Over the past four and a half years the Beagle has been able to reveal the details and outcomes of some of the many Code of Conduct complaints raised against Council staff and Councillors.
Prior to the most recent change of rules The Beagle was able to report on Councillors and Council staff being found, by an independent reviewer, to have breached an Act or Policy.
But then the rules changed. The Office of Local Government, backed by our own councillors, decided they would demand that anyone lodging a Code of Conduct complaint about a Councillor or Council staff member could NOT publicly disclose information about the complaint.
Basically you had to keep the fact of the Code of Conduct a secret and when made aware of the outcome you weren't allowed to tell anyone either. If it was against the General Manager then only the Mayor would know, if against the Mayor only the General Manager would know and if against a Councillor then only the General Manager would know. That means that even the councillors are kept in the dark unless the Code of Conduct is specifically about them.
And if you did, then you would be written to by the Council and invited to advise why you should not be banished to the far corners of the Earth if you failed to give a good enough reason for your disclosure within 28 days.
Council did this with The Beagle where we dared to reveal the outcome of a Code of Conduct complaint after the new rules came in. The Beagle can now advise that we will soon be welcoming a new member to The Banished following the revelation of the outcome of a Code of Conduct raised on the General Manager over her failure to provide what was considered a critical and importnat communication between the Office of Local Government and Council regarding the long term ability of Council to meet the financial burden of the new Batemans Bay pool and theatre to be subsidised from the General Fund. The General Manager was in receipt of this letter nearly two weeks before a cruicial vote was taken to proceed with a $70 million tender for the project, committing $19 million of ratepayer funds. The General Manager, under a GIPA request revealed that she had not provided the letter to either the Councillors or the Audit and Risk Committee prior to the vote. A member of the public, soon to be banished and forever denied any information around future Codes of Conduct complaints being raised, felt that the General Manger had failed in her duties due to the following (in part) In July 2011, the OLG issued Circular No. 11-14 under section 23A of the LG Act concerning a range of issues and requirements relating to the employment arrangements for council General Managers. Amongst other things, that circular spells out (in Part C.1) the ‘key duties of all general managers’. Those key duties include the specification that a general manager
“is responsible for ensuring that councillors are provided with information and the advice they require in order to make informed decisions” and
“should ensure that the council meeting business papers are sufficient to enable the council to make informed decisions”.
That part of the OLG circular also emphasises that councillors
“have a right to sufficient information to make informed decisions”. The ethical and professional standards applicable to council general managers and other staff are provided in considerable detail in the NSW Ombudsman’s ‘Good Conduct and Administrative Practice – Guidelines for state and local government’. In it you will find the following: Advice given by public officials should be accurate, impartial, complete and timely.”
“Public officials should provide advice and reports to decision-makers …. that are materially accurate (and) cover all the issues relevant to the matter”.
“Written advice on proposals should cover such things as …
· reference to all the considerations which should reasonably be taken into account
· sufficient information to enable any decision-maker to understand the relevant issues”.
Note that these are guidelines and not rules.
Given that the General Manager “is responsible for ensuring that councillors are provided with information and the advice they require in order to make informed decisions” a Code of Conduct complaint was raised.
The complaint was assessed and the reviewer found that the General Manager was Not Guilty saying :
"If considered in isolation, we can see how the selection of element of the OLG letter, as compared to the provision of the whole letter, could be perceived as providing incomplete information to Councillors. However, when viewed in the context of the publicly available information over the life of the project and noting the previous reports, briefings and information provided to Councillors and that many of these were detailed in the Agenda for the Ordinary council Meeting of 28 July 2020 to vote on the motion, the selection of information provided to Councillors is not considered to be an omission material to informed decision making.
"We assess that it is reasonable for reports and briefings provided to Councillors to be focussed on the decision being made, rather then re-providing voluminous amounts of information that Council has previously considered during the life of this project.
"We also consider it to be a prudent and professional approach for Council’s staff to select the salient information and provide summaries, rather than to simply pass on every piece of correspondence that Council receives.
Not at all happy with the findings our latest inductee to The Banished revealed the outcome to The Beagle.
Above: Eurobodalla does not have a good record when it comes to the amount of complaints raised.
Eurobodalla Council is well above the average for Codes of Conduct complaints. This is not because of undue complaints but in fact due to this council, and the way they conduct their business, being held to account by ratepayers who are informed of the rules and can recognise breaches such as has recently been revealed in the finding that Council's excuse to withhold information citing "commercial in Confidence" was unjustified.
This year alone the Council have been instructed on several occasions to pay more attention to the rules.
Sadly for Council (and for the Office of Local Government) the Eurobodalla community are making a mockery of the rules of banishment if a Code of Conduct determination is revealed.
With each code of conduct lodged there is a long list of community members willing to put their complaint forward and to then reveal the outcome. This will guarantee that all Code of Conduct outcomes will be known and published so that the wider community can be informed and included in an "open and transparent" process by default.
Whilst our newest team member is writing his response to Council's invitation to make a submission as to why he should not be banished we look forward to revealing the outcomes of two other Code of Conduct complaints.
