Murray's Blog
CEO Murray Douglas shares his thought for the week.
Week March 2 2010: 

Hawke’s Bay Local Government reform
The Chinese call it 'splitism' defined as a tendency for natural groupings to pull apart. We call it local government working on reorganisation.

It is disappointing that the Hawke’s Bay Councils are not proposing to undertake any detailed work on issues and options in regard to local government reform. The Chamber had asked councils to get on with the research now and not wait until the election.

The mayors and the chair of the regional council apparently met on February 12 and without reference to their councils agreed not to do anything. The HBRC later considered this matter at their meeting in later February and agreed with their chair- but only after some strong debate from some more courageous councillors who wanted to show more leadership on this issue.
The facts are simple.

A reorganisation scheme can be considered at any stage if the council submits this. However our councils seem to be very self-serving saying they will consider this- AFTER they have secured their position for another three years.
We also get the sense most don’t want to consider this issue at all and this is a way to avoid thinking about it and certainly, with the exception of the current Hastings mayor, not campaigning about it although even he has gone silent on this lately.

The regional council has asked its CEO to research ‘present and potential collaboration in terms of efficiency and savings’. This misses the point entirely- the greatest benefit comes from more strategic approaches to the region as much as from any ‘savings that may be present.

And history is against us.

Since the local government reforms of 1989 there has been a deliberative move away from deep collaboration.
In 1989 regional council rates were collected by the territorial councils saving the set up of a duplicate rating system and the on cost of separate systems. This broke down in the mid 1990’s when the Hawke's Bay Regional Council set up its own systems and duplicated exactly the same rating base.

Napier and Hastings in 2007 dissolved their joint cultural board which operated the museums and other cultural centres in one unit and set up a competitive and somewhat peculiar public monopoly market which the rate payer pays both ways. Just look at how the Napier municipal theatre and the Hawke’s Bay Opera House operate.

These sorts of splitist forces may be related to personal egos of elected or appointed officials. Or perhaps the long standing and vastly inefficient history of antagonism between Na 'pure' and Hast'stink'. Reasons well lost in time or relevancy.
Meanwhile the 'niggly' bits remain exacerbating the failure to have obvious shared services such as joint purchasing, single library system, one district plan or even have the same definitions in planning, subdivision or environmental health regulatory rules. And the list goes on.

Each of these differences cost money to the councils who lack simple standardisation and ultimately costs to the rate payer.

These delays in shared services let alone the courage of councils to ask the question to independently research local government reorganisation are further exacerbated by a cost-plus mentality that drives up the expense of silo councils.

If it was the private sector business model these councils would have gone out of business beaten by more flexible, nimble and alert competition.
Such is the monopoly of the local state and those who sail in her watching the election date.

One should ask of our leaders who meet in secret and decide Hawke’s Bay’s future, what sort of legacy do they leave behind?

I’m Murray Douglas and that’s my thought for the week

The views here are personal and not necessarily those of the Chamber of Commerce.

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