The Taxpayers’ Union is throwing its weight behind calls for the powers of Tauranga’s unelected Commissioners to be curtailed in the run-up to the return of democracy to the city, and urges Local Government Minister Simeon Brown to step in.

Commenting on this, Taxpayers’ Union Policy Adviser, James Ross, said:

“Unelected Commissioners in Tauranga have spent years tossing around ratepayers’ money with reckless abandon, all safe in the knowledge that they will never be accountable to the rate-paying public.

“Although it is three-and-a-half years too late, democracy will be returning to Tauranga this year; the Commissioners cannot be allowed to put that in jeopardy. The long-term plan will set the city’s course for the next decade, and this must only be decided by the elected representatives of Tauranga residents.

“We’re already seeing the damage at a national level that an outgoing government can inflict by signing long-term contracts that they know will be overturned. This is damaging to both business confidence and to the public’s back pockets, and this cannot be allowed to be inflicted on the city by Commissioners without an electoral mandate.”

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