BOB HAWKINS

The mayor’s attitude towards those whose votes elect him (or try to get rid of him) became apparent last Wednesday (May 13) during “public question time” at the council’s monthly meeting.

COURTESY of Huon Valley Council mayor Robert Armstrong, ratepayers and residents of the municipality have been told they will have no say in — perhaps even knowledge of — the process the council will pursue in appointing a new general manager (See Guessing Games (1) — May 11, 2009).

The present GM is thought to be finishing up by early October, but still the ratepayers and residents of the valley don’t really know because no one has officially informed us. So it’s still a guessing game.

The mayor’s attitude towards those whose votes elect him (or try to get rid of him) became apparent last Wednesday (May 13) during “public question time” at the council’s monthly meeting.

A ratepayer, after respectfully informing councillors of his name and address (as required under PQT rules), asked: “In view of council’s commitment to transparency, if it’s true that our present municipal manager is to resign when his contract lapses, are the mechanics of finding a replacement to be open for public scrutiny prior to the recruitment process being embarked upon?”

The mayor’s reply: the process will not be open to public scrutiny; the position will be advertised; and the process will be determined by the nine councillors in line with the local government laws.

Those in the public gallery, from this response, could reasonably infer that the mayor has no intention of allowing the public to be privy to any information that may or may not help them feel that the selection process is likely to result in the best applicant being chosen; or that the process will be fair and in the spirit of the rules. (How can we know a process is fair if we don’t know what it is?)

A QUESTION from another concerned ratepayer related to the almost certain loss of huge sums of council money. Not surprisingly, this is an issue that never gets a mention in the regular feature in the Huon Valley News newspaper that comprises mostly council PR releases, published verbatim and unquestioned.

(The HVN feature is subtitled “keeping you informed” — which is the last thing it does when it comes to information about council affairs that really matter: issues such as choosing a new GM and announcing the imminent departure of the present one; investment losses; economically or environmentally unviable projects, such as pumping inferior water over Balfes Hill into Cygnet rather than taking advantage of a purer and reliable supply for the town from nearby Grey Mountain; talking about its non-existent strategic plan; announcing that it would destroy, at dawn, Franklin’s football clubrooms . . .)

Back to the $4 million. The concerned ratepayer asked: “This question relates to the collateral debt obligation (CDO) investments made by Huon Valley Council in 2006. Can you tell me, please, whether there have been any market, structural or value changes made to these investments since those noted in the last annual accounts that may give rise to the need for a further book value revaluation?”

The questioner was referring to what looks seriously like the council’s loss of about a third of its total cash investment portfolio.

The finance manager seemed ready for this one. Adroitly, he dodged the question by saying the investments would be reflected in the accounts to June 30, 2009 — which are not normally available until the annual report is released in November.

By that time, up to five of the present councillors could be off council (retired or voted out in the October elections). And even the mayor, whose position as a councillor is safe for another couple of years, might no longer be in the top job.

Many feel there is little chance of seeing any of the $4 million again, especially in light of the fact that one of the companies in whose hands it was entrusted was investment bank Lehman Brothers, now defunct.

THE meeting droned on, interspersed by a few intriguing moments. Then we in the public gallery were thanked for our attendance and told to leave so that the final agenda item — “21. Process for the Appointment of General Manager” — could be dealt with in closed (read secret) council. (What on earth needs to be secret about deliberations on how a new general manager is to be selected?)

As I walked out into the chill night air, I mused that cynics might be thinking that a majority of councillors might already believe they know who will be the next GM.

Well, as the cliché says, only time will tell . . .

And another thought struck me. Why all the haste to appoint a new general manager? The council does, after all, have a deputy general manager, who was appointed in the past couple of years by the present general manager without reference (as he is entitled to do) to councillors. The deputy could hold the fort, as acting GM, until the council line-up after the October elections gets settled enough to choose the person to manage the council for the next five years.

MEANWHILE, back to the open meeting, where everything was on the table for all to see — well, at least for the councillors and seven managers.

The public, however, just had to sit there and try to make sense of a bare-bones agenda (one sheet of paper) on which, for example, items read like this: “19. Infrastructure services / water & sewer reports presented by the manager infrastructure services/ manager water and sewer.”

Although such reports are not actually read out at meetings, if we had all done our homework and trawled the council’s higgledy-piggledy, user-unfriendly website, we might perhaps have tracked down transcripts of those reports.

But most of us don’t have that much time. So it would be nice if council made at least a couple of full copies of council papers — well, at least those judged by the GM to be suitable to be seen by the public.

But not much chance of that. Why would this secretive council risk any member of the public being so well informed as to spot a nuance in councillors’ largely sotto voce observations in open meetings?

God forbid, we might even start to get an idea of what is going on!

A NOTE on “public question time”. Council has been very cagey about the way it stage-manages this sensitive item. By putting it near the start of the agenda, after “confirmation of minutes”, the meeting is no more than a minute or so old and would-be questioners have barely had time enough to warm their seats, let alone get composed enough to be able to confidently present their question to a mayor who frequently demands “What is the question” when anyone tries to explain why indeed they even have the temerity to ask a question.

There’s a bit of paper on each public gallery chair that lists the PQT rules, but not before we have been assured that question time is allowed “in an effort to increase the transparency and accountability of Council operations and decisions”. That line alone is cause enough to evoke wry smiles from seasoned council watchers.

One of the rules is that no question can be asked that “relates to business on the agenda for tonight’s meeting”. That caused a bit of mirth in the public gallery last Wednesday when the mayor appeared to fail to spot a link between the question about the general manager and item 21.

He could have said, therefore, that the question would not be answered. Instead, he chose to say that no outsider would be allowed to know about the GM selection process.

The PQT rules, however, do extend to the public one privilege that is not available to councillors: “as a resident, you are encouraged to speak to Council Officers . . . at any time on matters which may be of concern and this may be a more immediate way of gaining the relevant information which you require”.

NOW to agenda item “12. Urgent Matters”. Yes, said the GM, there was one urgent matter. Before anyone could say, “This council’s a joke”, the matter had been dealt with. “Those for, those against . . .” It seemed that, despite it being an open council meeting, we were not going to be told what the urgent matter was, or even what the wording was of the motion that was being voted on.

We’ll probably never know, even after we get to see the minutes of the meeting. Huon Valley Council minutes are very difficult to make sense of, mainly because of the lack of context.

So, another council meeting, another guessing game.

What to do? I suppose someone could slap a “freedom of information” request on council to get at the documents that reveal how it intends to select the next GM.

Now that’s an idea! But what’s the point? Ever since “freedom of information” came into vogue a couple of decades back, every level of government — federal, state and local — has been voting for “freedom from information” rules.

Now I hear the cry “Right to know” coming from government. They say they are going to strengthen the public’s right to know. Fat chance we’ve got.

The only right about access to information that I am acutely aware of is the dubious one that politicians have conferred upon us: we are carefully protected (by the perversity of legal spin) from knowing anything if it is something they (the politicians and their managers) don’t want us to know.

Maybe there’s a Rumsfeld or two among you who can glean the gist of what I’m saying.

For me, it means that, as fast as we knock down the barriers that hide bad government from public view, new ones will be erected.

There’s no winning, but to stop trying would mean abandoning our desire for transparency — the essence of democracy.