The battlefield of local government reform
The number one reason why Simon Watts and Chris Bishop have suddenly put the brakes on Head Start is a fear of suffering at the...
Tag : council restructuring
How reform will impact workforce
Workforce savings are more concentrated, slower and less permanent than a merger business case implies, and the transition succeeds or fails on people rather than...
Local democracy swept aside
If amalgamation weakened accountability and drove costs up in 1989, is there any reason to believe that even more heavy-handed mergers can deliver the opposite...
And the early winners are…
Each potential coalition of councils has essentially had to outsource the work around amalgamation to a consultancy because of a lack of internal capacity and capability, write...
Democracy or autocracy?
As the Government mulls over the proposals for how councils propose to reorganise themselves under the Head Start pathway of Simplifying Local Government, we must...
The three f’s of amalgamation
After several false starts, it seems as though the Wellington region’s local governments are to amalgamate. What form this takes is still uncertain, but it...
All the reform, everywhere, all at once
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...