Late on Tuesday, as foreshadowed by the Otago Daily Times lead story the same day, Local Government Minister Simon Watts and Resource Management Act Reform Minister Chris Bishop announced that New Zealand’s 11 regional councils were destined for the scrap heap of history.
These bodies, which include the Otago Regional Council and Environment Southland, have protection of the natural landscape as their primary focus. As well as monitoring air and water quality and the suitability of land use, they also have a civil defence role and play a part in environmental management, biosecurity and pest control and planning and providing regional roading and public transport.
All important things, but things which critics claim could be done by existing district or city councils. Regional councils were seen as an unnecessary extra layer of governance — and an expensive extra layer when their ever increasing rates bills arrived.
"Right now, the system is tangled in duplication, disagreements, and decisions that defy common sense," Mr Bishop said.
"The government does not think local government is serving New Zealanders well and the time has come for reform."
That process will begin in a fortnight, when the government introduces the latest piece of its resource management law reforms into Parliament.
The discussion paper released with the announcement is a thin 30-page document short on specifics. It focuses on proposed changes at the governance level but — apart from suggesting that council mergers and amalgamation of back room functions like legal services and human relations — offers few details about what this will all mean for the hundreds of people whose jobs may be affected.
They would presumably, at least in the short-term, become the employees of the new "combined territories boards" that the government is proposing should replace regional councils.
Boards are meant to take over all roles and functions of regional councils: whether they are permanent institutions is up to the individual councils in the region.
The intention is that mayors would work together to govern their regions through "genuine regional collaboration". The reality may well be very different.
Mayors, who are already extremely busy, may resent this extra task being forced upon them. They also may, understandably, feel local loyalties to those who voted for them rather than be imbued with a sense of regional collegiality.
The proposed voting structures include one where the mayors from the largest population centres would have the highest proportion of the vote — no doubt causing further angst for those who already feel their regional councils are dominated by big city priorities.
The question also arises as to what would happen to regional council assets. Quite apart from land and buildings, the ORC owns Port Otago, a vital cog in the national as well as the regional economy. Its future now hangs in the balance.
The new boards are expected to draft "regional reorganisation plans" within two years — including whether they themselves are to continue existing, or not.
The plans are expected to "support national priorities like housing and infrastructure" — which on one hand sounds sensible but on the other could remove local autonomy in decision making if the government of the day disagrees with a region’s priorities.
The discussion document notes ominously that crown commissioners, potentially with veto powers, wait in the wings "when they thought this necessary in the interests of New Zealand as a whole".
Few would argue that the current local government system, let alone the resource management system, did not need some level of review and reform. Councils and regional councils often butted heads on issues and the consenting system could be expensive and labyrinthine.
But the government’s proposed solution to those issues places enormous responsibilities on the shoulders of mayors, has a questionable commitment to localism and leaves dozens of services — and the people who provide them — in limbo.
