The funding board does nothing except move money from the council through to the amenities. All it does is meet a couple of times a year to hear how much the amenities want, and then it decides to tell the council how much they have to fund. There's still the arbitration process if the council disagrees, but the people who make the decisions about how much Aucklanders should be rated don't get to decide how much money goes to these amenities, because Parliament still says there has to be a law in place because Parliament doesn't trust the Auckland Council on how much it should fund these important amenities. 