Private ORC discussions continuing

THE Otago Regional Council is continuing to privately discuss important issues.

The council has held 15 sessions this year of nonpublic ‘‘workshops’’ which covered more than 40 topics.

Figures released under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act show last year it held 24 of these workshops, the largest number in the last eight years.

The number of topics discussed, 52, was about average for this period.

In the past year these topics included water quality, the Dunedin bus hub and several on minimum flows.

Cr Michael Laws said workshops had become an ‘‘antidemocratic disease’’ throughout all local government in New Zealand.

‘‘Workshops have become a secretive way to discuss council business, lobby for a particular view, and then truncate debates that should be held in either committees or at full council.’’

They should be held in public unless there were ‘‘exceptional commercial reasons’’, he said.

‘‘No mayor, chairman or councillor should ever be advancing viewpoints in private that they’re not prepared to own in public.’’

Cr Michael Deaker said he was fine with workshops as long as the council did not ‘‘get anywhere approaching decisionmaking’’.

‘‘I’m not particularly concerned about it. They give staff the opportunity to give free, frank and fearless advice, then we go into public session and have a debate.’’

It was important for the discussion to occur in the public arena, he said.

Openness at the council had improved since the early2000s when the council spent ‘‘an awful lot of time in workshops’’, he said.

‘‘We thought ‘it’s getting to be a bit crazy and we shouldn’t be doing all this talking behind closed doors’.’’

Council chairman Stephen Woodhead said no decisions were made at workshops and the council recorded what was discussed.

‘‘Workshops are very helpful in understanding the background to complex issues. They are educative and very useful for councillors to understand new information.

‘‘Often the content discussed in workshops comes to council or committees for discussion and decisions to be made.’’