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...
Tag : Local government governance
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...
Why good governance matters
Each council triennium we seem to have at least one council that maintains its place on our newspaper front pages for all the wrong reasons,...
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 this magazine got me thinking. The headline...