Bernard Orsman: Key question of local control still thorn in Super City side

The Prime Minister's view that community control of what matters in neighbourhoods will translate in the Auckland Super City reforms is still some way off.

In April last year, John Key talked about a crisp and clear demarcation between the Auckland Council and local boards. The Auckland Council, he said, would be responsible for regionwide activities and local boards would have clear and specific community roles.

In January, Associate Local Government Minister John Carter reiterated that the key driver for the 19 local boards was to make local decisions about local activities.

The demarcation between the Auckland Council and local boards sounds simple, but it is not.

The issue of keeping the local in local government was the biggest bugbear for the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance. After months of deliberation it proposed six community councils - a kind of halfway house between the existing councils and community boards.

The Government rejected the concept for smaller local boards having the local voice.

Despite overwhelming submissions last year calling for meaningful powers and responsibilities to be set out in a Super City bill, the Government opted for the principle that "decisions are best made at the local level unless there is good reason not to".

It then gave the thorny issue to the agency designing the Super City to flesh out.

On Friday, a little-known bureaucrat from the Auckland Transition Agency, Grant Taylor, presented a discussion paper on allocating significant responsibilities to the local boards.

It failed to silence the critics. Even the Government-friendly Employers and Manufacturers Association panned it for being vague and uncertain.

New Zealand Communities' Board chairman Mike Cohen said there was a high level of distrust about the optimistic picture of what was intended and what would happen.

He was referring to the clout still held by the Auckland Council, council-controlled organisations and bureaucrats over local boards in the new set-up.

For example, the biggest CCO, Auckland Transport, is not obliged to delegate any transport function, listen to communities, hold public meetings or front up to dispute resolution when things go wrong.

Before the highly anticipated presentation from the agency - executive chairman Mark Ford was notably absent - submitters to a select committee on the final Super City bill were asking whether Auckland was moving towards a "corporate city, not a democratic city".

With only eight months until the Super City comes to life, time is running out for the Government to assure communities they will have a strong voice, and not be at the whim of the Auckland Council and its CCOs.