THE PRESS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1988. Towards regional government

Press, 12 September 1988, Page 16

THE PRESS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1988. Towards regional government

In the continuing brouhaha about the reformation of local government, 1 an altogether inappropriate emphasis in the public debate has been on boundaries. Most attention has been focused on whether this or that scheme amounts to merger or take-over and on which of the soon-to-be-abolished local authorities is trying to put one over on its similarly fated neighbours. Somewhere in the kerfuffle the more important issues of what people want and expect of local government — of why we need local government at all — have been overlooked. Yet discussion about the shape of local government is rather pointless unless there has been some agreement on its purpose. Some of the responsibility for this oversight must rest with local body politicians and officers. For many of them the local body reorganisation will spell redundancy or political oblivion; a desire to limit the reduction in paid or unpaid positions is only natural. One means of doing so is to predispose the reorganisation to more government rather than less, by creating tasks for local government that will then require extra people and more money to accomplish. The public has connived at this narrowing of focus in two ways. One has been a reluctance to impose limits on what functions local government should assume, and an associated inability to limit local body budgets to essential services. The other has been the ability of sectional pressure groups to prevail upon local bodies to dispense ratepayers’ funds for all manner of purposes, whether or not ratepayers — or even the broader grouping of electors — have agreed that the charge is appropriate. Even the form of the country’s laws that deal with local government predisposes the course of the present debate: the powers and organisation of local bodies are covered first, and more exhaustively, than any prescription of their obligations to the governed. The powers accorded to local government, in whatever form, surely should be only those necessary to accomplish the duties expected or demanded of it by the people it is created to serve. This leads to the conclusion that the functions of local government should be pretty clearly defined and agreed upon as a first step. There is no agreement. Submissions to the Local Government Commission and public statements by local body politicians and executives confirm the point. Many arms of local government have lately looked more closely at their functions, especially after the commission advised them on July 22 that any submissions bn final schemes of reorganisation were wanted. It asked local bodies for their views in particular on what functions should lie with which tiers of government — central, regional, or district. Functions, duties and powers are the first consideration of the commission by law; boundaries are secondary and subservient to functions.

Case-by-case analysis might be expected to elicit a clearer picture of where particular responsibilities should lie. This would be an improvement on the general approach of some of the people who believe they will be active in local government after the changes; that local government should have more powers, as a matter of course, and that there is nothing to be gained from attempting to reduce the activities that become a charge on ratepayers. The thrust of local body arguments generally has -been that even greater powers should be. transferred to enlarged local bodies — responsibility for education and police are a couple -of examples that have been quoted — with a corresponding right, of course, to extract money for these tasks from ratepayers or residents, either directly or through central government taxation. The degree of support in the community for the fragmentation of such functions has not been tested. All or none of the extra functions that have been suggested for regional and local government might be appropriate and necessary, but they should be subject to critical examination by those who will be called on to pay for them. There has been a strong element of self-justification in the attempts by various local bodies to write their own job descriptions for what

responsibilities and powers they would like to have after the reorganisation. The greater the number of possible activities that can be added to the list of functions for a proposed authority, the more essential that authority can be made to look and the more staff it can hope to command. The range and scale of services performed by an authority at any tier of government, of course, largely determines its credibility in the eyes of the governed. It is the visible provision of services that establishes an authority in the public mind. This is not to undervalue or belittle the worth of the planning aspect of a local body’s functions; but no doubt the predominantly planning role of the Canterbury United Council, for instance, as opposed to the nuts-and-bolts of providing services direct to the public, has made it difficult for the council to establish its worth in the eyes of many ordinary Canterbury residents who still have' only a vague idea of what the council is and does. The case-by-case review of functions made by most local bodies should also help to resolve some of the conflict of opinion of what activities are best placed where. A degree of conflict always will be inevitable. Responsibility for some activities will overlap from district to regional government, or even regional to central government, which will demand a shared involvement. The setting of policy need not be tied to the provision of a service. Transport planning, for instance, is already done for the region by the Canterbury United Council; the construction and maintenance of the roads is done by local councils with money supplied in part from taxes collected by the central Government; and public transport in the system is provided by a mix of private business and an ad hoc local body. All of these functions will continue to be needed, whatever shape local government takes, and the responsibilities will continue to be shared. One consequence of ascribing manifold duties to the new amalgamated authorities is that the elected councillors would soon be overworked. The management, on a much larger scale, of just those duties performed by existing councils should prove exhausting enough for a score or two dozen local body politicians. The addition of responsibilities such as police, education, and consumer protection could force either the surrender of more and more executive authority into the hands of council employees, distanced from accountability to the electors, or the creation of more and more standing ad hoc committees to advise or assist the elected councillors.

The use of outside expertise, formally engaged or informally co-opted, is common in local government already. It is no bad thing. The better informed and, within reason, the more widely based the decisionmaking process is, the better the decisions are likely to be. Nonetheless, the mainspring of present reform is the desired reduction in the number of local authorities. This would be undermined if the net result is to replace existing elected bodies with non-elected committees of advisers who effectively make the decisions as quasi-autonomous local government working parties. The conclusion for current reforms must be against loading more functions and duties upon local and regional councils. The present reorganisation of local government offers a chance to grapple with much- more than simply redrawing the boundaries. Resolution of the functions expected of the different arms of local government — and, as a corollary, resolution of the means of funding them to perform those duties — have to be an essential part of the discussion. They are interdependent. Functions not only help to determine the logical boundaries, but boundaries also help to determine where functions best belong: the broader the canvas, the more responsibilities are likely, to be shed from regional government to district councils, for instance. So far, the boundaries have held centre stage; at last the functions of local government are getting more public attention; funding remains another issue still waiting its turn on the bumpy road towards regional government.