The Dunedin City Council is having a lot of ‘workshops’, or meetings with the public not only excluded but also not advised about. They avoid public notification saying no decisions are made at the ‘workshops’ so they are not classified as meetings, but decisions councillors make must be informed by these secret meetings.
And this move towards secrecy is a common council problem around the country.
ODT: What goes on behind closed doors? More DCC ‘workshops’
Dunedin’s elected officials are increasingly discussing major issues behind closed doors.
Since October 2016 the Dunedin City Council has held 48 workshops, none of which have been publicly advertised.
Figures released under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act show they are also being held more often.
In the year to July 31 this year the council held 31 more workshops than in the previous two years combined.
Subjects covered included the council’s $860 million 10-year plan, the $15.8 million Mosgiel pool project, the central city plan and freedom camping.
Under the Local Government Act, councils need to publicise all official meetings and make agendas publicly available.
But as no decisions are made during the informal workshops, they are not classified as meetings.
Other local councils publicise workshops and some open them to the public, but many do not.
Mayor Dave Cull has campaigned on transparency and public engagement, but seems to be doing the opposite. This looks like deliberate avoidance of open democracy.
Cull is also president of Local Government New Zealand.
A leading local government academic says the informal meetings, also known as workshops, exacerbate the disconnect between councils and the public.
Massey University senior lecturer Dr Andy Asquith said secrecy was bad for local democracy and when someone stood for public office they should expect to be scrutinised.
When the public and media were excluded, people had no way of knowing what their council was doing, he said.
“The fundamental problem with local government is people don’t know what councils do, or what councillors do or who they are and they turn off,” Dr Asquith said.
The use of workshops was widespread across councils and there would only be a change if the Government decided to make changes to the Local Government Act, something it had been hesitant to do, he said.
So this isn’t just a Dunedin problem.
Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull said councillors were presented with such a large amount of complex information, it would be impractical to try to absorb all of it during one council meeting.
There was no risk public debate would be stifled because of the increasing use of workshops, he said.
That’s a remarkable claim.
If the public doesn’t know what councillors are discussing and being told then public debate must be at risk – the public can’t debate what has been kept secret from them.
Cr Lee Vandervis said while some workshops were valuable, others were a “muzzling exercise” and he had stopped attending many.
“Some of them are good but many are being used to stifle debate and a lot of decisions are precariously close to being made or certainly coming to consensus, as Mayor Cull likes to say.”
He has often clashed with Cull, being a rare Dunedin councillor prepared to publicly challenge the mayor and council.
Media commentator and University of Auckland academic Gavin Ellis said the effect of workshops was to reduce the level of public debate of issues which were of public interest, whether it was intended or not.
There were already sufficient provisions in the Local Government Act safeguards which protected sensitive information discussed by councillors, so there was no need for the increasing use of the meetings.
Mr Ellis said the Dunedin City Council was not the worst offender, but the increase should worry anybody who cared about accountability and open government.
Unfortunately it isn’t unusual for politicians to do the opposite of what they say they will do on transparency, but that doesn’t excuse a surge in secrecy.
The default position should be that meetings or workshops be notified and to held in public.
This surge in secrecy sucks.
