LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18431, 15 March 1922, Page 4

LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

At a meeting of the Southland (Invercargill) Chamber of Commerce last week, one of the speakers, Mr. W. Hinchey, referred to the trend towards centralisation in government, and forecasted the exercise of an even greater measure of control by the general Government in the future. He ascribed this development to the manner in which local bodies had been carrying out their duties and prescribed as a remedy the appearance of more experts in local government. In commenting on this suggestion, the Southland Times, while not professing to know the means by which Mr. Hinchey proposes to secure the application of his remedy, expresses the opinion that the direct 'incorporation of the experts would be the best way to secure their service. By this our southern contemporary means a change in the system in the direction of what the Americans have called commission control. Municipalities in the United States have for a long time had the opportunity of supplanting government by elected councils, under whom experts carry on the administration, with elected commissioners, each one a paid expert with his powers limited to a particular branch of public control. These paid experts are subject to certain ehecks exercised through the referendum and the recall, but in the majority of cases experience has shown that they function with little interference from the electors. lu other places elected town managers have taken over the direction df local administration. New Zealand has not tried either of these systems in full effect, though one or two attempts at a restricted application of the latter have been made “In affairs of Dominion-wide 'lnfluence,” the Times proceeds, “we have not yet done enough with control by one highly paid expert immune from political 'lnterference, yet such a system, where a man of the right calibre is secured, has much more chance of giving good results than Boards of Control and Councils in which considerations other than the vital one play a big part in the determination of personnel. While local control is

in the hands ot bodies popularly elected, it is difficult to keep the local administrations clear ot politics. The politics that operate in the general government should not enter the domain ot local affairs, but there are politics in local affairs when a subject of sufficient public interest confronts the citizens. That the control of municipal administration, that county council affairs require the services of the best men we have; that business men should play a bigger part in local affairs cannot be questioned, but even they cannot hope to grapple local questions with the skill of experts in municipal control, and for that reason we think the future will see the application of the commission system to this Dominion. It is obviously better- to elect an engineer to take over the management of those portions of municipal activity than to elect him as one of a number to deal with subjects quite outside of his special knowledge. A citizen may be popular, an excellent business man and st'lll be profoundly ignorant on the construction and maintenance of roads. He must rely on an engineer, but he still has the power to alter and decline that engineers’ plans, and local government in New Zealand can supply many tragedies arising from the amendment of experts’ plans by well-meaning but unqualified public men. We may have taken this criticism of the local government system in force in New Zealand further than Mr. Hinchey would care to go, we may have put forward suggestions to which he would not care to subscribe, but we think that the remedies for the ills he mentions are to be found along the lines we have mentioned.” Apropos of the above, the Wanganui Borough Council last evening decided to appoint a committee to go into the pros and cons of a general manager for this Borough. The proposal will receive the wholehearted endorsement of the ratepayers.