LOANS WITHOUT POLLS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 26, 31 July 1933, Page 6

LOANS WITHOUT POLLS

Important general issues are raised by the protest made by the Mayor of Auckland against the action of the Local Government Loans Board in deciding that the Auckland loan proposals must be submitted to a poll of ratepayers. We do not wish to offer an opinion on the , local question—that will be decided in due course by the Auckland City Council and the ratepayers—but the Mayor's references to "bureaucratic control" may lead to a public misunderstanding of the functions of the Loans Board. The board was set up at a time when it was evident that local body borrowing had outrun the .constable, and the need for some independent check was fully apparent. The only regrettable fact lis that it was not set up earlier1 when it might have saved ratepayers from part of the loan burden which they now find so heavy. Its duly is

to examine borrowing projects from the viewpoint of the necessity and value of the work and the soundness jof the financial arrangements. If it gives approval it does not remove the need for a poll of ratepayers. The board is an additional check, not a substitute for ratepayer control. Only in certain circumstances is the poll provision dispensed with —in works essential to public health, when the approval of the Board of Health must be obtained —and, temporarily, for works to relieve unemployment. But the unemployment loans-without-polls were to meet an emergency by the provision of work quickly and without the delay and expense entailed by polls. Circumstances have changed greatly since then. New and more permanent means of dealing with unemployment have been provided. No council can now plead that it is confronted with a sudden need, or has not had time to make its plans and arrange its finances. The fact that the special legislation has been continued much longer than was originally contemplated is, indeed, a reason for holding that its repeal should be possible without inconvenience. It was not intended as a permanent curtailment of ratepayers' rights and its indefinite continuance would tend to give it unwarranted permanence.