Gore District Council CEO performance committee stoush set to get messy
Beyond Justin Marshall and a large trout statue, it’s not often that most New Zealanders need to think about Gore. But all that has changed since the 2022 Gore District Council election following months of stories detailing various rumours, spats, and the seemingly complete breakdown in the key relationship with Gore’s new Mayor Ben Bell and its experienced Chief Executive Stephen Parry.
Radio New Zealand reports that the growing disquiet at Gore District Council was finally brought to a head at the Tuesday 18 April Council meeting, with a notice of motion to establish an independent review into what’s happening at the council, and the formalising of actions previously agreed to around appointing a councillor to be a go-between for the Mayor and the Chief Executive, as well as removing the Mayor from the Chief Executive Performance Committee.
The problem, as Mayor Bell pointed out, is that under Section 41A(5) of the Local Government Act, the Mayor is automatically a member of all council committees. So the question is whether the Council then has the power to remove the Mayor from a committee that the Local Government Act says he’s automatically a member of.
Gore District Council seems to believe they can. I’m guessing that it’s likely they’re basing their belief on their ability on the preceding section of the Act - 41(A)(4)(b), where the council could effectively dissolve then reconstitute the relevant committee as a subcommittee which they presumably don’t believe the Mayor would be a member of.
Mayor Bell’s argument would likely be that 41A(5) overrides that, and I suspect that if the Council does press ahead, this may well end in a judicial review.
That in itself isn’t unusual. Here in Kāpiti, back when our past Mayor K Gurunathan was a councillor, he took a judicial review against Kāpiti Coast District Council over the fact there was a Chief Executive Performance Subcommittee that he had been excluded from. Unfortunately for the life of my I can’t find what the outcome of that was, though going forward it eventually reverted to being a committee of the whole.
Beyond the debate over whether or not Gore District Council can remove the Mayor as a member of that committee or how they might attempt to, there’s broader issues at play. The first is that the governing body - that is the collective of elected members - employ one person and one person only - the Chief Executive. This means that all the legal responsibilities of being a good employer of the Chief Executive fall on the elected members, regardless of whether they’re a part of a performance committee.
The other issue is one that may well effectively render Mayor Bell unable to participate in the committee even if he remained a part of it. That is the question of pre-determination. This normally has greater implications in the quasi-judicial proceedings councils often undertake, but it could be argued that the alleged breakdown in the relationship between the Mayor and Chief Executive would mean that Mayor Bell had effectively predetermined his position on the Chief Executive’s performance and would need to recuse himself from the proceedings anyway.
So even winning the battle for remaining a member of that committee may end up being for nothing given the possible legal minefield that would await the Mayor for continuing to participate in meetings of the committee anyway.
