Crone proposes more blancmange for Auckland

 

Oh alright, mayoral candidate Crone’s chosen headline states “Crone proposes more transparency for Auckland.”

But what does this alleged transparency amount to? Ephemera like “opening the books,” (something that is done anyway after every election), monthly report cards, something she calls an Independent Budgetary Office (who will apparently cook up cost-benefits analyses for the mayor).

She says these things are “much needed” because there is “serious concern” around “the strength of advice” behind council’s large-scale multi-million dollar investments.

There sure are plenty of serious concern. But it’s hard to see how they might be allayed by ill-qualified council bureaucrats in suits being shuffled into different departments to affer the same old advice.

This is the sort of window-dressing promoted by a candidate without any serious programme to address ratepayers real concerns about the exposion in both the debt and their rates bill

The main thing most ratepayers want to see is not more reports and more bilge about “transparency” and “digestible analysis” but cuts, and lots of them!

My advice would be to get her head around a genuine programme of long-overdue reform – not blancmange, but blood on the floor.

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