Ready to roll, but won’t say why

So another mightily influential southern outfit has rolled a key figure in its organisation for reasons it isn’t prepared to explain.

First the Invercargill City Council turned on deputy mayor Darren Ludlow and now the Community Trust of Southland has resolved, unanimously, that its chief executive John Prendergast should go. Which he has.

Once again the public is denied the opportunity to assess the validity or implications of the decision.

It might be said that less transparency can be expected from the community trust because it is not a publicly elected body. The trustees who govern its operations are appointed by the Minister of Finance.

But this trust has repeatedly, and rightly, acknowledged a need to communicate well with the public; rhetoric that sits badly with the flat refusal of chairwoman Margot Hishon to provide any sort of explanation whatsoever, other than to acknowledge last month, that that ‘‘we are in the middle of a legal process’’.

Echoing silence invites questions about whether the trustees wanted to smooth the way for some pretty substantive changes in the way CTOS operates. If not then what? Prendergast has been its chief executive for nearly two decades and when he says he’s leaving the trust in good shape, it’s not easy to disagree. His was a key role in an organisation that annually distributes millions of dollars throughout Southland, nearly $5.4 million last year, and it also recently established a $1 million Innovation Fund for non-profit organisations. Its return on investments was 5.9 per cent and at March 31 and its net assets $208 million, a $7 million increase on the year before. Under Prendergast the trust’s operating costs reduced for each of the past four years. Last year marked its lowest operating costs in 12 years.

For his part, Prendergast says he has not been provided the reasons that they asked him to resign. Such a statement, standing uncontradicted, can only fan the sense of public unease.

Meanwhile, we are still faced with the city council’s silence about Ludlow’s exit. Mayor Tim Shadbolt’s explanation for the lack of answer is that though he was willing to explain, his hand was stayed because of the potential for this giving rise to defamation action resulting from Ludlow.

So then, the mayor and councillors acted from reasons sound enough to justify their, let’s face it, brutal decision . . . but not sufficiently so that it prevents them, on legal advice, from huddling all the more closely when defamation is mentioned? Hardly reassuring.