Some real local government questions

(Published in the T&T Guardian on May 25, 2023)

It’s very likely that by the time this is published there would have already been sufficient in the public space to make sense or nonsense of speculative offerings on Privy Council Appeal No 0016 of 2023 regarding the Local Government Reform Act of 2022, and what becomes of the resulting vacuum.

It is acknowledged, through majority decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), that such legislation had had the illegitimate impact of extending the terms of office of local government representatives “not by the electorate but by the Government, which brought the amendments into force while those Councillors and Aldermen were still in office.”

There has been sufficient advised and mis-informed, partisan and independent commentary to signal a high degree of public interest in this matter, but this space is not about to be consumed by passions over the judgment.

It is also clear that elections should be announced. But there is another huge national assignment before us, to which insufficient attention is currently being paid, preoccupied as it is with Privy Council edict.

There is work to be done to move the concept of local government past its near absolute subservience to executive authority to a point of meaningful autonomous governance.

Since my first assignment as a local government reporter in the 1980s I have witnessed delays and lacunas of multiple varieties. So, the current situation does not alarm me very much.

In 2016, I was also invited to moderate public consultations on local government reform, and this space has since been used on numerous occasions to highlight the urgency of what was discussed, and the significant level of bipartisanship displayed.

Additionally, as a citizen, I have witnessed the degree to which local government performance frequently outweighs the value of parliamentary representation. For instance, I live in a community that has witnessed exchanges of partisan roles on several occasions with no change in this dynamic.

Today, what the JCPC judgment has done is to redirect our attention toward a much-neglected area of national life. It is important now, even as legal and political fallout is being assessed, to maintain some focus on dissecting the requirements of our local government environment.

This is important since the multiplicity of “little” things of community life often aggregate in values in excess of some of the “big” things at the national scale. Here is where “governance” comes to life through the delivery of social goods and services that make a difference in our day-to-day lives.

Most members of parliament who have transitioned from local government are easily recognised by their attention to the fine details of service delivery within communities. You can spot them from a distance. Mind you, this is not to say that the best local government representatives make the best parliamentarians, since they are almost entirely separate disciplines.

Now, what am I really fussing about today? It is May 2023 – exactly seven years since the last round of public consultations to consider an evolving menu of options for local government reform.

It was a process that spanned political administrations and included key players such as former ministers Surujrattan Rambachan, Hazel Manning, and the late Franklin Khan.

Significantly, there has been no serious contention over the main requirements of a reformed system. Chief among these was the ability of local government bodies to keep the proceeds of the Property Tax and other revenues in order to maintain stronger financial autonomy. Granted, the Property Tax has taken on a life of its own.

This issue was captured in the 2022 amendments and was a significant feature of the reforms related to the fiscal independence of local government bodies.

Other goals - some of them strongly represented in the amendments, others not - included a higher level of executive authority for the municipalities, a variety of new responsibilities including school maintenance and social services support, an expanded role for better resourced municipal police services, and added responsibility for disaster management.

For these and other objectives identified in the reform process, it will require much more than simple political will or even legislation. It will take the concerted interest of all civil society players to ensure that the goal of more effective, meaningful, governance at the local level is achieved.

All of this in turn will mean that beyond the hustings and the partisan flare-ups that can and will occur, a transition to community self-interest and responsibility, away from arbitrary executive action can become increasingly possible.

I am awaiting the political discourse which captures such possibilities. The Privy Council judgment only hints at it. But there is a quite a lot more to say and do about this.