How they Voted

How they voted

Over the last week, elected members have been hearing submissions in response to Council’s 10 year Draft Plan. Citizens and special interest groups have, paradoxically, requested both a further reduction and a significant increase in expenditure.

  Where both groups find common ground is a feeling that Council is in a financial mess and that Councillors en masse are responsible for the poor decision-making of the past, which has led to the need to put in place the austerity measures outlined in the draft plan.

An old marketing acquaintance once said to me, “the first victim in a good story is the truth.” The fact that New Zealand has, like the rest of the world, found itself in a significant economic downturn appears to have been ignored by both groups, along with the fact that central government has delegated more and more responsibility to local government but without passing on funding collected in the form of taxation. I acknowledge that a number of decisions made by Council have, at the very least, been poorly thought through. However, calls for all Councillors to go are misguided.

Democracy is about transparency. Those whom you elect should be individually accountable for their voting record and should not seek to hide in the herd. So today I have launched a blog which will highlight how individual Councillors have voted on six important issues over the last few years. The blog will be updated at regular intervals to provide easy access to how your Councillors, including me, have voted on particular issues.
Some of my colleagues will say fair enough - others will show signs of humourless irritation. From my point of view, I will not always get it right but I am happy to be judged by how I voted.

Record of Hamilton City Councillor’s voting history on 6 issues.

Motions

Julie Hardaker

Daphne Bell

Peter Bos

Gordon Chesterman

Margaret Forsyth

Marin Gallagher

John Gower

Roger Hennebry

Angela O’Leary

Dave Macpherson

Pippa Mahood

Maria Westphal

Ewan Wilson

Voted to proceed with Claudelands Event Centre funded by debt.*

N/A

Yes

Yes

Yes

N/A

N/A

Yes

NO

N/A

Yes

Yes

NO

NO

Voted not to pursue investigation of legal remedies against former CEO regarding the V8’s

Yes

N/A

Yes

NO

NO

NO

Yes

Yes

Yes

N/A

Yes

Yes

NO

Voted for a notice of motion for the introduction of a public register of councillor’s property and business interests.

No

YES

NO

NO

NO

YES

NO

YES

YES

NO

NO

NO

YES

Voted to exit the V8’s and sell assets for just $1.25 million

YES

No

YES

YES

N/A

NO

YES

YES

NO

N/A

YES

N/A

NO

Voted to give relief to Waikato rugby union

YES

N/A

YES

YES

N/A

YES

NO

N/A

NO

NO

YES

YES

NO

Voted for councillors to receive salary increase

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

YES

YES

NO

                                                 *The vote regarding Claudelands Event Centre occurred on the 18^th of Oct 2006. There were 14 members of Council at the time. The then Mayor Michael Redman, Cr Bell, Cr Bos, Cr Chesterman, Cr Gower, Cr Simcock, Cr Macpherson and Cr Mahood, voted to proceed. Cr Di Maio, Cr Hennerbry, Cr Saunders, Cr Thomas, Cr Westphal, Cr Wilson voted no.

A N/A means they were either not on Council at the time or absent.

‘And now’ cried Ray, ‘let the wild rumpus start’.
I think Maurice Sendak children’s author would have had a lot to say about the goings on at the Hamilton City Council.

Hullabaloo would be another word that comes to mind. Like most things in life, there is an endless team of experts lining up to tell you what the cornerstone fault is. Poor governance, bad management, over spending, unsustainable levels of debt are but a few words that are spoken.

We have former Mayors of the City pulling strings and giving helpful advice. We have splinter groups all pushing a particular bent. We have self-appointed Robin Hood Ray Stark, who unsuccessfully stood for public office in the past, using a man’s wealth to educate the poor masses about the wrong-doings of City Hall.

Interestingly, Stark’s web page ‘Concerned Citizen’ does not allocate much space to identifying what his ideal Council would look like. However, I do agree with him that some of the Councillors should go, but based on how they have voted, not for the final resolution. You see, in a democracy, the majority has the power and getting rid of all Councillors would only make sense if Council was an autocracy. Stark’s call for all of Council to be dismissed fails to recognise that Council is made up of individuals who voted individually on issues – his premise is autocratic not democratic.

Hamilton City is not broken; it has and will continue to grow. It is a great place to live, work and play. Have we got more work to do? Yes. It is going to be more about getting the balance right, than any ideological swing of the pendulum from a culture of unsustainable debt because of past over-spending, to a bleak and soulless City covered by the clouds of austerity.

I am the first to say, the ship was heading in the wrong direction. It was less about a particular spending project (although there were some dumb projects), and more about the mantra of former CEOs Marryatt and Redman to spend borrowed money rather than living within Council’s means. Elected members must also take responsibility as ultimately they enabled the Chief Executives’ modus operandi.

I must say at this point that not all debt is bad. Assets that have a long life should be funded over the life span of the asset by the rate payers it will benefit. But, in my opinion, this will clearly not include things like events.

Council has, however, this year come out with a plan to cut half a billion dollars from its capital expenditure over the next ten years, with a further fifteen million from its operational budget per year. Does it go far enough? Not for me. I would have liked to see a plan to reduce debt, not just cap it, but balancing the level of rates with what the community can live with in terms of facilities and services is a compromise.

Which Councillors should go? If you believe in a democracy, you must vote. And if you’re going to vote, you should be informed. Take the time to list the issues that are important to you and then ask each Councillor how they voted - judge them on that. To do otherwise means you are letting other people make decisions for you and that should have stopped when you finished reading children’s books.

I've always enjoyed kitchens

They are where the real work happens.

They are always busy producing things, blending useful ingredients to ensure the perfect delivery of a much anticipated meal. 

So I find the rhetoric of academics, and armchair critics, who suggest that at a governance level it is bad practice for the elected wing of a public body to spend any time ‘in the kitchen’, quite naive – a view best left to the insulated world of academia. 

Furthermore, in a political environment elected members are expected by the ratepayer to have a very good understanding of what is going on in the kitchen, so not spending any time there is challenging and counterproductive.

Councillors like O’Leary, Gallagher, Macpherson and I have advocated from the commencement from the Hardaker regime for a portfolio-type model where each councillor has responsibility for areas of interest, passion and expertise.  Wellington does this successfully.

Coming in armed with academic theories (not to mention advice from former Mayor Margaret Evans), Mayor Hardaker has pushed through the implementation of a council structure based only on the corporate model, which they claimed would lead to better control by the elected wing.   

Paradoxically, under Hardaker’s brave new world the elected wing has surrendered even more power, removing almost all oversight by elected members of Council operations. All power has been handed over to the “more capable” mayor’s office and recently-arrived management bureaucrats.

A significant and yet un-debated issue is the danger of an elected mayor with no council experience. If you look at the likes of Redman and Hardaker , under their watch we have had the V8’s, Claudelands,  a poor exit deal from the V8’s (where we sold assets bought by the ratepayer for $9M for only $1.25M), an attempt to radically shift the rating system to the detriment of residential ratepayers, Floodgate and now Powergate.

Hamilton City needs to move quickly to a structure that maximises councillor’s individual capabilities and empowers them to have extensive oversight, ensuring transparency and a better accountability for each portfolio.