LOCAL BODY LOANS.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 September 1924, Page 4

LOCAL BODY LOANS.

QUESTION OF CONTROL. (By Wire— Parliamentary Reporter.) Wellington, Last Night. When a Wanganui special rating Bill was before the Legislative Council today>. the Hon. W. H. Triggs strongly criticised the present system of control over the expenditure of local loan money and said the Bill supported those who contended that control was not sufficiently effective. He believed that Wanganui, which had a population of 20,000, already had debts amounting to £926,000, and it was now proposed that V anganui, in conjunction with adjacent boroughs, should take over £140,000 of a debt belonging to those boroughs. The total population would be added to by about 5000, so that for a population of 25,000 people there would be a debt of over £1,000,000.

He said the transaction of Wanganui had not been of the most business-like character, and one of the purposes of the Bill was to set right the financial muddle in which the local authorities had found themselves in consequence of their unbusiness like action. He understood that the Bill had the approval of the Auditor -General and that what was proposed was the best way out, but what had occurred furnished a very striking argument indeed that there should be some supervising authority before a loan was finally issued, and that it was not sufficient to leave the matter to a poll of ratepayers.