Mayoral power and the attraction of a benevolent dictator
By Linda O’Reilly, Special Counsel at Tompkins Wake. Nigel Clark’s guest editorial in the December 2024 issue of Local Government magazine got me thinking. The...
Category : Governance
Councils relieved of ‘well-being’ obligations
The Government is taking back central services from local councils, leaving them to “deliver essential services and core infrastructure”. “Earlier this year, the Prime Minister...
AI use in local government
Mike Manson, Chief Executive of the Association of Local Government Information Management (ALGIM). Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking the world by storm but you may...
Governance review – Tauranga City Council
Jeremy Sole explains how, in the new world of CCOs, the Tauranga City Council’s recent bi-annual CCO board review was provided by a framework based...
What elected members need to know
For most elected members it is mid-term. But the out-of-cycle election of members marking the return of Tauranga City Council from a Commission to fully...
Investigation into council practices
The Ombudsman investigated eight councils to see whether they were following the right processes in their meetings and workshops and says it is in the...
Tougher government scrutiny for infrastructure
The new Government needs to ensure it doesn’t repeat the costly infrastructure decisions of the previous one, warns Peter Dunne. It is a time-honoured ploy...
Local democracy challenge
Grant Duncan, the Associate Professor, School of People, Environment and Planning, at Massey University. A commentator on public affairs, his most recent book is The Problem of...
Elections are over – let the triennium begin
By Mike Doesburg, a partner at Wynn Williams who acts for councils on a wide range of local government and environmental issues. The reality of...
A stronger role for Te Maruata: Boosting the involvement of Maori in local government
Maori elected members, and many non-Maori members, have expressed a desire to see tangata whenua play a greater strategic role in local government in
New...