It has been a particularly interesting last few days for the plans going on to create the Auckland Super-City in November this year. In particular, it has been interesting to see the New Zealand Herald become more and more opposed to the “council controlled organisations” (CCOs) that will be set up to run water, development of the waterfront and (most controversially) transport.
First, there was Friday’s editorial, which included (among other comment) this:
The way it is shaping up, the single mayor and council will be a puppet show, purely for democratic appearances, while the real decisions are made by people the public has not elected and will never see. It cannot stand.
Now it seems that there’s a whole campaign within the Herald to expose exactly how unaccountable this new transport agency will be. In today’s paper there was a whole number of different articles on CCOs. Splashed across the front page of today’s newspaper were the words “The Lockout of Auckland“, and while the main article focused on the Waterfront Development Agency (transport will have its big article tomorrow), there is still mention of transport matters:
Aucklanders are to be locked out of decisions affecting their greatest jewels – including the waterfront – as well as important transport issues, including road congestion.
The two heavyweight contenders to be the first mayor of the Super City, John Banks and Len Brown, and an increasing number of other politicians and community leaders are aghast at a plan to set up agencies which will be virtually unanswerable to the public.
Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Michael Barnett said the Government risked handing Aucklanders a lemon with its vaguely drafted plans for seven “council-controlled organisations” (CCOs).
The proposed organisations – run by directors appointed by the Government with no input from local leaders – will be responsible for at least 75 per cent of services in the new Super City.
There are particular concerns about the CCOs being set up to look after transport and a huge swathe of the waterfront.
Columnist Brian Rudman did an excellent piece (save the first few paragraphs which were not much more than a nasty swipe at ARC chairman Mike Lee) on the CCOs as well, making these comments on Auckland Transport:
As critics argue, the big issue is lack of accountability.
The British colonists in America in the mid-18th century coined the catchcry “no taxation without representation” to protest at their lack of representation in the British Parliament that levied taxes over them, and this is one of the major objections to the new governance structure. As Mr Lee told the local government parliamentary select committee, “The transport agency will be spending over 50 per cent of the Auckland Council’s rates revenue, $1.3 billion of Aucklanders’ money, yet the arrangements proposed do not make it accountable to the public for the expenditure of that money, and nor do they make it accountable to the Auckland Council.”
Another critic claims more than 75 per cent of council services will be in the hands of these arms-length entities. Which raises the question, what will be left for the mayor and councillors – and the 19 community boards and their members – to do.
I have a sneaking suspicion that about halfway through the Super City process, central government got very very worried about the power of the agency they were creating, and have been trying to dampen things down ever since, with the CCOs being the primary way of doing this.
Another article briefly outlines Auckland Transport, in none-too-complimentary fashion:
This mega-CCO will be responsible, but not directly accountable, to ratepayers for spending more than half of their rates – about $650 million – on everything from major roading projects to public transport services to fixing broken footpaths. It will not handle state highways or railways.
Transport Minister Steven Joyce pushed the idea through the Cabinet against the advice of Treasury and other Government departments. Mayors, councillors and community boards say transport is too much part of political life in Auckland to leave to a handful of business types.
If one wonders why Steven Joyce would ignore so many government departments to create Auckland Transport, I don’t think you need to look too much further than the debates between the government and the ARC over Auckland transport priorities throughout last year. This was Joyce’s ultimate revenge on the ARC in my opinion.
A fourth article (yes that’s right, fourth!) has this to say about CCOs in general:
CCOs are not transparent and accountable to ratepayers in the way councils are. They do not have to release agendas or minutes of their meetings, which take place behind closed doors. They are, however, subject to the Official Information Act.
Until the Super City came along, councils decided what services would by run by CCOs following public consultation.
The Government has unilaterally decided on three CCOs for the Super City – transport, water and waterfront development. Four others have been proposed – council investments; economic development, tourism and events; major regional facilities and property holdings.
With the promise of more articles tomorrow, taking a particular focus on Auckland Transport, it will be interesting to see if there is any response from the government. I do think that surely some steps will be taken to respond to these criticisms – and to me the question really is whether the Auckland Transport CCO can be fixed or whether it needs to be done away with altogether, with transport matters being subsumed back into the Auckland Council.
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Based on the rumours that NZTA have, or will, pass the farebox recovery policy which was universally panned, I don’t see why they will bother to change anything here. Too few people really care or know what is going on, those that read the Herald editorials are typically National voters in any case and are less likely to really think ‘good old’ Key and Hide would do anything wrong. No, I think this will perhaps have a few cosmetic changes that can be touted as having solved the issues but it’ll be like putting lipstick on a pig, it’s still a flawed piece of policy.
Hmmmmm… yeah what’s happening with that farebox recovery policy. My word the last thing we would want is an Auckland Transport agency being as completely invisible and unaccountable as NZTA.
So Hide’s saying if the council is not happy they can just sack the directors. Is it really that simple? Can the council just go in there and sack the directors without any real grounds other than they don’t think that they will follow the councils plans? Because if they are not required by law to follow these plans (like the RLTS) what legal grounds would the council have to dismiss them?
Or can they just dismiss them without explanation? Sounds like it would have the potential to get messy.
Good question Cam. Rodney’s certainly making it sound like they could just dismiss the lot of them on day 1 without any problems. If so, then that’s 1 out of about 357923573290250 problems with this bill sorted.
Jon on Auckland Trains reported an annoucement from the Greens that NZTA were meeting a few days ago to approve the farebox recovery policy and set the minium recovery at 50% for all routes.
As if they can be sacked willy nilly, they will have signed contracts, unless these contracts are like the typical US style ones that state we can sack you without any notice and you can also leave without any notice then I don’t think it’s that simple. I wonder sometimes if Hide is actually a grownup – because grownups would perhaps wait until the new council was elected and then sit down and discuss who would be elected to Transport Auckland. A petulent child would perhaps do anything he could to make sure he/she got his own way, especially seeing as said child has been picked on all year by ARC and ARTA.
Well i can’t think what kind of idiot would sign a contract that would state “you can be dismissed at any time at the discretion of the council without exlpantion and regardless of you adherance to the local government or act etc etc” Why would anyone take that job? and is that actually legal under current employment law?
I saw Hide saying this on Close Up and Sainbury didn’t question him any further on it.
A director isn’t really an employee though…. so different rules may apply there.
To my non-lawyerly reading, the bill allows sacking of directors at any time, including long before their official term is up. It also says that they can have no expectation of a severance payment for dismissal.
This goes at least a little way of assuaging my fears with AT – but as others have noted, there’s still a lot wrong with it, and since there are no requirements for them to do X, Y and Z, even if we get an Auckland Transport that plays nice, they have no requirement to KEEP playing nice at any stage.
As for who would take such a job as director? Come on, CamBennet. There’s a lot of money and power right there, and corporate types can be hired and fired any time anyway (though as noted, they usually get golden parachutes). Further, the same situation (as far as I know) also exists at NZTA’s board, and they have even retained some of the Labour appointees, some year or so after National came into power. So the ACTUAL turnover is unlikely to be as high as you make it out.
If they don’t make substantial changes, you will have 20 councillors sitting around with not much to do but raise an unholy stink 24/7 till it is changed…
John Key noted in today’s Herald that he wasn’t going to change much. “There’s already lots of CCO’s in the Auckland Region, so why should you worry” – that kind of stuff.
Yeah I saw that. Pretty ignorant reponse if you ask me: the whole point John is that this one will be HUGE and suck up over half of Auckland’s rates. That’s a bit different to some CCO managing a swimming pool.
“though as noted, they usually get golden parachutes” – Exactly my point.
Sorry the edit option is not coming up so i’ll finish in another post. My original point was that they can de dismissed any time and don’t get a payout. However you are quite right Max i’m sure there will be plenty of candidates for the job, it’s also a good point you make about NZTA. I didn’t think about that.
@cambennet – there will be plenty of good candidates, but the problem I see is that people will be be given the job along political lines. Joyce is not going to fill the board with people like jarbury, it will be filled with like-minded people that share Joyce’s views. Do you really think that after all the crap he has had to deal with this year with ARTA and ARC disagreeing with his funding priorities that he would emply people who hold such views?
Ah damn rtc and here I was waiting for the call!
“there will be plenty of good candidates, but the problem I see is that people will be be given the job along political lines.”
So the first Auckland Council (who will hopefully be both a bit more progressive, and mightily pissed off about being given little say in their own city) should “clean house”. Quick.