Paying for local government

Reports in today’s press about council job losses carry grim echoes in Swansea where things are bad at Calamity Hall and about to get worse, according to sources who reckon that posts will be axed for successive years.

“People don’t realise the severity of what is going on”, states council leader Holley, who is said to be appalled that budget measures mean he could actually lose his council-provided car and personal driver. However, these outbursts do little to convince the tax-paying public that the big bluffer has an inkling as to:

(a) how a budget actually works

(b) what circumstances created the current mess

(c) how to get the city out it

As someone pointed out the other day, Holley and his entourage of hangers-on have managed to fool their way through the past five years by trading entirely on the fact that they’re not Labour. But now even the usually accommodating local paper is forced to concede that the financial shit-storm facing the city is entirely of the self-styled Swansea Administration’s making.

The blame game and bullshit no longer works for the Lib Dem leadership. They have been fingered for years of splurging on capital spending without the semblance of resources to repay debt. They have sold off millions in public assets to finance day-to-day costs and then bent existing regulations in order to sell off more. They ‘invested’ in sparkling new IT systems which cost millions but are only capable of telling you in twenty different ways that the finances are fucked up beyond redemption.

Any pretence of fiscal abilities in the early years was countered by the blunderings of a barely coherent finance cabinet member. And the new guy has since discovered that the chickens have not only come home to roost but also taken a seriously big dump in the nest. Yet are there any alternatives on offer?

Opposition leader David Phillips wanders the corridors sporting a shit-eating grin and claiming to take no pleasure from the situation. Yet the revelation that there is suddenly a new shadow finance spokesman (other than DP) is interpreted as a sign that Labour is falling into the old habit of being too clever. It further suggests that they are probably capable of no more than a stance which is big on accusations but small on solutions – their idea to scrap the Presiding Officer’s post being a case in point.

For many, if the answer lies in constitutional change at Swansea Council then it needs to be a lot more fundamental. Painful experience has taught the city that streamlined local government delivered either by single party dictat or a coalition prone cabinet system is just as indecipherable & unaccountable as the ‘inefficient’ committee system it was intended to replace.

If Swansea needs leadership to overcome its present malaise and to avoid slipping back into a similar mire of financial mismanagement then the arguments are in favour of a directly elected mayor. Just cutting out salaries of 10 cabinet members and half a dozen oversight wallahs would bring in millions for re-investment in frontline services alone. But it would also ensure that whoever took on the job on running Swansea could be scrutinised before election on their professional as well as political capabilities – rather than the present arrangement of someone getting slotted into post after the backroom post-election deals are done.

Of course, the politicians would never allow such a radical change. Councillors would condemn any idea of a single person running a city as ‘undemocratic’ whilst local assembly members would have the squitts at just the thought of a directly elected individual with actual powers – especially one capable of achieving a higher profile than them in the press or usurping the seating arrangements at posh events. Ah well.

But to finish on a trite point - and as cuts in services begin - the signs are that it will all very quickly become a question of not whether we can afford to change but whether we can afford to stay as we are, i.e leaderless, rudderless and heading towards the waterfall.