Ethics committee set up
Waikato District Council will move complaints between councillors inhouse, after a couple of high-profile spats cost ratepayers thousands.
At a recent meeting, council agreed to establish a new ethics committee to review code of conduct complaints.
Previously, all complaints were immediately referred to independent investigators to determine their seriousness.
Now, the ethics committee – chaired by Mayor Allan Sanson and made up of councillors Eugene Patterson, Janet Gibb and Noel Smith – will review complaints and decide whether the breach requires an independent investigator.
Waikato District ratepayers have forked out over councillor tensions before.
In 2015, ratepayers funded a $10,000 investigation when councillor Noel Smith complained Mayor Allan Sanson used the expletive ‘‘w ..... ’’ at a council meeting.
Around $9707 of ratepayer costs were also used resolving councillor Smith’s own comments that another colleague ‘‘F... off’’, although the complaint was dropped.
In 2018, $9000 was spent investigating councillor Frank McInally’s comments to councillor Jan Sedgwick that she should ‘‘get on her broomstick’’ and that she ‘‘would keep’’ when she asked him to be quiet.
In both 2015 and 2018, Tompkins Wake lawyer Mark Hammond was hired to investigate the complaints, interviewing councillors and writing reports.
Waikato District Mayor Allan Sanson said councillors are ‘‘trying to sort out issues between ourselves’’.
Though a council report states the new ethics committee will increase ‘‘rigour and transparency’’ in the process, Sanson admitted the ethics committee will meet behind closed doors.
He said the move was partly to contain controversy after recent tensions became high profile.
‘‘We’ve got to remember that councillors have families, they don’t need to be embarrassed by the media in these situations.
‘‘Nobody wants to be the complainant and nobody wants to be the person complained about.
‘‘So, yeah, it is a bit of damage control.’’
But when asked whether ratepayers should know whether councillors are playing up, Sanson said misbehaviour would be obvious.
‘‘If councillors are behaving badly then people will have already picked that up.’’
Sanson said ‘‘he did not know’’ what level of complaint would require an independent investigator, but a statement would have to be offensive enough that no mediation could solve it.
‘‘Obviously if there’s any sort of physical issue that would be a policing issue.’’
Ultimately, there’s not much council can do if a councillor acts inappropriately, other than removing them as chairs of a committee, Sanson said.
Sedgwick said she did not believe the change to procedure was prompted by the cost of the previous investigations.
‘‘I don’t think that was an overall driver, in this case a policy hadn’t been updated in some time and was a normal thing to do.’’
Sedgwick, who described McInally’s comments in the official report as ‘‘bullying, self-important and vicious’’ did not have a problem with the complaints process when she was going through it.
‘‘You are engaged in making sure everything you are saying is correct, so I don’t think you spend time asking what the process is.’’
But she felt appointing an ethics committee to assess complaints would make the process more efficient.
‘‘To me it seems like a logical, straightforward step by no means designed to obfuscate.’’
‘‘Nobody wants to be the complainant and nobody wants to be the person complained about’’. Waikato District Mayor Allan Sanson