The Sun 42 Wyndharn Street, Auckland, N.Z. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1927. SECRECY IN CIVIC BUSINESS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 175, 14 October 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndharn Street, Auckland, N.Z. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1927. SECRECY IN CIVIC BUSINESS

ANEW policy as to the administration of municipal business was adopted last evening by the Auckland City Council. It was decided to give the various standing committees full power to deal with routine affairs and, by way of a compensating balance, to lighten the arduous work of the council by holding an open meeting every third week instead of every fortnight. Anything that promises to give the city more effective government than it has enjoyed for some time past is to be hailed with a shout of grateful welcome, but, unfortunately, the majority of ratepayers have become so hardened in scepticism that they will be more inclined to voice protest and to look askance at the pretentious innovation. Of course, it has to he recognised, though it ought not to be tolerated, tbat the Wilsonian doctrine of “open covenants openly arrived at” has never been attractive either to the City Council as a whole or to its highest departmental officers. They always seem inclined to look upon the municipality as a close corporation which should have the same privileges as to secrecy as those traditionally possessed by private business organisations, instead of realising that it is next to the State in respect of service and financial obligations and, being so, should be as open as Parliament. Not one of the many Parliamentary committees has the same measure of power as that given last evening to the Auckland municipal committees. If this comment should appear harsh to those sensitive administrators who have been too long nourished on sympathy and sycophancy, let them look to their own talk as evidence of the fairness of the criticism. The main argument in support of the new policy was that the standing committees were fully competent to exercise extended authority in their respective spheres. It was also urged with glowing pride in achievement that the recommendations of the committees were seldom questioned. Before the echo of satisfied assertion had passed away Cr. Crookes had to assail the Finance Committee for its incomprehensible failure to carry out the council’s definite instructions to seek legal advice on the establishment of a motor camping site on Mount Hobson. It was later explained that there had been some misunderstanding about the instructions which really were as plainly observable as Mount Hobson. Is that the kind of competent manner in which the committees, fully competent to exercise extended authority, will do their work? It was emphasised by Cr. Allum that very little which appeared in the Tramways Committee’s report was ever questioned. Perhaps not, but the trouble in the past has been not so much about what was in that committee’s report, but what was left out. If the diversion of loan money for tram extensions to the stupid purchase of buses had been notified in a report the ratepayers of Reinuera would not have been compelled to go cap in hand to the council last evening seeking the tramway service of which they were deprived. And so with many other decisions of fully competent committees. There is so much secrecy already that, although the financial year ended last March, the balance sheet is still a mystery.