Tavish Scott, Liberal Democrat MSP for Shetland, has thrown his weight behind the Press and Journal campaign.
He said: “I want to support the strength of this campaign because it’s crucial that HIE are directly accountable to the communities they have been part of since the 1960s. That would be lost were some board in Glasgow to become responsible for the organisation.
“It’s really important that economic solutions for different parts of the Highlands and Islands are worked out and the focus that is brought by the HIE board is essential in making that work successfully.
“I think Scottish Enterprise are distant, remote and would not be effective in providing an understanding in the local economic circumstances across the area.
“What the current Scottish Government have done is centralise police and fire. Police has been an unmitigated shambles, they still have IT systems that don’t work, staff morale is at an all time low, so the track record of the Scottish Government has not been good.
“What worries me about all these centralisations is that the ability of a council leader or an MSP or a community leader to get a hold of the boss is lost. That would certainly be the case with HIE as well.
“Centralisation doesn’t work. It doesn’t necessarily save money, it creates structural upheaval and they loose a lot of good people.
“I don’t want any of that to happen to HIE, it’s a good organisation that works effectively for the area and we don’t want to lose that.
“People in Shetland and many of the agencies that deal with HIE on a day to day basis don’t want to lose that and certainly don’t want to see decision making sucked up into Glasgow and not taking place at a local level.”