WDC sacking under review

Three Whangarei District Council members and an independent chairman will look into the sacking of the council chief executive officer's assistant.

CEO Mark Simpson sacked the assistant, Jan Walters, for signing the nomination form for a mayoral candidate in the local body elections next month.

The councillors in the review committee met behind closed doors yesterday to discuss how to deal with the situation that acting Whangarei Mayor Phil Halse said was detracting from the election campaign.

Mr Simpson will continue working during the review. Mr Halse would not say if the committee had discussed standing the CEO down until the findings were released.

Mrs Walters, the personal assistant to Mr Simpson and Whangarei Mayor Maurice Cutforth, was sacked for signing the mayoral nomination form of former mayor Stan Semenoff. She is believed to be keen to challenge the dismissal.

The situation is clouded by the fact Mr Simpson's executive assistant Ford Watson helped mayoral candidate Warwick Syers with advice on some of his election statements. Mr Syers said Mr Watson had provided "wordsmithing" in his own time and had permission to do so from Mr Simpson.

After meeting for more than an hour Mr Halse said a committee of three councillors, including himself, but excluding any of the four councillors running for mayor - Mr Syers, Shelley Deeming, Greg Martin and Crichton Christie - had been appointed as a review committee to look into the employment matters raised and report to the full council.

Mr Halse said a suitably qualified independent person with a background in employment law would chair the committee, which would start work once that person was appointed. That could be as early as today and would be given urgency with a result "hopefully" released before the October 12 election.

The CEO was responsible for all council employment matters and as such it was inappropriate for individual councillors and the council as a whole to comment on them.

The review committee would look into the circumstances of Mrs Walters' sacking and Mr Watson's work for Mr Syers.

In June the council set election protocols for its employees saying they should remain politically neutral in their dealings with elected members and the public during the campaign.