THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 1913. PUBLIC WORKS GRANTS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 14 May 1913, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 1913. PUBLIC WORKS GRANTS.

The annual scramble by local bodies for the loaves and fishes will be taking place during the next few weeks. Following a practice that lias been adopted for sonue years past, the Public Works Department is asking County Councils to prepare schedule.-! of works withim their respective territories for which Government grants are required. In almost every County, demands amounting to thousands of pounds will be made. These will be gone through by the Minister, after consultation with the members for the respective districts, and the amounts will be cut down, so that they will come within a- reasonable distance of the public works allocation for the year. There is not a local authority in the Dominion that imagines for a moment that the whole of its requests for grants will be conceded. The consequence is that, as a rule, the Councils put in requests for about three times (the amount of money that is really reI quired. The Minister, for liLs part, has the last trump card to play. H knows that there is a limit to the borrowing powers of local authorities, and so he (inserts the convenient proviso that the grants, made are on the pound for pound basis. The result is that, in many instances, not one-half the grants that appear on the public works appropriation can be taken up. They are passed on to the next year's accounts, and the public works estimates are swelled enormously. The system under which public works giants aire made is as unsatisfactory as it possibly can be. It lends itself to extravagance, political log-rolling, and patronage of a most pernicious character. There is surely a more sane and economical method of constructing the roads and < fejridge§ is tho country thatf th*s •

which ifi at present in operation. It would he quite a simple matter for the Minister of Public Works to obtain an independent report upon the urgency of the different works for which grants are required. Under existing conditions there is, as we have already stated, a very strong temptation to magnify the requirements of the different districts, and, as it frequently Happens that polities enter into the discussion, the grants that are most urgently needed are at times refused, whilst those that are' almost unnecessary appear upion> the authorised list. In our opinion, while it is right and prop >r that County Councils, upon whom the cost of maintenance ultimately falls, should ho consulted as to what gra-nts are made for road and bridge construction, it is a bad policy to make straight-out, unrestricted votes. This not only lays the - Government open to the charge of favouritism; but it results in demands being made that aro of a most extravagant character. If all grants were made in the form of subsidy, the public works allocation wovld be tremendously reduced, and only those roads and bridges would be asked for that are urgently required, and for the provision of which the settlers interested are prepared to contribute their quota. One of ths first ax*tions of the •Government, if it is desirous of effecting economy in administratiom, should he to alter the system under which public works expenditure is allocated. To continue the present slipshod methods would b3 to perpetuate the wholesale squandering of public revenues," and to involve the Dominion., in an administrative scjyidal.