Major roles for Super City Mr Fixit

Mark Ford will run both the transport and water CCOs in the Super City. Photo / Greg Bowker

A silver-haired bureaucrat known as the Super City "fixer" has been handed the controls of transport and water in the Super City structure.

Watercare Services yesterday confirmed that Mark Ford was returning to his job as chief executive of the CCO after being appointed by Local Government Minister Rodney Hide in August as chairman of Auckland Transport.

For the past 18 months, Mr Ford has been executive chairman of the Auckland Transition Agency tasked with melding the region's eight councils into the one Super City structure.

The 60-year-old is a low-profile but immensely powerful executive with an enviable record at Watercare, where he was chief executive from 1994 to 2009. He was also chairman of the Auckland Regional Transport Authority from 2007 to 2009.

Mr Ford has his enemies - a smear campaign was run against him around the time he was appointed to set up the Super City. Critics say he is the invisible face for a corporate takeover.

Yesterday, Mr Ford said he had no plans to step down from chairing Auckland Transport after being appointed Watercare chief executive on a salary of $630,000 plus a performance bonus of up to 15 per cent.

Chairing Auckland Transport, he said, was a governance role and he planned to pay his annual fee of $105,000 to Watercare.

He said power was not the motivation to take on two big roles. It was about responsibility.

When he accepted the job of heading the Auckland Transition Agency he said he would not look for any future employment with the Super City. In March, he said he would not rule out a job in one of the CCOs.

Watercare chairman Graeme Hawkins denied keeping Mr Ford's chair warm while he was overseeing the Super City set-up.

However, he acknowledged there had been no attempt to advertise the job. The board concluded "Mark was uniquely qualified for the job and could hit the ground running" to lead Watercare in its expanded role to provide all water services across Auckland.

Labour's Auckland issues spokesman, Phil Twyford, said Mr Ford's latest appointment would lead to an unacceptable concentration of power for an unelected official.

He slammed his appointment to Watercare three days from the election, saying the board should have followed central Government practice of not making major appointments close to an election.

Water campaigner and Super City mayoral candidate Penny Bright said the appointment was part of a corporate coup for the Super City.