Policy development was too often controlled upstream by the mayor and senior officials. Councillors formally voted, but officials largely controlled the information, framing, recommendations and implementation surrounding those votes.
I challenged that culture, particularly when Council pursued representation arrangements that I believed compromised equal suffrage. Its proposed co-governance model required special legislation because it did not comply with normal proportional requirements under the Local Electoral Act. The Attorney-General concluded that it appeared to discriminate on the basis of race and that the limitation could not be justified under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The proposal was abandoned.
I also faced a record 13 Code of Conduct complaints that I regarded as attempts to constrain legitimate participation in policy processes. After I refused the mayor's demand for an apology, I was removed from two committees and excluded from important policy development.
These experiences pointed to a wider structural problem.
Nick Clark's 2024 New Zealand Initiative report, Making Local Government Work, describes a “democratic void” between those voters elect and those who exercise much of the practical power.
Mayors and councillors carry political responsibility, yet unelected chief executives control staff, operations and much of the information available to elected members. Clark also warns that codes of conduct can be weaponised and that inadequate access to information weakens democratic scrutiny.
His proposed reforms include giving voters more direct authority over major projects and exceptional expenditure; strengthening councillors' rights to information and political expression; providing elected representatives with independent professional advice; and giving councillors stronger powers to scrutinise management.
He also raises the German “strong mayor” model. I would go further.
Any new unitary provincial authority should combine the offices of mayor and chief executive into one directly elected executive position.
That would attack the democratic void at its source. Instead of electing a mayor who carries public responsibility while an unelected chief executive controls the organisation, voters would elect one leader with both the mandate and authority to govern.
The executive mayor would appoint senior managers, direct implementation of approved policy and present budgets. Professional management would remain essential, but managers would work under an elected executive who could be removed by voters.
Critics will say this would politicise local government, perhaps along party lines.
But local government is already political. Candidates campaign on competing policies, form voting blocs, receive endorsements from political organisations and often have identifiable ideological or partisan affiliations. Pretending otherwise does not remove politics. It merely makes political influence less visible when it should be more accountable.
Nor is movement between local and national politics unusual. Council service has long preceded or followed parliamentary careers. Former and future MPs regularly serve as mayors and councillors. The boundary between local and national politics is already porous.
The real issue is therefore not whether local government should be political. It inevitably is. The issue is whether political authority is transparent and democratically accountable.
An elected executive mayor would make responsibility unmistakable. Voters would know who proposed the programme, who controlled its implementation and who should answer for the results.
Party competition might even improve transparency if affiliations were openly declared. Voters could compare programmes rather than personalities alone. Councillors would still scrutinise the executive, while independent audit, judicial review, strong information rights and binding referendums on major issues would constrain abuse of power.
This should form part of a more ambitious reform: replacing today's maze of territorial and regional authorities with a smaller number of democratic unitary provincial governments.
A provincial authority could combine regional and territorial functions, reducing duplicated governance, overlapping planning systems, repeated consultation and administrative costs. One set of accounts, one infrastructure strategy and one performance framework would make responsibility easier to identify.
That is why Rotorua Lakes Council's campaign to become a stand-alone unitary authority is too narrow.
Simply transferring regional powers into the existing Council would enlarge the institution without necessarily reforming it. Councillors would not automatically become better informed. Officials would not automatically become more accountable. Greater powers would not guarantee greater productivity or drive down debt.
Most importantly, the existing ambiguity would remain: an elected mayor publicly responsible for outcomes while an unelected chief executive controls much of the organisation required to deliver them.
The institution seeking more power should first demonstrate why that power would be exercised more democratically, transparently and productively.
Nor is Rotorua necessarily an appropriate province on its own. Provincial boundaries should reflect communities of interest, infrastructure networks, economic relationships, environmental catchments and transport systems, not simply the ambitions of existing councils seeking institutional survival.
Final proposals should also require public consent. Boundaries, powers, assets, liabilities, debt limits, transition costs and democratic safeguards should be put to electors in binding referendums.
Rotorua does not need merely a bigger council.
New Zealand needs fewer institutions, clearer responsibilities, stronger elected scrutiny, transparent finances and executives whom voters can directly hold to account.
The goal should not be to keep politics out of local government. That is impossible. It should be to bring political power into the open, attach responsibility to those who exercise it, and give voters the means to remove them when they fail.
Reynold Macpherson is a retired professor and former CEO and councillor who writes about ethics, politics, educative leadership and governance. Contact: reynold@reynoldmacpherson.ac.nz
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