Onkaparinga Council paid CEO Mark Dowd’s $6800 Kooyonga Golf Club fee and kept it secret
ADELAIDE’S largest council secretly paid almost $7000 for its chief executive’s golf club membership at a prestigious course far from the region he serves.
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ADELAIDE’S largest council secretly paid almost $7000 for its chief executive’s golf club membership at a prestigious course far from the region he serves.
State Ombudsman Wayne Lines has criticised Onkaparinga Council’s decision to pay $6818.18 for CEO Mark Dowd’s one-off “establishment fee” for membership at Kooyonga Golf Club, at Lockleys, as well as its subsequent decision to hide it from ratepayers.
Mr Dowd, who has an annual salary package of $328,000, asked the council to cover the fee on the basis it was for council business, he would sometimes take staff to play golf as a “thank you” or “incentive”, and that he would also play with government executives or potential investors.
Mr Lines last week approved the part-release of his findings, which showed there had been no “maladministration’’ but the council was wrong to cover up the payment and to approve it in the first place.
Mr Dowd first wrote to Onkaparinga Lord Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg in 2014 to propose the council pay for his then $6200 establishment fee.
“I am a new member of Kooyonga golf club and I use this membership predominantly on Sundays where in addition to my own relaxation I sometimes take staff out for a round of golf as incentives or as a thank you, government executives and potential investors, including Chinese,’’ his email request stated.
The payment was approved in 2015, when the council voted to exclude members of the public from debate about whether to approve it.
Mr Dowd played no part in the council meeting to decide the repayment nor to keep the payment secret.
Mr Lines investigated a complaint by Councillor Martin Bray, who objected after he found the $6818 had not been declared on a public register which included the CEO’s salary.
The payment was made on February 17, 2015 but has taken almost two years to be brought to public attention because of the secrecy of the Onkaparinga Council.
The Ombudsman rejected the council’s deal to reimburse the $6818.18, formally finding last week that:
GOLF clubs are not organisations which relate to the CEO’s profession;
MEMBERSHIP of a golf club is not part of the CEO’s duties, nor is playing golf;
ONE hundred per cent of the joining fee was not a reasonable reimbursement even if it was part of his duties.
The resident who first raised the alarm that the payment was not part of the CEO’s salary register, former chair of the Onkaparinga Residents Association John Houlahan, said when he investigated why Mr Dowd had been granted a salary package increase of $46,000 in 2014, there was no mention of golf membership fees.
“It is out of control, the council is squandering money left right and centre, and someone has to hold the council to account,’’ he said.
Neither Mr Dowd or Ms Rosenberg responded to requests for comment last night.
The Ombudsman made no criticism of Mr Dowd, but said he already received “significant remuneration” for his job.
“A council CEO should be approachable and accessible to all members of the community and (those) who attend a private golf club should not be provided additional access to the CEO at a cost to all ratepayers,” he said.
Onkaparinga Council Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg represented the council’s views to the Ombudsman, stating that the purpose of the payment was not so that the CEO could play golf but instead do council business, and rejected a provisional finding that the council had committed maladministration by the reimbursement.
The council also argued:
IT was “more than likely” that Mr Dowd would be approached at the club by members of the public who wanted to talk about council business;
THERE was no Ombudsman power to investigate the issue;
MR Dowd frequently did not claim for other expenses he was allowed, such as fuel;
ADDITIONAL annual membership fees were paid by Mr Dowd at his own expense.
The council also argued Mr Dowd’s membership would allow it to use the facilities.
“The council thereby had access, through the CEO, to the use of the facility for its guests at nominal fees which would otherwise have been extremely expensive,” it said.
Ms Rosenberg is also President of the Local Government Association of South Australia and Mr Dowd is on its board as an “observer”.
The Ombudsman rejected the most serious suggestion that maladministration had resulted from the council decision, based on the dictionary definition because there had been no pattern of like behaviour.
Mr Bray said in debating whether to keep the payment secret, councillors had been misled by the council administration.
“In hindsight I find the wording in the agenda for the council meeting misleading and I believe it is a valid hypothesis that the wording is possibly disingenuous given that using the term “expenses reimbursement” would have been so simple and obvious,’’ he told the Ombudsman.
The Ombudsman found that it was wrong for the council to decide to consider the matter in secret on the basis that the payment was part of Mr Dowd’s personal affairs.
He rejected this because the council had argued that the payment was made as part of his official duties.
“If the council truly was of the opinion that the golf club membership was a ‘professional organisation subscription’ that was ‘reasonably consistent with his duties’, then the payment was a reimbursement for official duties and did not concern the CEO’s personal affairs at all,’’ he states.
Kooyonga Golf Club is a private golf club located in Lockleys, which is 30km from the southern suburbs council, the biggest by population in Adelaide.
Mr Dowd is a golf enthusiast who has posted on social media pictures of a private trip to the world famous courses at Augusta in the United States.
He is the second highest paid council CEO in South Australia and before taking up the Onkaparinga job in 2011 was the state general manager of Optus Business.