David Penberthy: The LGA can’t oppose State Government’s mandate on rate-capping

AFTER one mayor quit the Local Government Association this week, the LGA is being irresponsible for campaigning against rate-capping while it’s struggling to find a case for its relevance, says David Penberthy.

• LGA push to triple board allowances
• Mayor Glenn Spear quits LGA board amid allowance push
• Adelaide City Council push to leave the LGA
• SA councils campaign against rate capping

THERE are some political campaigns that endure through the generations as exemplars of excellence in the democratic process.

Then there’s the campaign by the Local Government Association against rate capping, where this least representative sphere of government has gone to war against a real government, one with a clear mandate and comfortable majority, attacking a policy that most ratepayers would enthusiastically applaud.

If the LGA had any sense it would quietly fold its tent and admit that its campaign to prevent the SA Liberals from introducing rate-capping has now failed.

It was always going to fail once the Libs got themselves in a winning position.

This is because rate-capping makes sense.

It is now in place in several other states and the local government sector has not ground to a halt.

This is because it does not prevent councils from increasing rates; rather, it requires that they simply be upfront in making the case for any increase, usually off the back of a special project or service that has community support, with an independent pricing tribunal deciding whether the rate increase is justified.

The chief problem with the argument against rate-capping is that for all their good work, councils also consistently provide examples of financial waste, willy-nilly rate hikes, time-wasting, political grandstanding, indecision and amateurism.

As such no-one feels any sympathy for them.

Only this week we saw Mitcham Council descend into farce with the debate over politically incorrect children’s toys at the local library.

At the national level, two years’ worth of unilateral posturing from so many councils on the question of Australia Day was enough to convince ratepayers that local government had taken its eye off the key issues of rates, roads and rubbish.

The anti rate-capping campaign in SA was marred from the get-go by the fact that the front person for the LGA, Lorraine Rosenberg, wears two hats as mayor of a council that rightly or wrongly became the byword for slapdash financial practices within the local government sphere.

LGA president Lorraine Rosenberg.

It was always going to be the toughest gig in public relations to win the hearts and minds of ratepayers against rate-capping when your own council, Onkaparinga, was at the centre of a storm over credit card use and the largesse it had shown towards its golf-loving CEO Mark Dowd.

If ever there was an example of a council that seemed capable of tightening its belt, Onkaparinga appeared to be it.

Yet this council’s sense of indignation at being attacked over these scandals was so acute it wouldn’t even follow the LGA’s sage advice to neutralise both issues swiftly so the rate capping argument could be won.

A few weeks after this year’s state election was over, it emerged that the LGA had spent a hefty $170,000 ratepayers dollars on its campaign against the Liberal Party’s policy of rate capping.

The LGA argues this was money well spent, noting that all the other major parties did not support the policy.

The problem with that argument is that all of these political parties were already on the record with their policy positions anyway.

This begs the question as to whether a single cent of the $170,000 needed to be spent on a campaign that had the ultimate, useless effect of forcing no change in anyone’s position.

This week it emerged that the latest stroke of genius by the LGA is to push for a whopping increase in annual payments to its own board members.

The LGA wants to triple the ratepayer-funded allowances of its board members to $240,000, while also dodging its annual $190,000 payroll tax bill.

The LGA also wants to streamline its management process reducing the number of board members from 18 to 10, meaning that conceivably they could each receive $24,000 for their troubles.

Again, the problem with all this goes to the sell job.

The average person does not seem sufficiently impressed with their local council or the LGA to be championing any kind of pay increase, particularly at a time of such sluggish (or non-existent) wages growth elsewhere.

The smarter members of the local government sector are recognising that this campaign has been a fiasco.

There are several councillors around town that are so unimpressed by the LGA that they want out.

This week, it was the Mayor of Mitcham, Glenn Spear who, despite his council’s silliness about children’s toys, showed real personal leadership by turning his back on the organisation.

Mayor Spear wrote to the LGA saying he had decided to quit its board after two terms on account of its attempted pay grab for future board members.

DISENCHANTED: Mitcham Mayor Glenn Spear is quitting the Local Government Association in protest.

“Given I’m a mayor that’s proposing efficiencies in local government, to then have this sort of headline makes my position untenable,” Mr Spear said.

He said he was shocked by the LGA’s lack of “commercial sensibilities” and was “very concerned” when the pay increase was proposed at its last board meeting.

“It was a stupid time to be proposing the possibility of such increases,” he said.

He also cited the LGA’s “poor” campaign against rate-capping as the other reason for his departure.

The loss of Spear is a big one for the LGA as he is exactly what local government needs.

He has no interest in party politics, no interest in grandstanding on national issues, he simply wants to provide basic services in the most cost-effective way.

He has none of the siege mentality that now characterises the LGA under Ms Rosenberg’s tenure. Perhaps in hindsight he should have run the rate-capping campaign.

Who knows, it might just have worked; instead, the LGA has registered a loss of its own making.

■ DAVID PENBERTHY HOSTS BREAKFASTS ON FIVEAA WITH WILL GOODINGS