By Dean Hurlston - Ratepayers Victoria, Inc.

For too long, Council executives have known one thing – they are the constant in local government.

Combined with the CEO, Council Executive and Director level staff are our “de-facto” local government.

Unelected and highly paid, with mandates as broad as the municipality, the truth is, in Local Councils these are the implementers of all things, good, bad, or just plain bizarre.

You see in Local Government much of the “work” in forming policy, strategic frameworks, determining facts, evidence, and eventual recommended actions (insert spending), is in the hands of the mighty, elite Council CEO and Executive staff.

Local Government has income of around $12 Billion in Victoria and about 55,000 staff. These executive staff are often earning salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, some up to $700K a year! For most, performance metrics are non-existent, soft, or completely commercially out of step with that level of salary in the real world.

These are the staff who can oversee cost blowouts in the millions regularly and know that there is little consequence for their poor management decisions. Rarely fired, usually shuffled to another Council, but never mind, ratepayers will foot the bill, always.

What Council CEOs and Executives have long known – is that it is they, who control the whim of Council. Councillors merely come and go every 4 years. Most senior Council officers and executives know that Councillors for the most part have busy lives outside the Council chamber, and they often play this to their own self-indulgent advantage.

Listen to most Council meetings and you would think that a Councillor asking hard questions of a highly paid Council Executive or CEO is a cultural faux pas. It’s simply not the norm and the Executive often, want advance notice, no hard on the spot questions and over the top thank you's for simply doing their jobs. It is a well-constructed and managed film set indeed.

There are even strong codes of conduct and mutual respect charters to manage those pesky Councillors and residents in every interaction with Council staff.

IBAC, The Victorian Auditor General and The Ombudsman have made it crystal clear that the position of influence in Council senior staff have is not being adequately addressed. It is in the executive and decision-making roles that outside influence, potential corruption and perhaps foreign influence is so readily deployed and effective. If you want something everyone knows you get in good with Council officers and executives.

Victorians elect Councillors every 4 years, but the most part, those Councillors are being stage managed, fed information designed to garner Council Officers recommendations and often exhaust them with over information. Our democracy is failing the first test, the test of over controlling administration and bureaucracy.

Make no mistake, this is a deliberate tactic by most Council staff, too much information, not enough time and aloof on the granular detail and evidence.

It’s no wonder so many Councillors full of ideas and reform end up worn out, jaded, and exhausted.

It’s time these public fat cats were scrutinised like the federal senate committee and oversight hearings.

It’s time the spotlight on performance was made public for all to see. I mean how can Council staff earning more than the Premier and State MP’s get away with average or poor performance?

Much of the err and public outcry of “Council has gone mad” originates from the poor, sloppy and rhetoric-based recommendations coming before our elected Councillors.

“Stuff” that is written, designed, and peddled by Council executives who remain largely immune and insulated from the communities they should be serving.

Executives that are holed up in their ivory towers, too busy “stage managing” the image of Council and their own agendas, to see that their communities are more frustrated than ever with them.

A community that feels taken for granted, unheard and often “told” by an out of touch and inward focused executive, spending millions on hired consultants and strategic business transformation projects to tell them what the people think in the suburbs.

The truth is, they could actually pick up the phone or venture out into the real world and talk to people. They won’t because they don’t know how to. It seems they have succumbed to a woke culture where the residents are their new enemy.

An executive who no longer treat the job as an absolute privilege and are more interested in demanding respect than giving it.

Something has got to give, and it shouldn’t be ratepayers and residents.