Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) & Waikato Regional Council's, Circus!
First they’re in then they’re out then they’re back in again, all in the space of a month!
It’s the Waikato Regional Council and their membership of LGNZ that I’m talking about.
The council met and voted to withdraw from LGNZ by a majority vote of seven for and six against, to stop spending more than $122,000, each year of ratepayer money on membership of LGNZ which is now considered a highly politicised organisation.
More and more councils are deciding to withdraw from LGNZ, given that they do not see their ratepayers getting anything from the membership and that LGNZ has been caught using ratepayer money to mount political campaigns against the interests of the ratepayers who fund them!
Even with this knowledge, after the decision to withdraw, there were discussions undertaken and one of the councillors (Stuart Kneebone) moved a motion to re-join LGNZ and another one of the councillors (Noel Smith) decided to change his stance and voted in favour of the motion to re-join LGNZ.
So that meant there was a 7–7 deadlock.
It is usual convention that when there is a deadlock, the Chair uses their casting vote in favour of the "status quo".
But, despite the long-held convention, the Regional Council Chair, Pamela Storey decided to use her casting vote in favour of re-joining LGNZ.
Regional Council Chair, Pamela Storey was Deputy Chair of one of LGNZ's committees and her justification for her use of the casting vote was that the 'status quo' was to re-join as the Council had originally been a member!
So in the space of basically one month the WRC have gone full circle on their membership of LGNZ.
Given her Deputy Chair position on an LGNZ committees, doesn’t the use of her casting vote to re-join LGNZ come with a serious conflict of interest?