OPINION
Name Withheld
In a very important Finance meeting this month, Hamilton City Councillor Sarah Thomson was upset by the word: FUDGE.
Yep, the dreaded F-Bomb.
It was so bad that it made the lead story on the Waikato Times website, distracting from her fellow (can I use that word?) Greenie politicians like Golriz and Genter.
She was not upset by the $5 million worsening of the already bad operating deficit that is leading to massive rates rises. She was not upset by the $7.5m decline in development revenue. She was not upset that net debt is due to hit $1 billion for the first time.
FUDGE was so bad that she was offended an hour before she even heard the word. As she took her seat at the meeting, she placed a printed copy of council’s standing orders (meeting rules) on the desk, and waited to pounce. Her offendedness was premeditated.
In the middle of the meeting, the terrible fascist, Councillor Andrew Bydder, did something really terrible and fascist. He thanked a staff member.
The staff member had just given the council a snapshot of the financial position, with a report highlighting the problem areas.
“Bad news is good if you get it early enough to actually make changes to make a difference,” said the evil Cllr. Bydder. “So we appreciate no FUDGING, hiding of the figures, telling us straight – that’s good to know”
Thomson sprang into action with a cry “Point of order!” maliciously disrupting the meeting (thus breaching council rules).
She then began flipping through the pages of the standing order manual to try and find anything that could justify her action. She latched onto something with gleeful wokenesss – “Disrespecting staff!”
A quick glance around the council chamber revealed an entirety of confused faces, many literally gobsmacked.
Thomson had chosen this particular meeting for her trap because her political ally, Councillor Maxine van Oosten was chairing it. Unwilling to reprimand the pointless and unnecessary disruption, the biased chair sided with Thomson (again breaching council rules). Bydder was told to rephrase without the offence, but was not actually told what the offending words were.
Bydder proceeded cautiously to repeat the words, unsure where to stop, and inevitably stumbled into the dreaded F-Bomb again. Cr Angela O’Leary launched into the defence of her shocked gender team-mates, later following up by publicly labelling Bydder as unprofessional on her Facebook page.
Used as a verb, not as the confection, “fudge”, according to the Cambridge On-Line dictionary is “to avoid making a decision or giving a clear answer about something.” The example given is highly appropriate: “The government continues to fudge the issue by refusing to give exact figures.” Something we have also come to expect from councils.
“No fudging” in Bydder’s statement means (we appreciate) “giving a clear answer”, which is a very reasonable thing to say and hardly disrespectful.
Thomson, van Oosten, and O’Leary deliberately misrepresented the statement as implying staff occasionally avoid clear answers, or worse, sometimes alter figures. Which happens to be true.
The city council lost $40 million in the V8 debacle based on fudged figures. The Claudelands Events Centre review revealed staff had fudged figures turning an annual $1.5m loss into a $1.5m profit. The last time the council claimed its accounts to be out of the red was done by fudging development revenues (used to repay existing debt) as income that could be spent on other things.
The backlash on O’Leary’s Facebook led to her pulling the post, blocking public comments, and changing her wording to call Bydder’s statement ‘potentially’ disrespectful.
Any councillor who prefers to have her numbers fudged rather than risk disrespecting staff should seriously consider what the role of governance is all about.