LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 464, 11 May 1912, Page 3

LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM.

At a meeting of the Ma*amata County Council, held at Tirau, the chairman (Mr C. W. Keeley) made a vigorous indictment of the proposals contained in the Local Government Bill, as brought down in Parliament last session. He considered its effect would be that the law would practically have to find all the money for taxation. The dual control outlined in the Bill was one of its weakest features, and the extension of the franchise would allow people to to have a vote for loans in which they had no concern. The Bill would, moreover, place county councils in a very humiliating and subordinate position. Its only redeeming feature was its position of assured finance.

The following resolution was unanimously agreed to: "That the Matamata County Council strongly protests against t-he passing of the Local Government Bill., by reason that it will aggravate and intensify thn evii of centralisation; that it will curtail the right of the people to administer thfir own affairs; that its proposals will, in operaton, prove cumbersome, expensive, unsatisfactory and oppressive; that while increasing the cost of local government, it will not acid to its efficiency; that while diminishing the authority of the people it will increase their financial burdens by imposing fresh and unnecessay taxation; that no measure embodying so violent an altereration in the administration of local affairs should be passed into law until the people have been afforded an opportunity of pronouncing upon it the ballot box."