A junket in election year
The HoS reports:
Manukau Mayor Len Brown has come under fire for spending thousands of dollars of ratepayer cash to take his wife on a sister-city trip to Japan.
Supermayor candidate Brown was also criticised for opting to fly premium economy on the junket while other members of the delegation flew economy.
Flights for the mayor and his wife Shan cost $7900, and a further $8700 was spent flying three council staff to Utsunomiya, 120km north of Tokyo.
Council chief executive Leigh Auton also brought his wife, Jenny, on the trip but paid for her costs personally.
I’m not against Mayoral travel, but there are three reasons why this travel stands out as a rather stupid thing to do:
- Len Brown travelled a higher class of travel, than the other delegation members. There should be a clear policy on travel which has everyone travel in the same class.
- He had the ratepayers pay for his wife to attend, while the CEO personally paid for his wife. Again, consistency is key.
- The Manukau City Council is disappearing in a few months, and there is no way the new Auckland Council will maintain all existing super city relationships, so the travel was ill-timed as there may be no sister city relationship going forward.
The eight Councils between them have a huge number of sister cities. If the new Auckland Council doesn’t prune some of them, the new Mayor would end up spending more time overseas than in Auckland!