Watercare director's two-year role invalid

By BERNARD ORSMAN

The topsy-turvy career of conservationist Gary Taylor took another twist yesterday when his seat on the Watercare Services board was declared null and void.

A technicality picked up by a sharp-eyed auditor means Mr Taylor was never legally a director on the board of Auckland's bulk water and wastewater company.

The Local Government Act states that an elected member of any local authority cannot be a director of Watercare. It also states that a director of Infrastructure Auckland is considered an elected member of a local authority.

Mr Taylor has been a director of Infrastructure Auckland since January 2000 but his ineligibility was not picked up when he was appointed to the Watercare board in March 2001.

A legal opinion said Mr Taylor's appointment to the Watercare board when he was ineligible did not invalidate his work as a director. In view of this and Mr Taylor's "considerable value to the board", Watercare was unlikely to recover any of the $54,166 in fees he had received since 2001.

Mr Taylor yesterday said he was surprised and hugely disappointed by the legal technicality.

"It's a terrific company - an environmental services company in the local government area and those are both my interests and professional strengths," he said.

Since being elected a Waitakere City councillor in 1981, Mr Taylor has been in and out of public life. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he had senior roles on the Auckland Regional Council and the Auckland Area Health Board. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1996, at No 2 on the Progressive Greens' party list.

Mr Taylor said he could have resigned from Infrastructure Auckland and stayed at Watercare but believed the work of Infrastructure Auckland during the development of the regional transport infrastructure was more important.

Watercare had completed the Waikato pipeline and was just completing the Mangere sewage plant upgrade and heading into a more routine mode, he said.

The boards of Watercare and Infrastructure Auckland pay the same director fees of $25,000 a year. Mr Taylor has just been reappointed to another three-year term as a director of Infrastructure Auckland.

Dr Bruce Hucker, who chairs Watercare's Shareholders' Representative Group, which appointed Mr Taylor, said neither the group, which sought professional advice on the appointment, nor Watercare picked up the legal technicality.

An external auditor from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu raised the anomaly in the legislation in the past fortnight and a lawyer confirmed the problem.

"Mr Taylor has made an excellent contribution to the board and it is most disappointing and regrettable that ... his appointment is invalid," Dr Hucker said.

It would be churlish to thank Mr Taylor for his work and then ask him to pay back his fees, he added.

Dr Hucker said there was no need to appoint a replacement director. The board had seven directors, excluding Mr Taylor and Watercare's constitution required between two and eight directors.

Dr Hucker said the group did not see any conflict of interest in being a member of the Watercare and Infrastructure Auckland boards and would ask the Government to change the law to allow this.

If it did, the group would consider reappointing Mr Taylor to the board, he said.

The Shareholders' Representative Groups represents the six local authorities that own Watercare and appoints a board to run the company.

Who is Gary Taylor

* Chairman, Environmental Defence Society.

* Parliamentary candidate for Progressive Greens.

* Former chairman Auckland Area Health Board.

* Former Auckland regional councillor.

* Former Deputy Mayor of Waitemata.

* Age: 55