THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, APRIL 13, 1931. RATING SYSTEMS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21308, 13 April 1931, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, APRIL 13, 1931. RATING SYSTEMS.

If the petition to the City Council, asking that a vote of the electors shall be taken on a proposal to introduce the system of rating on unimproved values, is found to be in order —as it may be anticipated it will be —a poll on the question will be held on the day of the municipal elections nest month. The proposal, which has originated with the Labour Representation Committee, may conceivably make some appeal to unthinking ratepayers who have expressed dissatisfaction with assessments that have been made under the system of rating now in force. For it is one concerning which the votes of ratepayers are peculiarly liable to be influenced by personal interest. It is, in fact, to personal interest that the arguments that are being used by the advocates of a change are to a large extent being directed. Whatever the system of rating, the City Council must derive from rates a certain amount to meet the costs of the public services. As the Finance Committee of the City Council points out in a report which it has prepared on the matter, a change in the system “ would effect a complete and farreaching redistribution of the bui'den of local taxation as between one ratepayer and another.” And the ratepayer who is encouraged to believe that a change in the system would have the effect of lightening the burden of rating that is borne by him and of increasing the burden that is borne by some one else is selfishly tempted to consider that the change should be made. But it is also pointed out in the Finance Committee’s report that the ratepayer who is being told that it will be in his personal interest if the system of rating on unimproved values is adopted is in danger of being deceived. The explanation of this consists in the fact that there is no valuation roll in existence that will admit of any accurate estimate of the amount of rates that would be paid by anyone if he were rated on the unimproved value of his property. The valuations upon which the rating on unimproved values is based are Government valuations, but there has been no revision of these for several years, and in the interval there have been great changes in the value of properties in different parts of the city. For this reason the arguments which the advocates of a change in the rating system base on comparative figures are to be viewed with suspicion. It should only be upon clear evidence that a system of rating on unimproved values would operate more justly and equitably than the system of rating on the capital value that the electors should approve of a change of method. The onus of proving that the change would be in the interest of the public as a whole necessarily rests upon those who have promoted the petition. Unless that onus is satisfactorily discharged the electors should pause long and seriously before supporting the proposal for a change. They have to remember, also, that the system of rating on unimproved values has not proved an unqualified success in boroughs that have adopted it, and that in some of these there arc large sections of the public that would welcome a reversion to the system of rating on the capital value.

THE UNEMPLOYMENT BOARD. A vacancy has occurred in the personnel of the Unemployment Board through the resignation, by reason of “ pressure of private duties,” of Mr W. Bromley, one of the two representatives of the workers. Mr Bromley was selected by the Government, along with Mr 0. M'Brine, for appointment to the board from a number of persons connected with industrial organisations who had been nominated. The method by which the selection was made excited, as will be remembered, strong protests from the Alliance of Labour and from some of the unions of workers that are associated with that body, their claim being that the workers’ representatives on the board should be elected —in a manner, that is to say, that would conflict with the provisions of the law. Messrs Bromley and M‘Brine having been appointed by the Government, it was logically enough argued at the conference which was held in Wellington last month, under the auspices of the Alliance of Labour, to consider the Government’s economy proposals, that it would be out of place for the conference to instruct them to resign their seats on the Unemployment Board. Mr Bromley, however, who attended the conference as a delegate from the Federated Cooks and Stewards’ Union and explained the methods adopted by the board, intimated that he would resign at once if it were so desired by the conference. He had to listen to some hard things that were said about him in the course of a discussion on the Unemployment Act. He was told by a delegate from the miners that if Mr M'Brine and he had any sense of decency they would resign. Another delegate declared that “if Mr Bromley had been honest of purpose he would have issued reports from the very beginning as to what the board was doing,” and have “obtained the opinion of the industrial organisations as to whether the action of the board was assisting or injuring the trade union movement.” Mr Bloodworth, having himself been one of the candidates for nomination to the board, admitted that he would have accepted a position on the board if it had been offered to him, but he asserted that he would certainly have resigned when the majority of the members of the board had resolved on the methods that are being adopted by it, and he added that he had told Mr Bromley and Mr M'Brine that they should have resigned. The secretary of the Alliance of Labour, Mr Roberts, expressed the view that Mr Bromley should have resigned “when Mr Forbes vetoed the sustenance regulations,” Another delegate said it seemed to him that Mr Bromley “was becoming conscience-stricken by his own action.” It seems a reasonable conclusion from the whole tenor of the discussion that the “pressure of private business,” which is the pretext for Mr Bromley’s resignation, may be related more or less to the pressure that was exerted on him by the conference. There was no recognition whatever in the discussion of the fact that the Unemployment Board was provided with resources calculated on the existence of 8000 unemployed persons and that, having been faced with the need of providing, out of those resources, for an army of unemployed that has mounted up to over 37,000, it has perforce had to resort to expedients which were never contemplated when it was brought into existence.