Council ‘recreated’ document
Nelson City Council boss Pat Dougherty has been accused of lying about accidentally releasing a draft document of his performance agreement.
The ‘‘accidentally released’’ draft instructing the council’s CEO to ‘‘drive’’ controversial projects in 2017 was the only version of the document that existed until last week, it has been revealed.
On Friday, Dougherty said the draft document was released because the council had less time than expected to release the information requested.
However, Nelson Residents Association member Steve Cross, who said he fought for a year to have the information released, said he noticed that the ‘‘draft’’ document was a PDF file, but the ‘‘final’’ document was a word file which was last edited last Thursday.
Cross said he asked Dougherty about the edit, and Dougherty ‘‘admitted that [council group manager of strategy and communications] Nicky McDonald did edit the document’’.
In an email to Cross, Dougherty said it had ‘‘become apparent to us that we didn’t hold a final version of my KPIs for 2017/2018’’.
‘‘We held the draft version and a final version included as part of my progress report to the CE Employment Committee at the end of the financial year. We therefore had to recreate a final version by updating the draft version. That is why Nicky McDonald was editing the document for 19 minutes.
‘‘I absolutely acknowledge this is far from ideal. This was a staff oversight and we have taken steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again.’’
Cross believed the explanation ‘‘puts a lie to the story’’ that he
was provided with the wrong version of the document due to time pressure.
‘‘We now know that both myself and the Ombudsman were provided with the so-called draft because it was the only version around until Nicky created the ‘final’ version.’’
However, Dougherty later said it was a case of not realising the document had not been updated at the time.
"The draft went to the council, and they made one change to the wording, and subject to that change the performance agreement was made.
‘‘We didn’t update the document with that change.
"It was only after Mr Cross pointed out the wording that we realised that the wording was not changed."
He said the situation was "not ideal".
Dougherty supplied redacted minutes from a public excluded meeting of the full council on March 18, 2018 recording the amended wording, and the agenda for a publicly excluded chief executive employment committee meeting where Dougherty reported progress on the agreement which also included the amended wording.
Cross said he was now satisfied that the council had changed the words, but maintained that the original draft indicated ‘‘an expectation’’ of the CEO, and said he didn’t know how he felt about the council ‘‘re-creating documents then sending them out without explaining that they have been re-created’’.
He said he also feared being discredited for his reaction to the draft wording.
‘‘I acted in good faith on the information provided.’’
Dougherty has been contacted for comment.