FRANKSTON Council has been forced to admit a meeting held behind closed doors in June did not comply with the Local Government Act.
The Victorian Ombudsman investigated a closed Special Meeting called by three councillors – Crs Brian Cunial, Glenn Aitken and Colin Hampton – to discuss comments made by councillors on social media sites such as Facebook (“Hidden agenda for secret council meeting”, The Times 20/6/16).
The Ombudsman’s office released an Investigation into the transparency of local government decision making report on Friday (16 December) that found some councils had “poor practice” around transparency despite no evidence of “widespread, deliberate, secretive behaviour”.
Frankston Council was used as a case study to show why council meetings should not be held in private “to avoid embarrassment”.
An unnamed councillor told the Ombudsman’s office during the course of the watchdog’s investigation it was decided that a public meeting “would be likely to attract negative media coverage”.
A councillor “who called the meeting” and was concerned about potentially slanderous comments on Facebook told the Ombudsman:
“I said this is getting completely out of hand. I said we need to have a meeting. We need to get these people, get them in that room and rip the stuffing out of them over this. Just rip the stuffing out of them. I said this has gone on too long.”
Cr Cunial, now mayor, publicly questioned The Times reporting at the time that noted four councillors did not attend the confidential meeting since they feared “an ambush” by “a gang of five” councillors after two years of animosity between councillors.
“There was an article in the paper a week or two ago … which is very well written by a very experienced reporter, but I think the information provided to the reporter may not be completely accurate,” Cr Cunial said at council’s July meeting.
“I was a little disappointed after I read it … reporters can only write based on the information they’re given. It’s clear that whoever provided the information perhaps was a little biased.”
No agenda for the meeting was provided by council when requested by The Times and no public notice about the meeting could be found on council’s website.
No link to a web page advertising the 15 June meeting, published online on 9 June, was provided on the page of council’s website that lists meeting dates so the page was effectively hidden from view on the site.
The Ombudsman found Frankston Council had not publicly advertised the meeting at least seven days before the meeting as stipulated by the Local Government Act.
Council acknowledged the meeting “was not in full compliance with the Local Government Act 1989.”
The report noted councillors who attended the meeting were unaware it did not comply with local government laws.
“The council advised that the officer who provided advice on governance, was on maternity leave when these events occurred,” the Ombudsman’s report stated.
“When the officer went on leave in April, her position was not backfilled.”
Crs Darrel Taylor and Suzette Tayler were subsequently forced by some fellow councillors to apologise after an arbitrator found comments made on Facebook breached council’s code of conduct.
Their apologies were not accepted at the final public council meeting before 22 October council elections since they went “off script” when apologising using wording dictated by Cr Colin Hampton with council officers’ input.
When contacted last week Cr Darrel Taylor said four councillors had not attended the June meeting since its validity was in doubt.
“We always struggled to highlight the lack of transparency and hypocrisy of some councillors,” he said. “We were constantly vilified and personally attacked whenever we spoke out.
“The meeting in question was just one of the mechanisms utilised to try and gag councillors for speaking out and trying to highlight the deficiencies of the council.
“The issue now is what is the validity of any decisions or outcomes from that particular meeting?”
