Editorial: Ratepayers want to know what is being discussed

Andrew Austin, Editor of Hawke's Bay Today.

It appears that many of Hawke's Bay's mayors and councillors are absolutely convinced it is quite acceptable for them to exclude the public from certain discussions in council and committee meetings.

The Insight section in Saturday's Hawke's Bay Today Weekend featured this issue and our mayors had some very interesting things to say.

They cited all sorts of reasons why publicly excluded sessions were important - commercial sensitivities, privacy, strategic advantage, staff reasons and quotes.

It all sounds quite reasonable and I have no doubt our mayors and councillors believe they are doing what they were elected to do.

However, I reckon most ratepayers disagree.

Our readers tell us constantly that they want councils to discuss as much business in the open as possible.

Surely the electors have a right to know what the elected are deciding on their behalf?

I can understand that there is some confidential business that should be discussed privately, but this should not be very much at all.

The problem is that there are too many publicly excluded sessions across all the Hawke's Bay councils and there are probably a lot of issues being discussed in private that ratepayers would want to know about and should know about.

It could be argued that publicly excluded has simple become an excuse for not wanting public scrutiny.

Ratepayers don't find the exclusions acceptable and our new councils should all draw up guidelines where the aim is to discuss as much business in public as possible.

Ratepayers want and need to know more.

It is their right.