April 1, 2018 4:00pm by David Farrar

Did Auckland Council break the law?

Auckland Council senior executives stalled the release of a major report, for political convenience in a possible breach of official information law. …

The study on the impact of moving the imported car trade away from Auckland was withheld from RNZ by the council for five months, and released only after intervention by the Ombudsman’s office.

Email exchanges released by the council to RNZ include a discussion on how the report could be withheld to allow the council to better “manage” its release.

Another executive observed that it “might not be useful” having the report in the public domain during last year’s general election campaign.

Almost all of the exchanges over how to handle RNZ’s five-month long effort to get the report, include senior staff in the office of mayor Phil Goff.

So Goff’s office got a report that should have been released within 20 days, delayed for five months.