Whangārei District councillor Jayne Golightly. Photo / Susan Botting
Whangārei District councillors have contemplated whether one of their own has breached the council’s elected member code of conduct.
Councillor Jayne Golightly was the focus of a code of conduct complaint hearing at Whangārei District Council (WDC)’s Forum North council chambers, attended by the full council.
The outcome of the hearing is expected to be released on Friday.
It started out as a public hearing. However, Cr Gavin Benney successfully initiated, in a majority rather than unanimous council vote, the council moving the meeting into public excluded mode.
Mayor Vince Cocurullo presided over the hearing.
In September 2020, Cocurullo was found guilty by his fellow councillors of breaching the same code by releasing details of a confidential council meeting agenda.
Cocurullo denied the allegations, which were made against him whilst still a councillor, by previous Whangārei Mayor Sheryl Mai.
Upon closing today’s meeting, Cocurullo said council would provide a report after the hearing, but did not provide a timeframe.
WDC chief executive Simon Weston said a majority decision was required.
“If council finds there has been a breach of the code, there will then be a debate and vote about penalty,” Weston said.
There would be no further action, if councillors decided the code had not been breached.
Golightly sat with her lawyer Tony Savage. Her partner David Blackley was also present as her single support person.
Blackley and Savage are both former Whangārei mayoral candidates.
Today’s hearing came after WDC, on November 27 last year, received a complaint from community member Terry Burkhardt, alleging Golightly had potentially breached the council’s elected member code of conduct.
This came after Golightly spoke to radio host Sean Plunket on his internet radio show The Platform, regarding litigation between WDC and Whangārei contractor Jimmy Daisley.
Daisley asked the High Court in Whangārei to sell WDC’s Forum North head offices after the council missed a critical deadline for paying some of the court-ordered $6 million he was owed.
The 2.4ha site in question includes Forum North council offices and theatre and the city library.
Council records show these buildings and land have a $20 million value.
On February 13 this year, digger driver Daisley said he and WDC signed an agreement he would be paid some more of the $6 million owed to him by the council. He won judgement against WDC over a wrongly-filed resource consent the council used to pursue him over his quarry, leading to an epic 18-year fight for justice.
Burkhardt alleged Golightly breached council confidentiality by including information from confidential council meeting discussions in her on-air Sean Plunket interview.
WDC-appointed independent investigator, Auckland-based barrister James Chrichton, concluded the councillor’s code of conduct breach was material.
Chrichton found the central allegation made against Golightly by Burkhardt was substantiated, on the balance of probabilities.
Chrichton said Golightly’s code breach was at the lower end of the scale.
He said Golightly had breached the code on a single occasion by disclosing which way she voted on the WDC appeal against the Whangārei High Court ruling the council had to pay Daisley money.
That was because the information about the way councillors voted on the appeal should have remained confidential, as council discussions on this topic were in the public excluded session.
Burkhardt questioned in his complaint whether Golightly had been authorised to make comments about Daisley on behalf of the council, or whether she was speaking in her personal capacity and said that this had not been made clear.
Chrichton did not uphold that part of the complaint. He found Golightly did neither when speaking to Plunket, because what she did was no more or less than to tell the radio host how she had voted.
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