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North Grampians - First Job to Sort Out a Sacking |
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Saturday, 21st January, 2006 The advertisement calls for a Chief Executive Officer "RESTORING GOVERNANCE TO COMMUNITY REPRESENTATIVES". The Northern Grampians Shire Council is offering a package around $160,000 a year for a Chief Executive to work with a new Council. There are wonderful words about "rebuild the community partnership by stressing consultation, strategic planning and delivery" but no mention of the extraordinary circumstances that led to the job being vacant. The first task of the new CEO, you see, will be to stort out the mess surrounding the sacking of the old CEO, Ms Gina Lyons, that saw Ms Lyons continuing to turn up for work at Shire Offices in Stawell and St Arnaud well after a newly elected North Grampians Council had voted to dismiss her. Ms Lyons refused to step aside gracefully. She argued that the dismissal was illegal because the Councillors were trying to interfere in what was essentially a management responsibility rather than one for elected members. Initially the Council gave no reasons for the dismissal but eventually councillor and former Mayor Brian Small blamed Ms Lyons' handling of a staff restructure for her termination. Cr Small told a Council meeting the former chief executive appointed a consultant who cost more than $70,000, but the restructure of staff that resulted still did not meet requirements.Ms Lyons says council is breaching the Local Government Act by saying the reason for her termination was because it was unhappy with the restructure. She says it is the chief executive officer's responsibility to appoint staff and that the consultant was hired for 12 months and also took on the role of human resources manager and other tasks. The Victorian Local Government Minister Ms Candy Broad has refused to intervene in the dispute.
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