AUTHORISATIONS.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17882, 1 October 1923, Page 13

AUTHORISATIONS.

LIMIT FIXED.

Craws association telegbak.) WELLINGTON, September 30. It is necessary ia order that an expenditure reasonably approximating the cash appropriation may be obtained, to fix a limit to the authorisations, bat , this limit must be in excess of the cash appropriation. The cash appropriation is £984,860, and the Minister has fixed the limit of authorisation- during the financial year at £1,400,000. This means, assuming the actual expenditure, up to March 31st to be exactly regulated to the cash appropriation of £984,860, that April Ist will show that while the total of the various individual votes is £1,613,000, the actual cash appropriation provided by Parliament is only' £984,000, or CO per cent, of ths total of tho voted cash appropriation. There is, of course, a limit of actual expenditure during the,financial year, and it follows that it is quite impossible to authorise every individual voto for expenditure. If this wore done it would mean either that the cash appropriation would be over expended, or, alternatively, that a most irritating checking and restriction of work would have to be practised to avoid over expending. The only practical expedient is the one which has been followed, namely, restricting authorisations. •This system is automatic, so far as concerns the provision of items on tho ! Estimates, and eacli Public Works dis- ] tfict's total of items voted is as nearly correct as can be ascertained under that system. The next step was tho introduction and passing of the Main Highways Act, which created a Main Highways Fund, and reposed in tha Main Highways Board, which has absolute, powers, free of all possibility of political intervention, the control of all works and finance in respect of all roads which the Board declares to be main highways. This, scheme may involve an. annual expenditure of approximately a an amount which will doubtless increase as • tho reserved sources of income to the fund naturally expand, but there still remains a very real difficulty in regard tp the roads and bridges votes when it comes to authorising expenditure of individual items. The Eton. J. G. Coates, Minister cf Public' Works, interviewed, expressed himsolf as very much averse to anything in the nature of interference of political considerations in his public works policies, and stated that he ,had already made marked .progress in establishing systems to prevent such, happening. The first step was the declaration of his policy to proceed'with the railway hydro-electric,and, irrigation works, according to a definite programme based on the order of importance arid urgency arid concentration of expenditure according to that programme. Next'came the introduction of what is known Departmentally as the - automatic system of allocating votes for roads and bridges to varions public works districts. . The factors which determine the/amounts for each district are area, population, rates collected, loan charges, mileage. of open roads, cost of completing roads (including allowance, for sccessibility of metal arid climatic conditions)), and value of undeveloped Crown and Native lands. There would. be carried forward a liability against the fund.: .*>f £415,140.4 In the shape of unexpended balances of authorities.