JAMES BEST’S ‘OPEN LETTER TO RESIDENTS’—A RATEPAYER RESPONDS

 

By now everybody in York will have read former Commissioner James Best’s ‘open letter to residents’.  I have done so with a sense of wonderment that anyone is able to pack so many lies and distortions of the truth into such a tiny space.  Like Dr Who’s telephone box, it seems to defy the laws of physics.

In its squalid way, the letter is a masterpiece of disingenuous writing.  Sorry to spoil your handiwork, Mr. Best, but I can’t let it pass without comment. 

Why ‘an open letter’?

An open letter is addressed to one person, group or legal entity but made public in a newspaper, journal, magazine or blog instead of, or as well as, being sent directly to the addressee. 

A good example of an open letter is the one Jane Ferro and I wrote to Minister Simpson asking him to intervene to prevent the Shire’s proposed purchase of the Old Convent School. 

James Best’s letter is better described as a ‘circular’ letter.  It should have begun with the salutation ‘Dear Resident’ and been printed on bovine toilet tissue for ease of reference and filing.

Is it true as he says that ‘the Shire has been cleared of every allegation’? 

No, it most certainly isn’t.

Most, if not all, of the ‘allegations of incompetence, misconduct and even corruption’ Mr. Best alludes to have never been satisfactorily investigated by any properly constituted investigative agency—so how can the Shire have been cleared of them?

If what Mr. Best asserts is true (no sniggering at the back there, please) let the Shire publish online, or otherwise make available for scrutiny, the reports of every such investigation, suitably redacted as required to protect the identities of complainants and of Shire employees cleared of wrongdoing.

To be credible, any such report must, at minimum, tell us:

(a) Who carried out the investigation, and what qualified them to do so;

(b) What issues and complaints were investigated;

(c)  What evidence was gathered, and how;

(d) What interviews were conducted, with whom, and with what results; and

(e) What conclusions or ‘findings’ the investigator(s) drew from the evidence, and for what reasons.

Professional investigative reports may also make recommendations designed to put an end to the kinds of misconduct covered by the investigation.

Does the Shire have any reports of that calibre arising from investigations into specific allegations of misconduct concerning councillors or employees?   If not, there’s no reason at all to believe its assurances that nothing bad happened and everything in the garden is and was always a prospect of delight.

The ‘Probity Audit’

If Mr. Best has in mind the Department of Local Government’s 29-page report of its probity audit, he is misrepresenting its contents. While it exonerates our elected councillors from any wrongdoing, it has a good deal to say, if not about misconduct, then about ignorance and incompetence on the part of ‘key’ (i.e. senior) Shire staff. 

It avoids comment on so-called ‘historical issues’ such as those canvassed in the Fitz Gerald report, which have never been properly investigated by anyone and which Mr. Best and the Department have gone out of their way to bury as deep as the spade will go.

Meanwhile, I remind Mr Best of allegations made by me some time ago concerning instances of patronage and falsification of a public document.  In the first case I referred to, and in the second I published, evidence of wrongdoing by a senior officer of the Shire. 

I have other evidence of wrongdoing by the same senior officer that I am saving up for a rainy day.

As well, I remind the Shire of evidence posted on the other blog and in windows on Avon Terrace relating to the alleged misuse of a corporate credit card.  There’s a great deal more where that came from.  Who can say where that may lead?

The good, the bad, and the very very ugly

Most people who serve the Shire as elected representatives or employees are good people who do a good job.  On the other hand, some councillors and senior employees over the years have not been good people, have not done a good job and have hurt some residents badly.

Acting CEO Simpson is a major part of the Shire’s problem at present.  He does not seem to be doing a good job.  The fact that he has ‘done everything [Best] asked of him’—including his role in the proposed purchase of the Old Convent School—of itself raises serious misgivings about his conduct in office.  The influence his status gives him over staff makes him a dangerous threat to any hope of reform.  He should resign at once or be fired.

‘Allegations of serious wrongdoing should not be made lightly’, says Mr. Best.   He tells us he has been ‘privy’ to such allegations, which I take to mean that is where he has tried to dispose of them. 

I assure him they are not made lightly.  They are made in the hope, increasingly forlorn, that wrongdoing for which there is evidence will be seriously investigated and the guilty deprived of position and power.   The passage of time is irrelevant. 

Individuals who have abused their authority and damaged the interests of residents must be held to account.  Mr. Best himself, having done his best to send us broke, may now be regarded as one such person. 

Minister Simpson, please take note.  If you have the slightest shred of political decency and courage, you will order a probity audit into what has happened in York during the past six months under the stewardship of James Best.   Do you have the ticker for that?

‘James Best is’—what, exactly?

Those residents of York who follow this blog—I like to believe that’s most of them—or were simply awake and about on the day certain words appeared on the Shire office wall will know that the words in question were not, as stated in Mr. Best’s letter, ‘James Best is a worker’, but the rather less complimentary ‘James Best is a wanker’.

That is obvious from the photograph appearing with my earlier post ‘York Community congratulates Commissioner Best on how well he has handled himself while in office’.

I have no idea who was responsible for writing those words on the wall.  I don’t approve of graffiti and damage to public buildings. 

However, I don’t think the word complained of was intended literally, i.e. to accuse Mr. Best of the sin of Onan (Genesis 38:9).  I think what the writer was trying to to do was draw attention to Mr. Best’s many shortcomings.

As for the ‘dark force’…Mr. Best reads too much Harry Potter.  Nobody knows who defaced the Shire office wall, but I have it on good authority that it wasn’t Lord Voldemort.  Sorry, Mr. Best, but the only person damaging ‘Brand York’ right now is you.

 

WTF is ‘Brand York’, anyway?

You may well ask.  I think most people living in a place like York would look askance at this kind of consumerist nonsense.  We see ourselves as a community, not a commodity. We may sell things, but we are not for sale.  We are not a ‘brand’.

How much? Are you kidding?

Mr. Best makes the astonishing and utterly misleading claim that ‘$807,824.00 [was] spent responding to formal inquiries and staff resignations’.  Grouping those two categories of expenditure together is part of his tedious campaign to shower blame on dissident residents for the blowout in Shire finances under his watch.

Nobody with anything more neurologically sophisticated than the most rudimentary nervous system will fall for that one.  Those categories are entirely distinct.  We are not responsible for staff resignations. Nor are we responsible for the cost of dealing with FOI applications.  Stop trying to pretend otherwise, Mr Best.

There should be absolutely no need for individuals to seek information via FOI about any aspect of local government activity. 

In particular, every detail relating to Shire expenditure of public money should be recorded online and made available for public inspection.  That includes details of staff appointments and remuneration. 

I believe some local governments (Claremont, for example) already do that.  Why not York?

Unfortunately, our Shire administration takes a different view.  Under Graeme Simpson, it prefers to operate in secrecy, as it did under Ray Hooper before him. 

There is no justification for secrecy in the administration of local government.  No activity of the York Shire Council carries any implication for national security or Australian diplomatic prestige.  So far as I know, the Shire is not assisting police in covert operations to root out the Mr. Bigs of the local drug trade.

If the Shire is not corrupt, it will have nothing to hide.  If it does have something to hide, it is more than likely corrupt, or at the very least concealing incompetence and maladministration on a significant scale. 

So where has the money gone?

Well, one problem has been that successive FOI coordinators, both senior officers of the Shire of York, have not understood relevant legislation and had no idea of how to apply it. The Acting CEO seems equally at sea.  His letters on FOI topics appear to be written by somebody else.

The upshot has been that FOI applications and problems connected with them have been farmed out at considerable cost to lawyers and an organisation called FOI Services to do those officers’ job for them—as if the officers concerned weren’t already paid more than enough for the qualifications they possess (or don't possess) and the work they do.

None of that expenditure was necessary.  When ratepayers and residents ask for information about Shire activity, that information should be provided without hesitation and in full.  

Lawyers aren’t the only unnecessary expense indulged in by Mr. Best as commissioner.  At some stage he decided to hire a pricey public relations company, i.e. a deception of spin doctors, to write a feeble column in the local rag ostensibly extolling the ‘wonderful’ and ‘amazing’ things going on in York, with the barely disguised hint that they are all happening thanks to him. 

To be honest, I suspect that the ‘open letter’ was composed not by Mr. Best, who as a graduate of Curtin University would probably have known how to spell ‘puerile’, but by one of his pet spin-doctors.

So, Mr. Best, precisely how much did your hired guns slug the Shire for services necessary only to protect some sensitive reputations—including yours?

Mr. Best indicates that part of the $807, 824 total was swallowed up by ‘staff resignations’.  What resignations were those, I wonder?  Who resigned, when, and why, and how much was each of the departing employees paid?  Does the amount given over to staff resignations include, as some people are suggesting, a hush-money payout to former CEO Ray Hooper over and above his contractual entitlements? 

You can bet your life that anybody wanting that information will have to apply for it through FOI. 

Oh God, not visioning again!

Mr. Best’s letter concludes with an appeal to readers to attend a forthcoming ‘community-visioning launch’. 

He hasn’t had much success so far in York with ‘community visioning', his snake-oil remedy for the shire’s social and economic ills.

If the ‘visioning process’ is managed and led by Shire President Reid, I shall be very happy to take part in any capacity asked of me.  I believe he could make it work.

But if it’s just another ‘showcase’ opportunity for Mr. Best to tell us how clever he is, and what amazing and wonderful things he has done for South Perth, Toodyay and Fremantle, I think I’ll stay at home.  I would recommend that others do the same.

James Plumridge

CULTURAL NOTE:  Onan was the second son of Judah.  His elder brother, Er, was slain by God for some unspecified wickedness, whereupon Judah ordered Onan to marry Er's wife and make her pregnant in accordance with ancient Jewish law.  Onan wasn't happy with this, so when consummating the marriage he 'spilled his seed on the ground', which means that he engaged in coitus interruptus rather than the activity later ascribed to him.  God slew him, too. It's amazing what you can pick up in Sunday school.

The American wit Dorothy Parker named her pet budgie Onan.  Can you guess why? (Sorry, no prizes).

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