Wollongong City Council was well on its way to recovering from last year's corruption scandal, the city's administrators have told Local Government Minister Barbara Perry.
The administrators' positive report was contained in a letter sent to the minister six months after corruption hearings, a copy of which was obtained by the Mercury.
The letter constituted the first of a series of regular reports by administrators Gabrielle Kibble, Col Gellatly and Robert McGregor which will ultimately determine when Wollongong can make a return to democracy.
Listen to an interview with Wollongong City Council general manager David Farmer, one year after the ICAC hearings
A number of anti-corruption initiatives are listed in the six-page report which they are required to write under the terms of their employment at the council.
The NSW Government is relying on the reports to gauge when Wollongong is ready to have a democratically elected council again.
Upon their appointment the Government said the three would remain in place until 2012, however statements from NSW Premier Nathan Rees and former local government minister Paul Lynch have indicated that the time span might be shortened if, in their six-monthly reports, the administrators indicated the council was sufficiently corruption resistant.
In the reports, the administrators do not say whether the organisation is sufficiently corruption resistant to warrant a return to democracy.
They do however mention the ongoing battle to block disgraced developer Frank Vellar's Quattro proposal, describing the saga as "difficult and expensive''.
"The technicalities of this are proving difficult and expensive with the findings of the ICAC not being able to be relied on in court,'' the administrators said.
The administrators also said they had dismissed all the "affected persons'' named in the ICAC investigation and now carry out random audits of their development applications.
It has been close to a year since the council was sacked and since then the administrators and council staff have implemented all of ICAC's recommendations aimed at making the council corruption resistant.
Wollongong's corruption scandal: Could it happen again? See Saturday's Mercury for full coverage.
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