Councillor cleared of Facebook faux pas
A Horowhenua councillor cleared of internal disciplinary wrongdoing says the organisation’s chief executive ‘‘dulled’’ a report’s findings to make him look bad.
Cr Ross Campbell was found not to have breached the troubled council’s code of conduct for speaking publicly about a private council meeting. Now, he’s come out firing at council chief executive David Clapperton.
Clapperton refused to talk about Campbell’s criticism.
Cr Neville Gimblett filed the complaint, and accused Campbell of lying about council building reports, leaking ‘‘in-committee’’ information and denigrating other councillors in a video posted on Facebook.
But an investigation by employment specialists Fairway Resolution concluded that ‘‘whilst the comments made by Cr Campbell could be seen to have the effect of bringing the council or a councillor into disrepute, [investigators] did not consider the complaint to be material’’, and no further investigation was required.
A report from Clapperton about the investigation, which was due to go before councillors at a meeting last week, relayed this information, but left out other key comments from Fairway Resolution, Campbell said.
Not included was Fairway Resolution finding there was no evidence private information was leaked by Campbell, he said.
Instead, in his Facebook post, Campbell only referred to matters that were in the public domain, the investigation found.
Feeling that Clapperton had ‘‘dulled the report down’’, Campbell said he wanted to discuss Fairway’s findings at July’s council meeting, but it was cancelled because councillors were sick or busy elsewhere.
‘‘I was going to read out what the commissioner had said.’’
Campbell now felt ‘‘abused’’ by his council colleagues, who at a meeting in April called him ‘‘irresponsible’’ and a liar.
At that April meeting, Gimblett said Campbell’s comments about the council building being unsafe and reports into its structure being below par were ‘‘as far from the truth as possible’’.
Another of Campbell’s claims, that councillors did not say hello or smile at each other, was a ‘‘lie’’ that made the council look unapproachable, Gimblett said.
Cr Ross Brannigan backed the complaint and said detailing what happened at the publicly-excluded meeting was ‘‘irresponsible’’.
The investigation into the complaint cost ratepayers $3000.
Gimblett said he accepted Fairway Resolution’s findings and that his complaint would go no further.
The investigation cost ratepayers $3000.