Nice work, if you can get it

Councillors are not supposed to interfere in the day to day operation of the Councils they govern.  They have two roles;

1) establishing policies to be followed by the officers

2) appointing and directing the Chief Executive Officer.

So it’s important the Council is happy with the performance of their CEO.

Pursuant to this, each year councillors must review the performance of their CEO.

It has been the practice of the Bridgetown-Greenbushes Shire Council to appoint a committee of councillors to review the CEO’s performance and his remuneration, and this committee then provides a recommendation to the full Council for rubber stamping.

For the past four years, our Council has voted to endorse a suggestion from the CEO that an outside consultant be engaged to assist the committee in reviewing his performance.  On all four occasions the CEO has suggested that a Mr Fitzgerald of FitzGerald Strategies be appointed.

In 2011, the CEO’s recommendation was not greeted with the usual unanimous rubber stamping. I was then on Council and I argued strongly against the appointment, on the basis that it involved a clear conflict of interest. I had discovered that Mr Fitzgerald is often engaged to do contract work for the Council (on the decision of the CEO) as an adviser on industrial relations. I pointed out it would not be in his interest to prepare advice for council which was adverse to the CEO,  given that this might affect his on-going relationship with the CEO and prejudice his chances of being offered more work. However, it would in Council’s best interest to obtain completely impartial advice on the matter. I also said that perhaps it would be healthy to change advisers on this issue, so that we might get different viewpoints.

I was able to convince two other councillors, Cr Moyes and Cr Williams to oppose the appointment, but the motion was passed, six votes to three.

It is interesting that Cr Williams was one of those who voted unanimously to appoint the CEO’s regular, hand-picked consultant to steer his performance appraisal again this year when Mr Fitzgerald's appointment for 2012 was put to Council last month.

There is one other thing that is curious about this… Council President Brian Moore has been on Council’s CEO performance review committee for four years. Given he is a member of the State Government’s Salaries and Allowances Tribunal and was that tribunal’s executive officer for many years previously, why does he need a ratepayer-funded consultant to tell him how to assess the CEO’s performance and decide whether a pay increase is justified?

By the way, the outcome of the process described above has been glowing appraisals and a pay rise for the CEO every year. But that doesn’t surprise anyone, does it?