LAKE COUNTY FINANCES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1905, 25 May 1888, Page 11

LAKE COUNTY FINANCES.

A Rather startling report was recently published to the effect that the Government had been guilty of very sharp practice with regard w> the irregular expenditure of the Lake County Council, which formed the subject of an Audit inquiry and subsequent legal proceedings. It was stated that a clause was introduced into " The Public Revenues Act (No. 3) 1887 " with the object of " checking " the action of the Auditor-general," and that this was done at the instance of the Minister o£ Justice, Mr Fergus, in order to prevent " any recovery of the illegally expended moneys " worn certain of his constituents. A reference y° the Statute Book shows that this charge j s happily quite unjustified. "The Public Revenues Act 1878" declares it to be the <wty of the Audit Office to audit the accounts of any borough, county, road J*>ard, or other public corporation or institution receiving aid out of public moneys, when required to do so by the Governor,

" and the Audit Office shall have and exer- " cisc in respect of the moneys and accounts " of any such body and the persons dealing " therewith the same powers which are hereby " vested in it in respect of public moneys "—" — i.e., the right of surcharge and recovery of moneys expended without due authority of law. Difficulties were experienced from time to time in the case of local bodies in exactly fixing the liability for such improper expenditure, and in order to make the matter clear in the future a clause was introduced in " The Public Revenues Act 1885 " to the effect that, if upon any audit under the Act of 1878 it should be found that moneys belonging to any local body " have "at any time not been duly accounted " for, or have been expended without " authority of law, unless such local " body has acted bona fide and under legal " advice, the audit officer shall surcharge the 11 amount thereof upon the person or persons " accountable for the same, or jointly and " severally upon the members of the local " body by whose authority such moneys " wereso expended. Any such moneys " shall be deemed to be a debt due to the " local body by the persons surcharged " therewith, and the audit officer may " recover the same in any court of " competent jurisdiction and pay the same " over to the local body to whom such " moneys belong." It would seem sufficiently clear that unless there was a distinct provision to that effect this enactment could aol be held to be retrospective, and it certainly was not intended to be so by the Legislature. Circumstances, however, developed which rendered it desirable that any possible misapprehension should be removed, and the Government therefore embodied in the Public Revenues Act of 23rd December 1887 the following enactment: — "Whereas " doubts have arisen as to whether the provi- " sions of section 7 of ' The Public Revenues " Act 1885 ' have retrospective operation, and "it is desirable to remove such doubts. Be " it therefore enacted that the provisions of " the said section shall not be deemed to have " had any retrospective operation or to apply " to any act, matter, or thing which happened " prior to the passing of 'The Public Revenues " Act 1885.' " As to the special matter of the proceedings taken by the Audit Office against the Lake County Council, we are not aware whether the Auditor-general acted or not under the assumption that the Act of 1885 was retrospective in effect. If, however, he did so he was clearly in the wrong, and whilst no sympathy can righily be afforded to members of that Council who may have been parties to illegal expenditure, they are entitled like all citizens to justice and to the fair interpretation of the law. The Act of 1878 in fact arms the Audit department with quite sufficient powers ; it is only the method of proceeding with the principle which is affected by the Act of 1885. The imputations on Mr Fergus are quite unjustified : as a matter of he has been pretty plain spoken as to the irregularities in the conduct of business by the Council which were so patent a few years ago, but which under an entirely new regime are, it is to be hoped, entirely things of the past.