2 years of ECan

An article in The Press from a few days ago about ECan two years after the dysfunctional Councillors were sacked. First the past:

As the regional level authority, it had become paralysed by an internal conflict between largely green-minded metropolitan councillors and development- minded country councillors.

And it was a double failure because while none of the sensible big projects – the dam and canal networks to trap the annual snow melt – could get off the ground, ECan had also proved incapable of stopping farmers from drilling wells into the aquifers under their own land, or gaining consents to extract from local rivers.

There was still a water goldrush going on, but of the least sustainable kind.

And now:

Some say the earthquakes have naturally over-ridden all other public concerns. Or that the commissioners have cleverly stayed out of sight – people have forgotten they are even there.

And yet a surprising number have also remarked that the commissioners seem to be working out rather well. And furthermore, now the right people are in charge, the idea of a regional council is not looking so bad after all.

Sacking the Councillors may have saved ECan. Otherwise it was perhaps inevitable local authorities would go unitary.

The old ECan took an adversarial approach. Its role was framed negatively – the guardian of the natural landscape usually telling people what not to do.

“In these sorts of work environments, people are very conscious of the rules. You’ve got to operate within the frameworks,” says Bazley.

And making it worse was the political friction – the fact the council table was split 50-50 between the rural and urban factions.

For staff, it was like being the children caught in the middle of a messy divorce. Bazley says they had become even more risk averse because any action was liable to set off one or other side.

“I’ve seen many of these organisations where staff work to the rules to protect themselves, as opposed to where staff are confident they will be backed and so are prepared to stand up.”

She could sense this atmosphere immediately she arrived. “Staff scuttled by with their heads down.” So the biggest difference the commissioners could make was just to free officers to use their initiative, Bazley says.

Each of the commissioners was put in charge of a portfolio. For example, Caygill manages water, while Bedford handles air quality and Williams deals with transport issues. Bazley says this gave staff a clear boss. No-one was stepping on anyone else’s toes.

She says as a result her commission meetings are a breeze. “Usually there’s only one right decision and we quickly get agreement on it. We don’t even have uproars to report on in private.”

Is this just Bazley’s views?

Speaking from the staff point of view, Bazley’s claims of a change in culture are supported by Christina Robb, ECan’s programme manager for water and land. Caught on the hop at a public meeting on the water plan’s progress, Robb happily confirmed the difference.

She says staff used to spend much of their time in meetings with councillors. What mattered was what was being said inside the council chamber. There was a natural inward focus to the organisation.

But now those discussions take place out in the community with the commissioners at places like zone committee meetings. “I’m just out so much more. I’m not all day in some council workshop.”

And as Bazley says, the shift is from thinking regulation to thinking problem solving.

So ECan is actually serving voters and the community better, but having removed the politicians who had paralysed it. There is nothing wrong with politicians in charge, so long as they put the welfare of the body they sit on ahead of their own welfare. But it seems obvious that this was not the case at ECan.

Far from the commissioners taking away from the democracy of water decisions, Robb says their “benign dictatorship” seems in fact better aligned to a community- based consultation process.

The Government probably was not smart enough to have seen that in advance, Robb laughs, but the commissioners have ended up more directly accountable for ECan’s decisions.

“These commissioners take their need to be out in the community and to be doing what the community wants very, very seriously.”

This is not a reason to keep the Commissioners on beyond the 2013 elections, but it is a reminder that local government is the creation of Parliament, and Parliament has the ability to intervene if they fail.

However, Caygill denies any dark motives. It really is about allowing Cantabrians themselves to form the policies around appropriate agricultural development, he says.

Caygill says those who are going to be investing in the big irrigation projects – the energy companies, bankers and farmer collectives – just want certainty about the ground rules.

“I was at a public meeting last night and the irrigation representative said farmers need and welcome the idea of limits. I thought that was a really good statement to hear.”

Caygill says it is going to take decades for them to see the return on their investments, so they need a stable consensus as much as anyone.

A politically imposed solution, one against the wishes of the people, will fall apart pretty fast. But a water plan with a buy-in starting at the grassroots level will be very difficult to unmake.

And that consensus has been emerging, says Caygill.

Excellent.