By Laura Michell
Whittlesea council has accused former councillor Ricky Kirkham of attempting to undermine its staff and operations in the days following his resignation from council.
Mr Kirkham announced his resignation on social media last week, just hours before the council was due to meet to appoint a new acting chief executive.
In a Facebook post, Mr Kirkham said the current circumstances at council had made it “impossible” for him to discharge his obligations “to hold council accountable”.
“Since my election to council, I worked hard to expose anomalies that could amount to fraud or corruption,” Mr Kirkham said.
In a statement, the council’s acting chief executive Kelvin Spiller said: “Since his resignation on Monday 17 February, Mr Kirkham has made public comments that reflect negatively on the City of Whittlesea in an attempt to undermine current staff and the organisation’s operations.
“In relation to Mr Kirkham’s allegation, we are not aware of any incident of this nature currently under investigation.”
As revealed by Star Weekly, Mr Kirkham was due to face a councillor conduct panel prior to his resignation.
The Local Government Inspectorate had made an application for a councillor conduct panel “to make a finding of serious misconduct against Mr Kirkham”.
The circumstances surrounding the inspectorate’s application is confidential.
Mr Spiller said the council believed this was only the second time in its history that the inspectorate had launched an investigation into a councillor for serious misconduct.
The councillor conduct panel process has been discontinued following Mr Kirkham’s resignation.
Mr Kirkham said he could not comment on the panel hearing.
He said he resigned because he refused to put himself in a situation where his accountability and responsibility to ratepayers “exposes me to allegations of misconduct for simply doing my job”.
It comes as Mr Spiller confirmed the council was involved in a number of confidential matters and investigations with Fair Work Australia, WorkSafe, the Local Government Inspectorate and the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC).
A IBAC spokesperson said: “For legal and operational reasons, IBAC generally does not comment on whether we have a complaint or investigation before us.”
Meanwhile, council last week appointed a new acting chief executive, former Manningham council boss Joe Carbone, for up to 12 months.
