If local government feels overwhelmed at the moment, that is because almost every lever that shapes the sector is being pulled at once, writes Gwynn Compton.
Water, planning, rates, structure, emergency management, infrastructure funding and central government machinery are all changing at the same time. The question is no longer whether reform is needed. In many cases, it is already happening regardless. The real question is whether the sector can absorb this much change without losing the local voice it exists for, or undermining the local services and infrastructure it is meant to provide.
The local government sector is not facing one major reform. It is facing a stack of overlapping reforms that, taken together, amount to the most significant reshaping of councils since the late 1980s.
Some of these reforms respond to real problems: water infrastructure needs a more sustainable footing. The Resource Management Act has long frustrated almost everyone who has had to work with it. Councils do need stronger financial discipline, clearer performance information and better infrastructure funding tools.
But the sheer volume, speed and sequencing of change now risks becoming a problem in its own right. Councils have barely finished redesigning their water services, yet they are now being asked to prepare for a new planning system, develop reorganisation proposals at breakneck speed, absorb new reporting and accountability requirements, prepare for rates caps, respond to emergency management changes, adjust to wholesale changes of the government ministries they deal with, and still deliver day-to-day services to their communities.
They are also trying to prepare long-term plans against one of the most uncertain horizons the sector has faced in nearly four decades.
Take the Simplifying Local Government reform and its Head Start pathway as an example.
Instead of a single, coordinated, overarching reform programme as I’ve repeatedly called for through a Royal Commission, the process has instead descended into dozens of mini-reorganisation exercises trying to take place simultaneously across the country. There is scant consistency between councils in the same region on how they’re approaching this, let alone across the country, and that is fuelling confusion and frustration for communities.
What’s more, councils are being asked to undertake this work against the backdrop of even more uncertainty around the new resource management framework. We know the new system is meant to include 17 regional spatial plans, which were intended to combine planning work from both city and district councils and regional councils. However, now that the Coalition has put the future structure of local government into play, much of this sits in limbo.
That the whole Head Start process is meant to produce reorganisation proposals in 12 weeks does not bode well for quality decision-making. The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance took 17 months to come up with its recommendations, yet a region like Wellington is being asked to run an equivalent process in just three.
Simplifying Local Government and the new resource management system are just two of the big reforms in the room. Even Local Water Done Well is still working its way into reality as new water service arrangements emerge and councils adjust to this new world.
There is also a raft of smaller but still significant reforms impacting the sector. These include changes to emergency management, new financial reporting requirements, the removal of voting rights from unelected appointees on council committees (including iwi representatives), the looming possibility of rates caps, and greater restrictions on what activities councils are meant to undertake.
In short, almost everything is changing all at once.
A similar situation of reform overload under the previous Labour Government undoubtedly contributed to voter backlash against it. One can only wonder whether the Coalition, in its own rush to get things done before the end of the parliamentary term, is at risk of repeating the same mistake.
Back then, National, ACT and New Zealand First made plenty of political hay from vigorously opposing Labour’s reform programme.
As communities begin to realise that the shape of local democracy may be changing forever, the political response from voters may not be quite as tidy as those behind this reform programme assume.
As former National Party MP Brett Hudson recently observed: “It’s certainly going to be interesting to see how voters respond to forced amalgamations in the referendum the Government has scheduled for November.”