Invercargill City Council will hold an extraordinary meeting on 2 November to decide whether to ask the Government for an exception that would let its appointed committee members keep voting, after a law change that strips voting rights from non-elected members from 18 March 2027.

The Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Act, which passed its third reading on 15 September, restricts committee voting to elected members. Councils can still appoint outside people for expertise or community representation, but they will not have a vote and will not count towards a quorum. Statutory and Treaty settlement appointments are excluded.

In Invercargill, four appointed members are affected: mana whenua representative Mike Bain, water committee deputy chair Lee Babe, and risk and assurance committee chair Ross Jackson and member Lesley Soper. Three appointed members of the community wellbeing fund subcommittee also lose their votes.

At Tuesday's council meeting, chaired by deputy mayor Grant Dermody in Mayor Tom Campbell's absence, councillors adopted the mayor's recommendation to add all 13 elected members to the risk and assurance committee from 1 November and to appoint Cr Ria Bond to the water committee, Invercargill news site What's On Invers reported.

Council manager governance Michael Morris told the meeting there was a process to seek approval for appointed members to continue voting. He will bring a report to the 2 November meeting setting out options so councillors can decide which exception, if any, to apply for. Any application must be lodged by 18 November. Mr Morris said he had also asked local rūnaka for guidance.

Cr Andrea de Vries suggested a second councillor should sit on the water committee once the appointed members' votes are removed, saying it "upholds better democratic function". Mr Dermody said the point was fair, and that the appointed members still added value: "They certainly have a level of influence," he said.

Mr Campbell told the Otago Daily Times before the meeting that risk and assurance was "an area of great importance" with a significant oversight function, and that bringing all councillors on to the committee would put the council in a good position when the law took effect. Mr Morris said the change had no financial implications because councillors are paid an annual honorarium rather than per meeting.

Local Government Minister Simon Watts announced the change in June, pointing to councils in the Far North, Tauranga and Hastings where iwi representatives and people under 18 had been given committee votes. "That's not democratic, so we're fixing it," he said at the time.

The 2 November meeting will set the council's position on the exception. If councillors choose not to apply, the four appointed members will remain on their committees in an advisory role only from March.