The State of Local Gov’t in NZ

August 2024: I’ve been reading lots and lots of Long-Term Plans… and wondering what’s happening with the Future for Local Government Review that finished a year ago.

The past several weeks, I’ve been reading the draft Long Term Plan of each of the 78 Councils in Aotearoa.

These are the 10-year plans that Councils are required to draft, consult upon, finalise & adopt by 1st of July every three years.

I’ve never looked at them across the whole country before, so I don’t have a sense of what’s typical, but here are some takeaways from me:

• 13 of the 50 North Island councils & 10 of the 28 South Island councils (nearly 30% of councils in total) haven’t drafted one. A few have deferred it. Most others opted for an enhanced annual plan or 3-year plan instead.
  
  Reasons include recent flood events (especially Cyclone Gabrielle) & being unprepared to budget for their three waters infrastructure when the new government cancelled the old government’s Three Waters reforms.

• We’ve all read about the proposed rates rises being around 15% on average. Every LTP has to show the budgeted rates rises for the next 10 years; nearly all propose a huge increase for one or two years then taper off to low single digits for the next eight years.

• Despite rates increases, nearly every LTP is full of both planned & in-progress projects being cut, scaled down or delayed, with emphasis on ‘getting back to basics’ & infrastructure repair. Councils take up multiple pages explaining all the cost-cutting measures they’ve already undertaken, and it’s clear that their wellbeing role takes a backseat to their infrastructure provision role (if it’s there at all).

• I was surprised by how openly these public documents bemoan the increasing demands put on councils by central government & the broken system for local government funding.

• So, 30% of our councils were unable to do their normal long-term (& ten years isn’t long term enough!) planning because of the shocks of extreme weather events & central government changes. And at least half of the others are almost totally focused on critical infrastructure.
  
  What will happen as these events, both extreme weather & funding shifts, increase in frequency? (Ironically, multiple Councils propose or were consulting on axing or delaying their climate adaptation programmes to cut costs…)

• Woefully few planning documents felt in any way aspirational or forward-looking, but there were a couple.

  • Tauranga, with sustained population growth, proposes to stay the course with a major civic precinct development & waterfront upgrade. There were a couple others where population growth cushions the need for cuts.

  • Palmerston North’s LTP (my favourite) has such clear communication about the goals driving all decision making & a wonderful tone & communication style; it really exudes care & respect & a long-term perspective. & completely foreground’s Council’s wellbeing focus & function. Quite a standout.

All this got me wondering what was happening with the Future for Local Government Review that issued their final report of recommendations just over a year ago (June 2023).

First, some of the top recommendations of that review, relevant to the LTP conversation:

• Entrench the purpose of local government…to embed intergenerational wellbeing and local democracy at the heart of local government.

• Introduce statutory provisions [requiring] councils to set wellbeing goals and priorities each term, in conjunction with community and hapū/iwi.

• Local government and councils develop and invest in democratic innovations, including participatory and deliberative democracy processes.

• To prioritise and deliver on wellbeing, central government makes a greater investment in local government through: ▸ an annual transfer of revenue equivalent to GST charged on rates ▸ significant funding to support local priorities & place-based agreements.

• And under the heading SYSTEM RENEWAL, a set of recommendations including ▸to establish a new local government stewardship institution to strengthen the health and fitness of the system. And ▸research, development, and innovation capability that equips local government to maximise intergenerational wellbeing for its communities.

There’s a lot more in it, & it’s exciting stuff that’s calling for a pretty thorough overhaul.

Unfortunately, it got parked when Labour was frantically cutting programmes last year, & Local Government Minister Kieran McAnulty said it wasn’t a “bread & butter issue” (which Andrea Vance beautifully rebutted in the week the report came out).

I asked LGNZ if they knew whether any of the recommendations were being considered by the new government. They replied: “We've been encouraging the government to think about the aspects of this review that would help local government & align with the gov's priorities. There's been limited progress at the central government level, but we're still pushing for change where possible through things like the electoral reform group.”

That’s the initiative, launched last month, to try to drive higher voter turnout in local elections & move to four-year terms.

It seems that’s all that’s officially left of the 2-year review and 135pg report.

The report

The Andrea Vance article