MUNICIPAL AUTOCRACY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 109, 10 May 1928, Page 6

MUNICIPAL AUTOCRACY.

We have no intention of discussing the work of the Transport Commission till its labours are completed, but .a statement made by one of the witnesses yesterday seems to us to require a little passing comment. Councillor J. A. C. Allum, chairman of the Tramways Committee, was explaining the City Council's policy, and referred to the defeat of the ti-am-ways extension loan proposals. The Council, he said, still holds that the proposed extensions are essential and are urgently required, and it therefore considers that legislation should be passed empowering it to raise money for extensions approved by the Public Works Department and the Local Government Loans Board "without the necessity of taking a poll." We do not know how far the other members of the City Council share these views, but we protest against them emphatically. Mr. Allum had apparently forgotten that councillors are clected by the ratepayers to carry out a policy which the ratepayers have endorsed. They have no authority and no official existence apart from the approval of the ratepayers, and yet, according to Mr. Allum, they now claim the right to over-ride the decision of the ratepayers by statutory means and to impose fresh financial burdens upon them against their considered judgment and their declared will. Such an assumption of autocratic power would be ridiculous if it were not at the same time dangerous. We hope that Mr. Allum will come to recognise the folly and futility of such absurd pretensions, which are wholly inconsistent with our established methods of municipal administration, and utterly incompatible with the democratic principles on which our systems of local and national self-government are based.