The Ashburaton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, JUNE 25, 1888. THE AUDITORIAL FIAT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1876, 25 June 1888, Page 2

The Ashburaton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, JUNE 25, 1888. THE AUDITORIAL FIAT.

It will be seen from the balance sheet of the Borough Council that the Auditor-General has disallowed certain items m the accounts, and so far as we know the Council has made no shift to refund the amounts thus disallowed. The Auditor has not confined his atten tions to Ashburton, for, according to the Hokitika correspondent of the " Kumara Times," he is uot only alive and kicking— he is feverishly active — this time on the matter of overdrafts. He has informed the Westland Charitable Aid Board, the Hokitika Hospital Trustees, and the Benevolent Society that they must not dare to indulge m such a thing as an overdraft ; and the Hokitika Borough Council has received a wither peremptory message demanding the immediate refund of an overdraft of £400 m excess of the revenue Other places and local bodies have been similarly made aware of his presence, but as to what attention has been paid to bis behests the same is not made known. Unless the Council here can devise a way out of the difficulty we can see nothing for it but, m vulgar parlance, to "ante up" out of their own private purses, which is perhaps a hardship. It seems strange that the possibility of these items being disallowed novor aoem«d \o dawn upon our worthy Councillors as a body. The Act is pretty strait-laced on the point, but this same Act, however, has not been studied with that earnestness we might expect from such a body of men, otherwise the confusion m the recent proceedings over the Clerkship would never have taken place. On whom the onus should -rest for such conduct we are not prepared to say. Though the Mayor is the first citizen m the Borough it would be too much to put upon him the whole blame of leading the Council into the maze m which it is acknowledged it finds itself at present. So far as can be judged the matter ia only m its first stage of cloudiness, and the end is not yet. There is perhaps a faint indication of a silver lining m the cloud under which the Council has become obscured." For the reputation of the town and for the sake of peace and harmony we hope all will soon be right, and that the Council will deal fairly and iully with its servants, and mete out justice with that unsparing hand which jls characteristic of a properly constituted corporate body, apart from personal bias or outside and undue pressure. To return, however, to tlje question of the refund of the expenditure disallowed by the Auditor, we think that seeing the public good for which the expenditure . was incurred, it would not be the right thing on the part of the burgesses to allow the members of the Council personally to be liable for the amounts, and perhaps some action may yet be taken jto bring before the ratepayers more fully the circumstances upder which the items of expenditure disallowed were incurred.