Dear Blogmaster
RE: Shire of York Probity
Audit Review
Contained in the minutes for the May ordinary Council
meeting under agenda item 9.2.4 is 'Probity Audit'. A/CEO Graham Simpson tabled
the document at the meeting, this is confirmed in the minutes under the heading
'officer Comment', where the A/CEO states, "An action plan to address
recommendations will be tabled in response to the Probity Audit that has also
been tabled".
The Local Government Act states:
A person can attend the office of a local government
during office hours and, unless it would be contrary to section 5.95, inspect, free of charge, in the form or
medium in which it is held by the local government and whether or not it is current at the time of
inspection —
(p)
any notice papers and agenda relating to any council or committee meeting and
reports and other documents that
have been —
(i) tabled at a council
or committee meeting;
I visited the administration office this morning to access a
copy of the Probity Report, Mr Simpson would not speak to me personally, so
poor little Helen was having to go backwards and forwards between his office
and the front counter.
Mr Simpson would not provide me with access to a copy of the
Probity Audit Report, even though, according to him, it was a 'tabled' document. Instead, I was
given a copy of the Probity Audit Review, which I presume is a summary of the
full Probity Audit Report.
I was not particularly satisfied with being refused access to
what I consider to be a public document, so I contacted the Department of Local
Government.
I spoke with Mr Vernon McKay at the Department, he stated in
no uncertain terms; "the Department will not be getting involved",
which sounds very familiar, as it was this sort of attitude which allowed Ray
Hooper along with two Shire Presidents to run riot.
The Probity Audit Review appears to identify many failures
within the Shire of York administration.
Regards
____________________
30 June 2015
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Too right it identifies problems in the administration and we have been saying that's where the problem is for years.
ReplyDeleteThe responsibilities for most of the inadequacies in this summary clearly rest with 'Senior staff' who have since had to undertake training. How can it be justified that they have been paid so much over the years for knowing so little and not fulfilling the title role to the standard expected.
We have a DCEO who was responsible for Shire finances, complaints. preparing reports, annual returns etc., and she got it all so wrong. What makes this worse is CEO Graeme Simpson and Commissioner James Best were totally aware of the probity report when they chose to prematurely renew her contract for a further 5 year term.
Adding fuel to the fire, we now have a former Project Manager/FOI Officer/Finance Officer/ HR Manager / Master of none - stepping into the role as Acting DCEO who is no better and was also responsible for many failings highlighted in the report.
As for the report writing and decision making processes, well that's a joke, no blame whatsoever can go to the Councillors appointed from 2013, unfortunately they got caught in the cross fire of poor decision making habits inherited from the previous Council and when they attempted to put things right, they were shot.
In the meantime, what happens to all the poor decisions of the past, will the decisions be reviewed and what about all the people harmed along the way?
Recommendation 8 - Training was supposed to be completed in April - the student failed!
ReplyDeleteSuggest Mr. Jolly have a read of the the last three Agenda's, then read the two Blogs for the suggested spelling and grammatical corrections: Community Recommendation for A/CEO - Further Training required.
As for Ms. Maziuk - Project Officer of the very smelly Wreck centre, Finance Officer, HR (I believe the H stands for Human but I am absolutely sure) and FOI Officer but didn't know the FOI Act.
GM is considered a key member of staff and there are no less than 7 recommendations for improvement so what does the A/CEO do - he promotes her to A/DCEO!
Just as expected - don't worry about all those poor decision of the past and don't lose sleep over the people harmed along the way. Remember Mr. Best drew a line in the sand and we all have to forgive and forget what was done to those people.
Not likely Mr. Best!
What an absolute treat to read that our returning Councillors should not have been suspended for the actions of idiotic past Shire Presidents and the senior staff of the administration. I hope they receive the apology they deserve.
ReplyDeleteWhat a delight to have this blog back - thank you! I have so missed all the documents with all the juicy facts, it must make the powers that be cringe when they read about their own crimes and dishonesty.
It's great to see the sense of humour has returned with cartoons that must make even the characters in them chuckle....hoorah!
Wait, what? Public servants employed by the public to serve the public and who are also bound by the Local Government Act (for everyone's protection, including their own), allegedly refusing to act according to the Act and provide what the Act requires of them?
ReplyDeleteNot only that, but the next level up thinks it can safely be one, or all, of the infamous three monkeys?
Have any of those public servants heard of the "Public Interest Disclosure Act 2003"?
Perhaps it's time to for York residents to remind all of them of it via letters to the York PID officer (is there one?) and/or (and especially in the case of the Department of Local Government), the Western Australian Ombudsman, as per: www. ombudsman. wa. gov. au/Complaints/PID. htm (link deliberately broken in order to get it into the comment stream).
From the W.A. Ombudsman website:
The Public Interest Disclosure Act 2003 enables people to make disclosures about wrongdoing within the State public sector, local government and public universities without fear of reprisal.
The Act aims to ensure openness and accountability in government by encouraging people to make disclosures and protecting them when they do.
Further information about public interest disclosures can be found in the Public Interest Disclosure section of the Public Sector Commission website.
For further information on making a public interest disclosure about a public authority contact:
Public Interest Disclosure Officer
Ombudsman Western Australia
PO Box Z5386, St Georges Tce, Perth WA 6831
Telephone: (08) 9220 7555
Email: PID@ombudsman.wa.gov.au
Please mark any correspondence 'Private and Confidential'. Alternatively, call the PID Advice & Referral Line on 1800 355 835.
I'm not surprised Graeme Simpson wouldn't hand over the Probity Report, it's got shoddy administration written all through it.
ReplyDeleteThe scope of the audit was 1 January - 31 August 2014, and included the following:
Policies
Delegations
Meeting structure and process (information recorded in the minutes of meetings)
Financial Interest Register - Register for disclosure at meetings and returns
Complaints - Register of complaints and general complaints
Statutory record keeping by the Shire
Policy: It's the responsibility of the highly overpaid members of staff to prepare policies, or, as is normally the case, plagiarize a policy from another City or Shire for Council to consider, it is not a Councillors role to write policies.
Delegation: After trawling through the minutes, delegations have not been reviewed since the OCM September 2012. Delegation have to be reviewed annually, CEO's responsibility.
Meetings: It is the responsibility of the administration staff to record minutes for meetings. Historically, as many as five members of staff would take notes during a meeting, even then, they couldn't get it right. Minutes have always been a bone of contention, the administration loves to remove all context from questions, this servers two purposes. Firstly, it makes the questioner appear to be retarded and secondly, they need not answer the question accurately, they call it 'summarising' , others call it censorship.
Financial interests etc: This falls squarely on the shoulders of the compliance officer as reported in the review, who's the compliance officer? Oh its Maziuk, enough said.
Complaints register: The designated complaints officer was DCEO Tyhscha Cochrane, there you go again, administration, senior administration at that!
Record keeping: Another bone of contention, lost and missing records, incomplete records, shonky correspondence registers, recording keeping is also the responsibility of the administration.
Unless I'm missing something, the 'probity inquiry/report has identified huge deficiencies within the administration department.
You are not missing anything Bill, I reckon the York Administration requires at least three qualified Remedial Teachers to provide one on one lessons to bring the senior staff up to an acceptable standard!
DeleteThe cheapest and BEST solution would be to sack them!
Recommendation 14 is a joke. You would be lucky to receive an acknowledge let alone a response. As far as complaints go, nothing has changed between Ray Hooper's term and Graeme Simpson's term as CEO.
ReplyDeleteThe Shire continues to bury its head in the sand, even after the Departments probity audit has identified issues with the Shire of York and complaints handling.
Of course the Shire, the DLG and the Minister for LG continue to bury their heads collectively - its a sand-fest and Mr. Best is here to provide them with a straw so they can breath while their heads are buried!
ReplyDeleteIn the mean time, they continue to hope for the protection of those involved in the last decade of cover ups, corruption and third rate, rude, puppet councillors we were subjected to by deliberately extending the DCEO's contract well before it was due and promoting an ill equipped person into her position as A/DCEO, all in an attempt to block the truth from being revealed.
What they didn't reckon on was not one Blog, but two!
Thank you Blog master for the work you are doing to help everyone.
Re Recommendation 8, I myself have not yet seen evidence that certain Senior Staff has/have passed "training in report writing and the framing of recommendations that support clarity in council motions". Far from it, as at least one questioner in recent Shire Meetings has pointed out. I know for a fact (I have seen copies) that my friend Liz Christmas (who has plenty of editorial experience) wrote a couple of times to the ACEO to try and make sense of one or two garbled sentences and got back rather 'obfuscating' replies. She also tried to get similar clarifications in a couple of Shire meetings, though she may have been wasting her time as far as any likely change is concerned. Not her fault, though.
ReplyDeleteIt takes me back to a point during RH's time when another lady (I think she gave up after experienceing the 'brick wall') took along to question time a large slice of Agenda in which she had highlighted the enormous number of spelling mistakes and such.
Also, in Minutes we sometimes got Questions quoted leaving out whole bits of questioner sentences, in such a way that what did show up made the Questioner look foolish. That included when the Questioner had handed in or e-mailed in written questions. We seem to have switched (from mere spelling mistakes and left out bits) to sentences that would make sense if rearranged, or that do not spell out clearly what is meant. And that is under our 'bright new' régime who are supposed to be an example to our councillors and to staff in general, and (Recommendation 7) to be making the intent of all its motions, for instance, clear to us all. A good test of good writing is that it should be understood by speaker of the language aged 12 or up. Even in industry a favourite quote is "Keep it simple, stupid (KISS)".
I have also seen examples of questions in recent months where the questioner's questions had bits left out when read out by the Commissioner. Recently Liz Christmas's questions about the 14th April 2014 (3 motions authorising the FitzGerald investigation) and 15th April (when RH wrote his resignation and it was receipted the same day) had the 14th April bit left out by the Commissioner (who appeared to be claiming in his Agenda Item that it was the resignation of RH which was what triggered the FitzGerald investigation; to quote: "The resignation of former CEO, Mr Ray Hooper, appears to have triggered events that led to the conducting of investigations. The FitzGerald report was commissioned...."). Liz stopped him right then and pointed out the missing bit. He looked phased, but I doubt he is at all repentant.
No wonder Liz took to asking her own questions from then on.