Update on Dunedin Mayor’s “Gentleman’s agreement”

We now have more details of the deal uncovered by the Taxpayers’ Union over the weekend between Dunedin’s Mayor Dave Cull and former MP, Pete Hodgson, which the Mayor described in the media as a “gentleman’s agreement”.

This morning’s Christchurch Press editorial analyses the deal:

Editorial: Gentlemen sign contracts too

...

There is no reason to believe that Cull and Hodgson are anything other than honest gentlemen, but the geographic accident that also gives them "southern man" status should not put them above the usual requirements by which local government business is conducted.

The standards that apply to council administration in the south should be no less rigorous than in Auckland city or the Whangarei district. Why should ratepayers in Dunedin tolerate a more easy-going attitude towards the spending of their money than anywhere else, just because of a romantic notion that southerners are somehow more honourable? Actually, they aren't.

Click here to read more.

Mr Hodgson has provided emails from him to the Council from August 2013, relating to 40 hours of “consulting” equalling $3,200 of the $3,400 total we questioned.

It appears the Council was wrong to tell us that no documentation or invoice was available.

Producing an invoice under public pressure is only one aspect of the matter settled. It raises a whole lot more questions:

• Was it signed off by Council or did it come from a mayoral slush fund? 
• Who authorised the payment?
• How come the Council could not provide this information before? Why did it need to come from Mr Hodgson?
• What other payments are made without the Council’s finance department holding documentation?
• Was the Council deliberately misleading us when they told us no documentation existed? If so, why?
• What else does the Mayor negotiate without documentation?
• How is it appropriate to have the Mayor hire someone to do work with no authorisation, no contract, and not even retain the invoice?
• With the Council's audit and risk committee be examining what's happened here?