Only Helen Zille and her cabinet can approve a budget for Oudtshoorn Municipality after it failed to pass its budget on time.
|||Cape Town - Only Premier Helen Zille and her cabinet can approve a budget for Oudtshoorn Municipality after it failed to pass its budget on time, says Finance MEC Alan Winde.
Winde said on Monday an interim budget would have to be signed by Zille and would be in place for up to two-and-a-half months, while only he could give approval for any expenses the Klein Karoo municipality made.
“If any other money is spent without approval, it would be considered wasteful,” he said.
Mayor Gordin April has been unable to convene a council meeting and form a quorum to pass the budget since five of the 11 ANC councillors resigned in May and the DA has refused to attend. The ANC itself tried before to remove April.
The DA first tried to take control of the council, and since then, its councillors have refused to help approve Oudtshoorn’s budget.
Winde said the provincial government’s intervention into Oudtshoorn would stand until after the by-elections on August 7.
He said the municipality would also only be allowed to spend 8 percent of its budget every month.
Zille wrote in a letter to April’s lawyer, Hardy Mills, that the provincial government had “no intention of illegally intervening” in the Oudtshoorn Municipality or placing it “under administration at this stage”.
She sent the letter to Mills after he complained last week that Winde had overstepped his powers. Mills had written to Zille that Winde disregarded Local Government MEC Anton Bredell’s intervention in the municipality and took it upon himself to say he would dissolve the council and appoint an administrator.
Winde wrote to April last Wednesday to inform him the council had to pass its budget for the 2013/14 year before July 1.
He added that the province was compelled by law to intervene in the municipality if it failed to do so.
Oudtshoorn never did - the only one of 30 municipalities in the province.
Zille replied to April the he “misunderstood (Winde’s letter) to mean that a decision had been made to dissolve the council”.
She wrote that the constitution “obligates” her government to intervene in Oudtshoorn “in such circumstances”, but it was up to the provincial government to decide what those would be.
cobus.coetzee@inl.co.za
Cape Times