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TAFM: SOLGM Presents to Select Committee

On 1 July SOLGM Vice-President Athol Stephens, Chief Executive David Smith and Senior Policy Adviser Raymond Horan met with the Local Government and Environment Select Committee to discuss the SOLGM submission on the TAFM Bill. In the little time we had with them we focussed on the following:

the core services clause – we consider this is unnecessary and vague
the pre-election report – we consider this is of doubtful effectiveness, logistically challenging for many councils, and containing vague reporting requirements
benchmarking – we are not averse to the concept, provided it isn’t used to undermine local accountability, but we think this work should be done by an agency outside the policy process. We also think that the primary users will be central government so they should pay for it, not the ratepayer
financial strategy – we strongly support the concept, but have some reservations as to whether the requirements in the Bill as it stands are sufficient to see good strategies developed.

We reminded the the Select Committee that the real drivers of local government rates in recent years have been in the cost of providing the so-called core services. In fact the recently published BERL local government cost index has shown local government input costs have risen 50 percent faster than the CPI over the past five years, with some components such as pipelines increasing by 10 percent in the last year alone,

Select Committee questions focussed mainly on the core services clause, and the pre-election report. Surprisingly there was very little about the opening up of water/wastewater to PPP options.

9 July 2010

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