Hundreds of pages of highly confidential Wellington City Council documents – including termination agreements, a sexual harassment claim, and staff pay details – ended up in the hands of a local man who bought an old mayoral office desk at a dump.
The council has launched an investigation and notified the Privacy Commissioner after being alerted to the situation by the Herald, while a former mayor is demanding answers from officials.
“It’s appalling, I’m appalled,” Dame Fran Wilde said.
Fellow former Wellington mayor Dame Kerry Prendergast said it is a “diabolical situation on a number of fronts”.
The desk was from the Wellington Town Hall, which used to house the council chambers but has been closed because of earthquake damage since 2013.
Raymond Morgan, a builder who lives in Breaker Bay, said he spotted the piece of furniture, which was labelled as being from the Office of The Mayor, at the Tip Shop last week among other items from the old Town Hall.
He paid $200 for it with plans to break it down and use the wood to build a bar.
When loading it on to his trailer, Morgan said his partner noticed papers printed as “confidential” poking out of locked drawers. “Oh, there are some documents in there hanging out the door,” she said.
He took it home and broke the locks to find hundreds of papers about former council employees.
“I thought, unbelievable, even though this goes back a number of years, these people are still living,” he said.
He called the council to report it and follow up on a prior query about cycle lanes, but claims officials “didn’t really take much notice at all”.
“I said, ‘oh, you might want to get your arse into gear because I’ve just got hold of all these documents, quite legitimately, quite sensitive, confidential, but no one’s got back to me about’.
“She was too busy to answer because she had to go pick up her kids from holiday daycare or something like that.”
He then posted on a local ratepayers Facebook group asking what to do about it.
“I just find it absolutely amazing that they would not check to see what was in locked cupboards and drawers, especially when the documents were actually poking outside.
“It’s just about showing how incompetent these people are because yeah, they can’t even manage this stuff.”
When first contacted by the Herald about Morgan’s post, a council spokesman said officials did not believe it to be legitimate, saying it was likely social media “mischief”, and encouraged the Herald to come back when it had found evidence.
The Herald then tracked down Morgan, who provided our newsroom with the confidential cache.
The papers mostly date between 1988 and the early 2000s and contain information concerning the highest level of council leadership.
It includes anonymous letters from a whistle-blower detailing sexual harassment allegations against a former councillor, printed email correspondence about claims of abusive workplace behaviours, termination agreements, code of conduct complaints, information about employees’ pay, confidentiality agreements, private emails and highlighted newspaper clippings from media coverage of the council at the time.
One letter addressed to a then-mayor discusses pornography being accessed on a council computer by a person linked to a then-councillor.
The council has now said it is investigating the situation.
“We are taking the situation extremely seriously and are working with our legal and privacy staff – along with staff and contractors involved with the disposal of the Town Hall furniture – to understand what has happened,” the spokesman said in a statement.
“We will also endeavour to discuss the situation with the member of the public who is alleged to have found these documents.”
The council disputed suggestions from Morgan that officials didn’t appear to take his approach seriously.
Wilde, a former mayor from the time covered by the material and whose private correspondence is included in the documents, said she is outraged the files made their way into public hands.
“It’s an appalling breach of confidence that a council administration would let a bit of furniture go containing confidential documents,” she told the Herald.
She planned to contact the council demanding an explanation.
Prendergast, who was mayor between 2001 and 2010, told Herald NOW’s Michael Morrah she could not believe the desk was not emptied in 2013 and that the council did not believe the man who found the documents.
“We’re now is a situation where highly confidential papers are available to the media.”
She said she hoped there would be a full and rigorous investigation.
“Those cupboards in the desks were locked for a good reason.“
“These were the days before digital, so everything was in hard copy… this is a terrible situation for both the people that signed the documents but also the parties that were part of the agreements. It’s diabolical.”
She said before she left office in 2010, she was made to go through all the files. A special importance was placed on things locked away in desks.
“And I know Mark Blumsky and Dame Fran Wilde would have done the same. And when you hand over to the next mayor, you hand over the keys, you explain why you’ve kept them and why they’re in that part of the desk.”
Ethan Manera is a Wellington-based journalist covering Wellington issues, local politics and business in the capital. He can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz.