The South Australian government is changing the law to prevent dozens of councillors from losing their positions. 

In recent weeks, three mayors and 42 councillors had to be removed from their positions for not submitting gift registration forms, regardless of whether they received any gifts.

They had all failed to respond in time to multiple reminders from the Electoral Commission of South Australia to submit the documents. 

The issue would have triggered dozens of council by-elections, but the state is now moving to avoid that. 

It has proposed an amendment to give council members extra time to lodge their campaign donation returns to avoid losing their elected positions.

The ousted elected members will reportedly be reinstated if they submit their forms by the new deadline.

“The consequence of not acting on this would be hundreds of thousands of dollars of likely extra costs for ratepayers,” SA’s Attorney-General Kyam Maher says. 

Opposition local government spokesman Sam Telfer has called for an independent investigation. 

Up until a year ago, Mr Telfer was a mayor and the president of the Local Government Association of South Australia.

“Although the short term problem is going to get a fix, and we'll welcome that and look at the legislation, there's still a real need to understand why this happened,” Mr Telfer said.