Maling cleared over damallegations
Tasman District councillor Kit Maling has been cleared by the Auditor-General of conflict of interest claims over the proposed Waimea dam.
The ‘‘pleased’’ Richmond Ward councillor, who removed himself from the council table in recent months when the project came up, said yesterday he would now be involved in those discussions and votes.
‘‘I will take part because the Auditor-General says that I can,’’ Maling said.
A letter to council chief executive Lindsay McKenzie from assistant Auditor-General, legal, Melanie Webb says the Office of the Auditor-General concludes Maling has not breached the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act 1968.
‘‘We are not proposing to take any further action in response to the complaints,’’ Webb says.
The long-running investigation follows complaints alleging Maling breached the contracting and participation rules in the act.
Maling, who was elected in October 2016, is a former director and shareholder of Waimea Irrigators Ltd – the proposed jointventure partner of the council in the $82.5 million dam project.
Webb says after Maling was elected, he resigned from his directorship at Waimea Irrigators Ltd (WIL). ‘‘He told us that he believed that by resigning his directorship that he had disposed of his share because he understood that the share ran with the directorship,’’ she says. ‘‘He had never received a share certificate and was unaware that he still held it until the matter was drawn to his attention at a council meeting in March 2017, after which he promptly disposed of it.’’
Maling on Tuesday said he was ‘‘annoyed and embarrassed’’ an ‘‘admin error’’ meant the share was not disposed of at the time he resigned as director.
The complaint to the AuditorGeneral alleged Maling was disqualified from being elected because he was interested in a contract between WIL and the council at the time.
Webb says section 3 of the act provides that a councillor is automatically disqualified from office if they are concerned or interested in contracts with their council and total payments made, or to be made, by or on behalf of the council exceed $25,000 in any financial year.
‘‘You [McKenzie] told us that in the year of Cr Maling’s election, the council had no contracts with Waimea Irrigators Ltd under which the council paid more than $25,000 in total, although it had provided the company with a grant of $81,866,’’ Webb says.
The council and the company had also jointly funded some work in relation to the dam project. ‘‘We do not consider the grant or the joint funding to be contracts covered by the act,’’ Webb says.
McKenzie, who released the letter yesterday, said the $81,866 grant was money from a former levy paid by water users on the Waimea plains.
In the letter, Webb says the participation rule in section 6 of the act prohibits councillors from participating in discussion or voting on any matter before the council in which they have a direct or indirect pecuniary interest, other than an interest in common with the public.
Correspondence alleged Maling had breached that section by discussing and voting on dam project matters at council meetings on November 10, 2016 and June 14. At the behind-closed-doors meeting in November 2016, Maling seconded and voted for a motion that the council agree in principle to underwrite a loan from Crown Irrigation Investments Ltd to WIL of up to $5m.
Webb says that decision was ‘‘preliminary’’ as was a decision on June 14 that allowed negotiations with WIL to continue with increased council funding and credit support for the proposed Crown Irrigation loan.
The council could not make the decision to underwrite the loan or a final decision on its funding for the project ‘‘without consulting the community’’, she says.
Webb also refers to ‘‘non- financial conflicts of interest’’, for which the Auditor-General did not have a specific role.
‘‘However, we did ask Cr Maling whether he had considered whether he had a non-financial conflict of interest in decisions about the Waimea Community Dam project,’’ Webb says. ‘‘He told us that he had considered the issue but believed that he was not predetermined in relation to decisions about the dam.’’
Maling said yesterday he would ‘‘demonstrate an open mind’’ on the project, which still had a ‘‘number of hurdles’’ to clear before a final go/no-go decision. Those hurdles included signed contracts from irrigators, council deliberations on public submissions and its finances along with a price for the dam ‘‘we think is affordable’’.