Regional deals debate: extraordinary "blackmail" accusation from Mayor Lewers

In a lively and sometimes heated Queenstown Lakes District Council meeting today Mayor Glyn Lewers used his casting vote to defeat an amendment that would have given elected members the chance to introduce more safeguards into the proposed regional deals process.

Mayor Lewers accused councillor Niki Gladding of "blackmail" when she said the amendment was a deal breaker for her in supporting the motion to send the draft regional deal outline to central government. He said the amendment would take too much staff time and risk slowing the process down too much.

The regional deal proposal is a bold document that proposes a mix of public and private funding, and a partnership with the CODC and ORC, to address public transport, energy needs, health care and a number of other key issues for the Otago district.

The wording of the amendment, tabled by Esther Whitehead, was to:

"Direct staff to develop a structure for the management and governance of the negotiation phases that lead to the signing of the MOU and the Regional Deal - to be agreed by council at least one month before any MOU is signed."

The meaning behind the amendment was focussed on preventing central Government from controlling the early stages of the process in a potentially unbalanced or inequitable way. Councillors who supported the amendment wanted to make sure that the three councils (QLDC, ORC and CODC) had a fair say in how the deals were put together - and were not dictated to by central government. 

The current fast tracks deal structure was used as an example of central government having too much power in terms of controlling the rules and structure of the process.

Councillors who voted in favour of the amendment were Gavin Bartlett, Melissa White, Cody Tucker, Quentin Smith, Esther Whitehead and Niki Gladding.This produced a 6/6 deadlock that was broken by mayor Glyn Lewers casting vote against the amendment.

The "blackmail" comment was just one of a number of tense exchanges between the mayor and Councillor Gladding. She issued the following statement to Crux after the meeting.

"Glyn's blackmail comment was ridiculous, aggressive, and probably worthy of a code of conduct complaint but he's not worth the effort.  And I won't spend good ratepayer dollars on an investigation.  We have an election this year and the community can decide whether he's the sort of leader we should give another term in the Mayoral Office."

"But the amendment would have created certainty and transparency - for the public and councillors - about how negotiations would be conducted and would have guarded against anyone having undue influence over the final proposal/deal.  I thought it would pass easily as it's just good practice."

The QLDC full council meeting voted today in favour of the regional deal document going to central Government before the end of February.

The Central Otago District Council votes tomorrow on whether they also support the regional deals document being presented to government.

The full document can be read here.