Council CEO salaries | LGA Constitution Ancillary Documents | 2017-18 Annual Report | ICAC Annual Report No Images? Click here Vol 3: Issue 40 - Monday 22 October 2018 It has been an honour to serve as your President for the past four months. This Friday at our AGM I will hand over to new President – Tumby Bay Mayor Sam Telfer – who will work with a new Board to continue to represent, and advocate for councils over the coming two year period. Please click here for a copy of Friday’s special edition announcing the members elected to SAROC and GAROC. As the outgoing President, I want to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to all of you who are stepping down from your role as Councillor, Chairperson, Mayor or Lord Mayor in the next month. I hope you've found your experience in local government extremely productive and rewarding - I certainly have. I wish you all the very best in your future endeavours and I'm sure your local government experience will continue to benefit many. To my local government colleagues contesting the current election, I wish you all the very best and also sincerely thank you for your ongoing commitment and willingness to serve our diverse communities. Finally, I would like to thank and acknowledge the LGA Board and Executive members I've served with, as well as LGA CEO Matt Pinnegar and the rest of the Secretariat. LGA President Sue Clearihan Council CEO salariesLast Thursday The Advertiser ran a story comparing metro council CEO salaries to the remuneration received by State Ministers (subscriber link). This is not a new story – council CEO salaries have been reported on and compared to politicians for a number of years. A better comparison is to state and federal government CEOs, who are – on average – paid significantly more than those in local government (subscriber link). South Australian council CEOs are also paid less on average than in any other mainland state, and this is also true for their senior staff. Local government CEOs administer multi-million dollar budgets, and are responsible for hundreds of employees and billions of dollars in assets, and are paid the market rate for their expertise and contributions to communities. CEOs of smaller and regional councils have less staff, less resources and are often ‘hands on’ in many specialist areas across the councils they administer. LGA Constitution Ancillary DocumentsOne of the items on the agenda for this week’s AGM is a recommendation to endorse the Ancillary Documents that support our new LGA Constitution. We have produced a series of videos that provide an overview of these six Ancillary Documents, and the changes that have been made based on member feedback over the past six months. I would encourage you to take a few minutes ahead of Friday’s meeting to watch these videos and familiarise yourself with what has been proposed. If you have any questions or concerns about any of the draft documents, please let us know and we will be happy to discuss with you. 2017-18 LGA Annual ReportThe LGA’s 2017-18 Annual Report was adopted by the LGA’s Executive Committee last Thursday. Working together with members and our partners in government, the LGA has delivered some excellent outcomes over the past 12 months, including:
These achievements and others are outlined in this year’s Annual Report, which you can download from our website. A printed copy of this report will be available for each council at our AGM this Friday. ICAC Annual ReportICAC’s 2017-18 Annual Report was tabled in Parliament last week. In his report the Commissioner recommended that local government should have a register that will identify all persons who have been dismissed for misconduct or other inappropriate conduct from positions in public administration, or have resigned their position during the course of an investigation into a conduct matter. This recommendation has not yet been discussed with the LGA. The report outlines that 415 complaints were lodged by members of the public in 2017/8. 21.8% of these related to local government, compared to 48.7% for state government. A further 706 reports were lodged by agencies and public officers, with 15.6% of these coming from councils. No action was taken on 53% of the complaints and reports lodged. Across the year 48 corruption investigations were undertaken, and 50 matters were referred to the Ombudsman. Inappropriate conduct and conflict of interest matters were the primary issues referred to the Ombudsman for further review. Consistent with the previous year, the majority of complaints and reports received related to inappropriate conduct, bullying and harassment, and failure to comply with policies/procedures. Last week I wrote to the Minister for Local Government and the Attorney General seeking urgent discussions on strengthening the Code of Conduct and other reforms to more effectively deal with issues of bullying and harassment. I’m pleased to say that the Government has agreed to meet with us on this issue, and I’m sure that the incoming LGA President will provide updates on future discussions. For further information or to submit |