Tom Belford quits but denies conflict

Tom Belford

Regional councillor Tom Belford has resigned from Transparent Hawke's Bay but continues to deny any conflict of interest between his roles with the council and the advocacy group which opposed the Ruataniwha dam.

His resignation has not appeased Regional Council chairman Fenton Wilson who last week pushed Mr Belford to formally declare his interest in Transparent Hawke's Bay.

The regional council is due to vote next month on whether to invest up to $80 million in the Ruataniwha water storage scheme.

Mr Belford spoke on behalf of Transparent Hawke's Bay at a board of inquiry hearing in January. The group's written submission to the board said it opposed the dam.

Mr Wilson said last week guidelines from the Office of the Auditor General made it clear that a councillor should not make a submission on a issue their council was determining and he suggested Mr Belford should not vote on Ruataniwha matters.

Mr Belford said he remained open-minded, but skeptical, about the dam project.

In a Talking Point opinion piece published in today's Hawke's Bay Today, Mr Belford said he had "reluctantly" resigned from Transparent Hawke's Bay, an organisation he co-founded, even though he saw no conflict.

"I resign only because I want no confusion in his [Mr Wilson's] mind or anyone else's between the views I express on the dam as a councillor and any views THB might express on the matter going forward," he said.

Mr Wilson said the resignation did not resolve the issue, which was that Mr Belford had a responsibility to declare potential conflicts of interest.

"Because of a lack of transparency, now that he's resigned from Transparent Hawke's Bay it makes it worse. If it didn't mean anything and it wasn't worth declaring, why does resigning from it fix the issue? I don't think it does," Mr Wilsons said.

The president of Local Government New Zealand, Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule, said this week that a council could potentially face a legal challenge to a decision it made on the grounds that a councillor was "pre-determined" on an issue as a result of lodging a submission on it.

In turn, the individual councillor could conceivably be pursued for the costs resulting from that legal challenge, he said.

In an email to Transparent Hawke's Bay members and supporters, the organisation's chair, Pauline Elliott, said Mr Belford's resignation was received "with much regret".

She said Mr Belford "inspired a constant challenge around transparency of local government process and access to reliable information. We all know that, in his role as councillor, he will continue to do the same."