The other day, a mate of mine drew my attention to an article published in the NZ Herald and written by Nick Clark, entitled, Do we need more powerful mayors?

Clark is a senior fellow at The New Zealand Initiative (www.nzinitiative.org.nz/), a think tank with lots of expertise. A think tank is a research institute that performs research and advocacy.

The stated mission of the New Zealand Initiative is to help create a competitive, open and dynamic economy and a free, prosperous, fair, and cohesive society.

Sounds fair enough, wouldn’t you say?

In his article, Mr Clark is concerned about the power of mayors in relation to their ability to influence the operations of councils, which he suggests are mostly in the hands of unelected administrators (officers) such as the council chief executive and general managers.

One of the first things you learn quickly in local government is that governance – comprising elected representatives (mayor and councillors) – are supposed to decide the “what” with input from the community, and that the chief executive and general managers are supposed to decide “how” the “what” is delivered. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

It is true, however, and largely unavoidable, that council officers are in a position to control the flow of information.

As such, they can potentially have significant influence around council decision-making tables.

Mr Clark refers to the “strong information advantage over elected representatives”. He also states that “mayors, while serving as the public face of councils and chairing meetings, often lack meaningful influence over council operations”.

Mr Clark lays out some options for empowering mayors and makes reference to reforms of the German city of Gelsenkirchen in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

More detail can be heard on these reforms in the interview that Mr Clark and Dr Oliver Hartwick (NZ Initiative executive director) – who is from Gelsenkirchen – conducted with the former Lord Mayor of Gelsenkirchen.

Interested readers should search “Podcast: German lessons for New Zealand councils: How merging mayor and CEO roles transformed local government” to listen to the interview.

Prior to the year 2000, the city of Gelsenkirchen had a British system of local government similar to ours.

The subsequent reforms created a sort of “Super Mayor” by combining the functions of the chief executive and the mayor into one.

A major aim of the reforms was to improve efficiency, and it seems the reforms had the desired effect.

Over my term as mayor, it has come to my attention that many folk are under the impression that the mayor runs the council.

That is, they believe the mayor is the boss and really decides stuff, or at the very least, is a powerful force in decision-making.

However, the legislation gives very limited powers to a mayor. These powers include:

1) to appoint a deputy mayor,

2) to set up committees and appoint chairs,

3) to convene meetings and

4) to communicate.

I think it is fair to conclude that compared to mayors in other countries, New Zealand mayors have relatively few powers. By the standards of the boss of a commercial business, mayoral powers are laughable.

More recently, more than one person has observed that I am not like Auckland’s Mayor, Wayne Brown.

Folk are perplexed at the difficulty I seem to have implementing the agenda I went to the community with.

I have no desire to be like Mayor Brown, although I do admire the man’s capability.

One thing that Mayor Brown and I do have in common is that we each have only one vote around the council table and the only way either of us can get the agenda we went to the community with across the line, is to get a majority around the council table.

However, one thing that folk don’t seem to appreciate is that Mayor Brown operates under different legislation from other New Zealand mayors.

The so-called Super City is different, although it is hardly a Goliath by international standards.

According to section 9(3e) of the Local Government (Auckland) Act 2009, the Mayor of Auckland must establish and maintain an appropriately staffed office of the mayor, which is not the case for the rest of us.

So, that is one clear advantage Mr Brown has relative to the rest of the country’s mayors.

Another difference is that he can relatively easily remove a deputy mayor or committee chair that he appointed without needing the support of council.

Simply put, Mr Brown is more powerful than the rest of us. But why should this be so?

If Auckland’s mayor can have special powers, then why not the mayors of our other major cities, and by extension, the rest also.

One of the commitments I made to the people of my community prior to being elected was to be transparent and to keep people informed. I believe I am doing my best to do that.

It is my intention that folk who read this column know what I have been doing, and to some degree, what I am thinking.

In this column, I am trying to dispel some common misunderstandings and get folk to think about how things might be improved.

At the Local Government New Zealand conference in August, Minister of Local Government Simeon Brown hinted that he might be open to beefing up the powers of mayors by stating the following:

“I’m also open to exploring options for mayors to have independent staff advice, separate from their chief executives and officers.

“Mayors are elected to represent their communities, but sometimes it seems that officers and chief executives may resist democratic oversight.

“I’m considering whether mayors having their own staff, directly accountable to them, could help navigate the civic service bureaucracy and ensure their communities’ voices are heard.

“Let me know if this is an area where I should seek further advice.”

Folk should know that within the local government legislative framework, the mayor and councillors employ only one person and that is the chief executive.

Under current legislation, it is the chief executive’s responsibility to employ the rest of the council staff according to the budget agreed to by elected members (councillors).

It is therefore up to the people to elect good representatives and for representatives to employ a good chief executive.

While the mayor has an acknowledged special relationship with the chief executive, they have no power to call a chief executive to account or rein them in.

Therefore, another way to strengthen the hand of the mayor would be to strengthen the ways in which the chief executive is directly accountable to the mayor.

Current legislation requires a mayor to lead the development of the Long-Term Plan (LTP). The legislation is silent on what leadership is or how it is to occur.

My response to LTP leadership was to define a set of expectations which I shared with my councillors and subsequently made available to the entire community by having them placed on the council’s website.

I referred to those expectations in this newspaper many times during the LTP development process.

One of the main motivations for the aforementioned local government reforms in Gelsenkirchen was to improve efficiency. While it is debatable whether New Zealand local government is efficient, I pose the question of whether our set-up is even particularly democratic.

There are many types of democratic systems including liberal democracy, participatory democracy, representative democracy, deliberative democracy, consultative democracy and direct democracy, to name a few of them.

Our system of democracy might be categorised as representative democracy since we vote for our leaders who we expect to represent our views. I don’t think that this is a bad system, although I believe we could incorporate more direct democracy where elected members get a more representative snapshot of community views through better use of mobile technology.

It is a reasonable expectation under our system therefore that when people vote for a mayor that they are getting someone who reflects their views and can actually make stuff happen. Otherwise, why bother voting at all?

Council officers are not elected, and yet in many cases they may strongly influence council decisions and policies if allowed to.

Dr Hartwick treated this issue in his article entitled Lost in Bureaucracy: Is New Zealand’s Public Service a ‘Yes Minister’ Reality?’

Bryce Edwards treated a similar theme in his Substack post of June 19, 2024 entitled When Unelected officials dominate the local democratic process and he presented some useful survey data from The Free Speech Union.

One of the survey questions posed to councillors was “How free do you feel in your role to counter or challenge council staff publicly?”

The average answer was 4.4 out of 10, and that tells a bit of a story, doesn’t it?

Another area where elected members may exercise some control is in the management of council meetings.

In some of the training that elected members receive, it is often stated that the chief executive “owns the council meeting agendas”.

I have looked into this and found that our council’s standing orders (council’s rules of engagement) state that, “It is the chief executive’s responsibility to prepare an agenda for each meeting, listing and attaching information on the items of business to be brought before the meeting so far as is known, including the names of the relevant members.

“When preparing business items for an agenda the chief executive should consult the chairperson.”

The Local Government Act is relatively silent on this issue.

I, as the mayor, chair council meetings and meetings of the Environment, Energy and Resilience committee.

Other committees that I set up are chaired by elected members that I appointed.

One of the things I wanted to change during my term in office was to bring about greater input by elected members to the development of agendas because it is in committees that a large part of the business of council is conducted.

The chairs now have pre-agenda meetings to understand the papers staff are bringing forward. I still think there is scope for further improvement in this area.

I hope that in this column I have dispelled some common fallacies about the powers of mayors and prompted some thought about the interactions between the mayor, councillors and unelected council officials (staff).

It is important that community expectations of mayors are consistent with legislated mayoral powers.

Or, if communities have different expectations of their mayors, then those expectations need to be reflected in the legislation. That implies that some kind of reform would be required.

Judging by some of the comments made by the Minister of Local Government, and the Prime Minister, it would seem that this Government may look to some changes in this regard.

If folk have an opinion on any of this then I would love to hear it. My email address is [email protected]