The importance of local councils executive secretaries

Our system of local government provides for councils and other local entities to be autonomous of the country’s central administration, that is, government.

This is one of the pillars on which the whole system of local government is founded, the other being subsidiarity, which means that decisions that affect people the most should be taken by that organ of the state which is nearest to those that will be affected.

However, autonomy should never be construed as meaning that councils can do away with equally important precepts such as good governance or accountability. Local councils consist of elected officials who have been elected in order to implement a programme which they had previously promised to implement. Being elected officials, they are interested in implementing their manifesto at all costs and, given our closely knit communities, may be susceptible to some degree of favouritism. Thus, it is of paramount importance that an impartial government official seeks to implement the manifesto in a correct, transparent and accountable way.

Enter the executive secretaries who, by law, are defined as the executive, financial and administrative heads of local councils which means they are entrusted with the powers to make sure that councils do not run into financial or administrative irregularities. This system is very much in line with how central government works. As politicians, we have been elected on our party’s ticket to implement our party’s manifesto as presented to the electorate.

Those MPs who are chosen by the Prime Minister to be in Cabinet are entrusted with implementing the manifesto. However, we do not have unlimited powers, as we are merely one component of a system full of checks and balances. Our work and policies are scrutinised by Parliament, the media and the general public, but first it has to be sifted by the Civil Service, which is ultimately entrusted to implement our policies. The Civil Service is also there to see that our policies are being implemented in a correct way according to preestablished regulations.

In local government terms, the executive secretary performs the work of the civil service, as ultimately, he or she is responsible for the financial, executive and administrative functions of the council. In fact, executive secretaries form part of the civil service: their employment is governed by the Public Services Management Code and they are also subject to the Public Administration Act. This system allows for a proper system that functions according to the rule of law as befits the governance of a truly democratic country.

I believe that executive secretaries should, time and time again, remind council members of their duties and the limits of their powers. Secretaries should remind these elected officials that they are not running their locality as if it were their own backyard and that there are rules and regulations that need to be adhered to not for selfserving purposes but because they are tried and tested and show that by sticking to such rules, the taxpayers’ money is not being wasted and that each euro spent should be accounted for to ensure transparency. We owe it to our electors, we owe it to our communities and we should owe it to ourselves.

There are those whose interest is not to have a robust system of checks and balances in our local communities. Such people apparently fail to grasp the elementary concept that good governance is important across all levels of government, and not according to which department or ministry best suits their partisan tirades. Time and time again, these same people tend to forget that the previous administration drove this system into financial ruin by encouraging over-spending on a number of schemes that riddled councils with debts to this very day.

The government firmly believes in the abilities of executive secretaries, to the extent that it put its money where its mouth is and invested in the country’s first ever professional formation course aimed at executive secretaries. This course, which is recognised both locally and internationally as a diploma course, was aimed at improving accountability and good governance in local councils as well as more efficient public procurement and the better management of public funds. It was part of a €110,000 EU-funded project through which the Department for Local Government was accredited as an Institute for Local Government which will be preparing courses for councillors and local council staff in order to increase the level of service provided to the public. In fact, other continuous professional development courses are being held regularly.

If councils fail to operate in a transparent way, they will inevitably fail any tests of efficiency and effectiveness and will surely not be of service to their communities. I am insisting on proper institutional behaviour and accountability not for the sake of it but because I firmly believe that the only way we can serve our communities well is to show them that we care for the resources we have to improve those same communities.