The Case for Strong(er) Mayors
Sydney (10 May)
When Auckland flooded on 27 January 2023, Council was silent for hours.
At 2:48pm, a Rodney Local Board members warned Council staff of “extreme flooding and impassable roads in Rodney.” Two hours later, at 4:30pm, Council’s Chief Executive and another Councillor alerted Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.
But the public heard nothing until 6:30pm. “If it’s safe, stay home … don’t drive through floodwaters. We will continue to update,” Auckland Emergency Management (AEM) said in a social media post that evening, according to Mike Bush’s report into Auckland Council’s flood response.
By the time AEM posted its message, Auckland had observed 75 – 79% of its annual summer rainfall over a day, according to NIWA Weather. Multiple Councillors and Parliamentarians, the New Zealand Police, MetService, Waka Kotahi, and Fire and Emergency New Zealand were issuing periodic updates too.
It took until about 9:30pm for Mayor Brown to declare an emergency, and another few hours for AEM to transmit information about evacuation sites.
In his report about the Auckland floods, Bush was clear. “The later declaration of emergency, establishment of evacuation centres and related public messaging came too late to provide Aucklanders with timely public safety advice and reassurance,” he said.
It would be easy to argue that Auckland Council’s response was a display of incompetence. Council certainly made missteps and Mayor Brown’s late-night comments – explaining that it was “not my job to rush out with buckets” – did not help the situation. Yet that would not be entirely fair.
Council’s core problem was that Mayor Brown – the city-wide elected official expected to be leading the response – could not actually do very much. He lacked both the legal authority to direct an emergency response and the access to information needed to keep people informed.
AEM sits within Auckland Council, under the supervision of Council’s Chief Executive, not its elected officials, as is the norm in Mayor-Manager (or weak mayor) cities. Mayor Brown and other councillors pass ordinances and budgets, but lack operational and broad staffing control over Council.
The Bush Report describes that the Mayor’s Office did not make public announcements because it was struggling to find reliable information about the floods. Though the report did critique Mayor Brown for failing to ask for regular briefings.
On the late emergency declaration, the report similarly found that “once the Mayor was informed of the need for the declaration of emergency, he signed it immediately and returned it to officials.”
As water drained from Auckland streets in the days following the floods, leaving four bodies behind, public opinion turned on Mayor Brown. A petition called for his resignation; frustration towards him was palpable.
When floods hit Auckland, residents understandably expected – in line with the central premise of representative government – our elected officials to wield control of the state, to direct public resources, order evacuations, and liaise with central government.
Auckland’s Mayor could not, constitutionally, meet that expectation. In the absence of operational authority, informational challenges are bound to arise in any crisis.
AEM was not dormant during the Auckland floods. Council staff were in constant contact with other agencies and planning next steps, including when to ask for a declaration. But without the Mayor in the room, he could not exercise the judgement that Aucklanders expected.
The gap between representative ideals and bureaucratic realities in weak mayor systems also extends beyond emergency management to the regular decisions that shape our cityscapes and regional economies.
Under local government rules, regulators assessing development applications generally need to weigh a wide range of factors, including everything from transport and economic development impacts to cultural heritage and environmental ones.
But they do not make decisions algorithmically. Rather, staffers working across New Zealand make inherently subjective judgement calls about applications they review.
As an example, while serving as an Economic Policy Advisor at Northland Regional Council, I once spent the better part of a week thinking about what the word ‘significant’ meant, reading guidance documents from Wellington and scanning criteria from municipalities in New York and New South Wales.
More frequently, skilled planners routinely approve, deny, or attach conditions to resource consents, doing work that is both vital and inherently political.
Every time a planner chooses to emphasise the economic benefits of a project over its transport impact, or alternatively attaches transport-related conditions to an economic project, they shift power from one faction of society to another. They also shift that power without a mandate from the voting public.
Planning work requires technical expertise that Mayors are not universally capable of providing. But elected representatives – and, in particular, Mayors elected city-wide – are perfectly able to guide priorities, within the bounds of the planning ordinances and under the threat of judicial review.
NIMBY mayors and their voters have every right to expect planners to emphasise cultural heritage protections over housing effects when assessing applications. Just as development-oriented ones have the right to expect the opposite.
Planning systems, in our current mayoral system, select for continuity, even in situations where voters explicitly ask for change. Giving Mayors the right to appoint planning personnel, at a managerial level, would maintain technical expertise while reaffirming representative control over the state.
When New Zealanders vote for Mayors, they expect them to shape Council operations, not just policies and funding decisions. And with our current system of weak mayors, they are persistently let down, trained to expect disappointment from local politicians and rigidity from local government.
By Avinash Govind