Dr Winford James
There was a time, especially early in his first administration, when PM Rowley led the charge for local government reform. He boosted the efforts of Local Government Minister Franklin Khan (since deceased) who went around Trinidad collecting ideas and views on how to do the reform. Then suddenly–and, to me, inexplicably–he stopped, and I thought that, perhaps critically because the Government could not get its way with the property tax, he had washed his hands and called that George.
But it is now clear to me that work on the reform was quietly going on behind the scenes when I thought he had taken it off the stove.
The events that tell me this include 1) the formation in 2021 of a Joint Select Committee of the Parliament to come up with a draft bill; 2) debate on that bill by both Houses in 2021; 3) assent by the President to the act on July 1, 2022; and 4) proclamation of the act by the President on the official date of November 8, 2022.
The act, short-titled the Miscellaneous Provisions (Local Government Reform) Act, 2022, amends the Municipal Corporations Act, Chap 25:04 and 9 other acts in order, ostensibly, to reform local government in Trinidad via the corporations. It invites the assumption that it is going to lead to improvement of the quality of governance in the corporations and, by extension, Trinidad, and Trinidad and Tobago. But it does not lay out the ways in which the improvement will come.
I would have wanted the Government to explain to the public that the act contains the instruments to empower the various corporations to create much-needed change in the way the latter and the country as a whole are run. But I anticipate the retort that they did that in the debate in Parliament and, before the debate, in exchanges between themselves and certain interest groups and individuals whom they directly and indirectly addressed on the matter of commentary on the reform.
I did not seize the opportunity of the general call for ideas in 2021 as I was expecting the JSC to 1) seek the input of the general public in town hall meetings in suitably located meeting spots, and 2) come to Tobago since the views of residents in the island must be important and relevant to any reform of government in the nation of Trinidad and Tobago.
But the powers-that-be do not conceptualise governance in that way. They seem to think that Tobago’s views on the matter must be confined to governance by the House of Assembly and, in some ill-defined way, to the country as a whole, and that Trinidad’s views must stick to governance by the corporations and, also in some ill-defined way, to the country as a whole.
Interestingly, in line with what Dr Rowley promoted in the early days of his first tenure as the model for the new governance model for the corporations, the proclaimed model borrows ideas from the THA Act. One of the interesting changes is four-year terms of office instead of three-year terms.
Some of the other changes are:
Creation of divisions like the THA Divisions to handle areas of administrative responsibility led by elected officials;
Replacement of the office of ‘City/Town Clerk’ with that of ‘Chief Executive Officer’;
Creation of an Executive Council comprising a Mayor, a Deputy Mayor and no more than six councillors/aldermen who will be called secretaries and be in charge of divisions just as is the case in the THA;
Creation of an Executive Council headed by an appointed Chief Executive Officer;
Making the Chief Executive Officer the ex officio Secretary of the Executive Council;
Creation of an Audit Committee–composed of two members appointed by the mayor, one member nominated by the minority members, two members from Civil Society or one from Civil Society and one from the Central Audit Unit of the Ministry of Finance appointed by the mayor–charged with providing ‘independent assurance and advice to the council in a number of areas, including risk management, internal audit, financial statements, and compliance requirements.
One big question for me is whether the Government consulted broadly enough on this matter of local government reform for Trinidad. I don’t think so. Nobody I have talked to, whether of high or low education, is aware of the provisions for reform, and this fact may suggest that their view did not count. Another big question is whether and how the provisions fit into the overall scheme of governance of the country.
But that is a matter for another day.