$20k - the cost to ratepayers of 11 OIA requests

Wanganui District Council PHOTO/FILE

Official information requests from three councillors to the Wanganui District Council have cost ratepayers more than $20,000 in the past three years.

That is the dollar estimate of time officers spent handling the requests under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (OIA) during the term of the current council.

Julian Harkness, council's deputy chief executive, said three councillors lodged a total of 11 OIA requests.

Eight were made by Michael Laws, two by Rob Vinsen and one by Jack Bullock.

Mr Harkness said these requests had taken anywhere from between four hours and 100 hours to complete.

"We don't maintain staff time records for the requests but we estimate that these requests have taken between four and 100 hours per request, with requests for correspondence being the ones that take the longest time," he said.

Mr Harkness said costing out the OIA requests took into account that the work was often done by or at least reviewed by a senior member of council staff. "As such, a rough estimate of cost would be in excess of $20,000," he said.

Mr Laws said he used the Official Information Act when he was "unable to get the truth" from official council papers or meetings. He said they had revealed "the secret suggestion of council staff that the council could borrow or rate to fund the $32 million Sarjeant Gallery project".

The council has ruled that no ratepayer funds will be used and the project will be funded from external sources.

Mr Laws also said his OIA requests had delivered "the smoking gun" as to the malfunctioning wastewater treatment plant's design.

"It contradicts the ... line that decisions taken by my council led to the failure."

He added that his "council sources" had advised him there was no cost to filling any of his OIA requests other than the cost of photocopying paper and that the staff processing the requests were already being paid.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr Laws described this as "a nonsense story about a non-existent monetary cost". We are happy to let the Chronicle readers make their own minds up.