But the council’s chief executive says staff, who turned up to work to do a good job but from time to time did make errors, had followed the correct process as required by the law and the elected council’s budget decision.
More than 14,700 ratepayers in Oamaru and the wider Dunedin area had to be re-invoiced after two errors in the Otago Regional Council’s recent rates invoices.
The errors were an incorrectly applied Oamaru public transport rate, which led to 972 property owners being overcharged, while the indirect Leith flood protection rate was undercharged, which meant 13,789 rates invoices sent to property owners in the wider Dunedin district — including in Dunedin City, Waikouaiti, Middlemarch, Hyde, Mosgiel, Taieri, Outram, Allanton and Henley — were for less then they should have been.
The council undercharged a total of about $220,000 across the latter group of invoices.
ORC chief executive Richard Saunders last week issued an apology for the errors and the inconvenience they caused to ratepayers and said the council would be amending processes in the future to ensure there was no repeat.
Those affected by the Oamaru transport rate were offered the option of a credit or a refund and those undercharged on the Leith indirect flood rate would not be penalised, and would have until 30 June, 2025, to pay.
The estimated cost of reinvoicing the rates would be less than $20,000, he said.
Cr Michael Laws yesterday lambasted staff, saying they got away with "screwing up all the time" and labelled the errors "an extraordinary cock-up of the first magnitude".
He said he had first found out about them through the media, before later reading about it in the council’s press release.
Councillors had not been given the chance to have input at all, which was "mandatory", he said.
"In all my time in local and central government, I have never known a case where senior management stuff up to this degree that they don’t immediately go cap-in-hand to their political masters or mistresses and say, ‘uh-oh,’ and A: inform them, and B: give them options.
"It just goes to a malaise at the heart of local government in this country, which is that senior staff think they’re in charge, and that governance are sort of sideline irritants."
There had been no atonement for the errors and the apology seemed to be a "whoop-de-doo, shrug of the shoulders".
The governance team should have been presented with options in the first instance for consultation.
He did not think giving people longer to pay the rates, by the end of the financial year, was a solution.
"But I wasn’t given the opportunity of saying I don’t think that’s a solution."
Cr Laws said he would have had it that the council wore the responsibility, with the difference coming out of the 2024-25 budget.
Councillors still did not know in detail how the errors happened or what mechanisms were in place to stop it from happening again.
Staff in local government in New Zealand got away with "screwing up all the time" and he wanted those responsible to accept they had stuffed up, apologise and atone for it, Cr Laws said.
Mr Saunders said mistakes happened despite the good intentions of staff, who worked hard.
"The important thing is that we own up and learn from errors and continue to improve as an organisation."
It was important the council was transparent with the community and there had been no attempt to hide the mistake, Mr Saunders said.
The Local Government Rating Act provided for errors to be corrected.
"We have followed the correct process to ensure we can complete the rates process as decided by council during the long-term plan.
"This is the decision of council we are giving effect to."
The council had implemented a process which it believed was the "fairest available", avoided penalties and provided flexibility to those impacted.
"That said, we acknowledge that this will still impact those people affected and we apologise for this."
ORC chairwoman Cr Gretchen Robertson said Cr Law’s proposal would have required the entire rates resolution to be rescinded and an entirely new rates resolution completed.
She did not accept his view that staff in local government were getting away with making mistakes.
The council would have the opportunity to robustly and transparently ask questions on the matter at its finance committee meeting this week, Cr Robertson said.
