QLDC public contracts reports one year out of date

After pressure from Crux over a lack of transparency on expenditure by the Queenstown Lakes District Council there are now supposed to be regular reports on where our ratepayer money goes. However, quarterly reporting on contracts awarded by the council on the QLDC website is now over 12 months out of date.

These reports are not easy to find but Crux will now publish details whenever new reports are released and chase updates on data when council fails to make information public.

The reports should also be measured against the QLDC's publicly declared priorities in their latest Long Term Plan consultation document and the fact that QLDC debt is due to reach $1 billion by 2030.

The QLDC's publicly declared goals, but do these match actual expenditure details?

There are two types of reports - the council spend on suppliers and contracts awarded by the council following a tender or bid process.

Here's the latest detail on contracts awarded by QLDC under a bid or tender process. This "quarterly" report ends in June 2023.

Out of date: The latest quarterly QLDC contracts report stops in June 2023

 

 

Using this link, and the image below, it is possible to find the missing QLDC contracts that have been awarded over the past 12 months but not yet reported by QLDC on their website.

QLDC contracts awarded since June 2023

The suppliers report has a different problem. Council only report expenditure of over $50,000 and refuses to publish details of a company where the name of the owner is visible due to "commercial sensitivity and privacy."

"The reporting threshold for both the awarded contract and supplier spend reports is $50k.

"In consideration of commercial sensitivity and privacy, we do not publish the details of sole traders (i.e. individuals who are not contracting through a company).

"Detailed information about spend and contracts may be commercially confidential. Should you require this information please submit a request for information under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act and that request will be considered in full." 

The problem with the $50,000 threshold is the discovery by Crux that council staff and suppliers were cutting big contracts onto lots of small slices, all just under the $50,000 limit.

In the case of ZQN7 the total of $600,000 was put into 13 smaller slices with the effect that public reporting was limited and managers thought (wrongly) that they could avoid procurement rules designed to protect the ratepayer by monitoring value for money, favouring local suppliers and a competitive, open process. The Auditor General was heavily critical of the QLDC in their investigation into the ZQN7 case.

What made the ZQN7 example so serious was that most of the "sub-$50,000" slices involved the supplier going well over budget - in fact of the $600,000 ZQN7 spend over $200,000 was above the agreed individual $50k budgets that were approved.

However, within that limitation, here's the latest published list of QLDC suppliers "over $50,000" keeping in mind that this quarterly list is only up until the end of March 2024, and excludes sole suppliers who could be identified by name.