Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Wellington Council's been caught keeping secrets from ratepayers again

Now, you would have thought that after all the publicity Wellington City Council has been getting - and the paid staff have been getting - for being caught doing things behind the backs of elected councillors, they probably wouldn’t do it again. And yet, here we are. They’ve been caught doing it again. The latest revelation is that they have decided to exempt themselves from a Government law brought in about three months ago. The law prevents employees who earn more than $200,000 from taking personal grievance cases against their bosses if they are fired. In other words, there will be no golden handshake if you’ve been sacked while earning that kind of money. But guess what? Wellington City Council bosses decided they weren’t going to follow that law and exempted 42 of their staff from it. That’s quite unbelievable, because the law is intended to make it easier for employers to remove incompetent managers who have been doing very little for years on end. And Wellington City Council knows it has a problem. A recent report suggests they may have a couple of hundred staff they need to get rid of. They have one of the highest staffing levels in the country when compared with other councils. As I say, they didn’t tell elected councillors they made this decision. However, a councillor found out, started asking questions and it turns out it was true. Technically, the council can argue it didn’t have to inform elected councillors -this is an employment decision they can make themselves. But even the mayor, Andrew Little, has said this should have gone to the council for signoff. It’s not a good look. And it’s becoming a bit of a running theme, hasn’t it? Not just in Wellington but around the country: unelected staff making decisions in secret that ratepayers probably wouldn’t be happy about if they knew. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.