The quick bureaucrat fox jumped over the bumbling brown Mayor

'No Lord Mayor' seems to have replaced 'Yes Minister' as the best political comedy of the year when it was revealled last week that local body mandarins tricked Mayor Brown into tripping over the latest attempt to save heritage buildings from greedy developers, look at this fiasco complete with secret agreements so secret they have to be denied to exist at all…

Sources indicate the bureaucrats left the politicians with little choice. They were told Auckland City had done a deal with Viaduct Harbour Holdings, a big private landowner in the area - a deal which itself was so secret, the parties are sworn to deny its very existence - that the old city would not add any extra buildings to its initial list of eight.

By law, Auckland Council is bound by any agreements made by the various councils that morphed into one on November 1, including that one.

There was reportedly strong opposition from former ARC parks and heritage chairwoman Sandra Coney and former ARC chairman Mike Lee leading to the concession that the council resolved it would support the right of the ARC's ally, the Art Deco Society, to carry on the battle in the Environment Court.

Witnesses say Mayor Len Brown and councillors agreed that this decision be recorded in the published minutes. But council staff on Friday denied there was any such resolution and the published minutes show no sign of it.

...first the bureaucrats set up a secret deal that can't be discussed, then they leave any mention of support from the minutes, it seems Len Brown is getting played, Aucklanders expect more from their Lord Mayor.