Miles Kemp: Sadly for ratepayers, the (council) golf payment is not an isolated incident, but a regular one
DESPITE all the prudence we are told councils engage in every day, along comes another council deal too good to refuse.
TIMES are tough, or so we are told. Councils are said to be squeezing every dollar out of the deals they do on behalf of ratepayers.
They reject out of hand suggestions from the business community that some of the plethora of 68 councils across the state should volunteer to be merged to try and save some money.
Nonsense they say, defending councils like Walkerville — seven suburban blocks wide — which pedestrians can traverse in 10 minutes yet it pays for a duplicate set of staff, executives, town hall, councillors and hangers-on when there’s another council just down the road.
Then there are the millions in ratepayer dollars spent on running the Local Government Association lobby group to cry poor and defend the spending. It is a highly organised, privately run self-interest group set up under the Local Government Act which spends a great deal of time and money fending off criticism of the sector, or undermining of its immense powers.
So it defends rates being increased at well above inflation. The LGA even paid for the sector to have its own inflation rate, well above CPI, on which to base increases in revenue and spending.
Suggestions that spending and revenue be curtailed — like the State Opposition’s idea of a rate cap — are derided and met with a threat from the LGA to campaign against the party that dares.
Influence is the key to the failure of state governments to take on the power of the LGA. Influence like that faced by Marion Council when it voted not to give the LGA $98,000 of ratepayers money to be a member any more. It came under immense pressure to vote itself back into the fold.
Now, despite all the prudence we are told councils engage in every day, along comes another council deal too good to refuse.
Onkaparinga chief executive Mark Dowd asked the council to refund his golf “establishment” fee of $6800 at the exclusive Kooyonga Golf Club, an almost 30km drive from his office.
Down the road the council runs the Willunga course, where Mr Dowd could have rubbed shoulders with around 130 people when The Advertiser visited yesterday. That would have been good value for ratepayers’ money, players said yesterday, when I spoke to them.
The fact is, while nobody above them has the power or will to take on the local government sector — Onkaparinga Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg is president of the LGA and Mr Dowd sits on the board as an observer — this sort of seemingly unjustifiable spending is likely to continue.
Sadly for ratepayers, the golf payment is not an isolated incident, but a regular one.
The Advertiser recently revealed Adelaide City Council staff can claim $250 a night anywhere in Australia under a travel allowance more generous than that offered to state government or tax office workers. They also receive a $115 daily meal allowance.
Mr Dowd was given a $36,000 salary package rise in 2015, taking his salary to $328,000.
The Playford council - which has Holden’s Elizabeth factory within its boundaries - used $120,000 of ratepayers’ money to buy a luxury Toyota four-wheel-drive for its chief executive, who is already the highest paid in Adelaide.
This is just the spending ratepayers actually find out about in this highly secretive system of government.
The Kooyonga deal wouldn’t come close to passing the pub test. It didn’t pass the Ombudsman’s test when courageous Onkaparinga councillor Martin Bray blew the whistle.
The Ombudsman found Mr Dowd had done nothing wrong, but the council shouldn’t have made the payment and it shouldn’t have voted to keep the payment secret from ratepayers. The local government system of checks and balances in South Australia is broken.
Last year when I tried to write an article about a secret report into a sewage leak at Onkaparinga, my request for comment to the Onkaparinga Council was met with a demand to my boss that the newspaper turn up to court at 3pm that day to stop the publication.
It later transpired the council had budgeted $130,000 of ratepayers money to keep that report secret.
The Ombudsman last reviewed SA council secrecy in 2012 with a damning audit. Time to do another one.
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