Alpine Shire councillors repeated their opposition to a reform to exclude them from grant funding panels at their meeting last month.

Councillors received the recommendation for their exclusion from council's grant funding and event funding assessment panels at their April meeting, but its status was not clearly resolved, so it returned for further deliberation at the May meeting.

They unanimously voted down the proposal, noting it removes local knowledge from grant assessment panels.

Councillor Ron Janas particularly disapproved of the proposal.

“I’m not going to sit here and be labelled by an officer from VAGO saying that I’m incompetent to make these decisions and I am not trusted in that area,” he said.

“We’ve been around and we understand what is required of us.

“The community expects us to be involved in these sorts of things.”

Cr Janas also questioned how conflict of interest approaches would be handled if the policy is passed.

“When it comes to the time where it has to be approved by council for that spend, who approves it?” he said.

“Does it come to council then to say this organisation gets that amount, that organisation or whatever gets that amount and we then have to declare a conflict of interest in that circumstance?

“Or is it going to come back under CEO delegation?

“That’s an unclear point, to me.”

The recommendation follows a May 2022 Victorian Auditor General's Office (VAGO) report to parliament titled 'Fraud Control Over Local Government Grants', which examined fraud controls for six Victorian councils.

According to Alpine Shire Council, they appointed an independent auditor to undertake a review of their Community Grant Program and event funding against the VAGO report to recommend improvements council could make.

The internal audit identified thirteen areas for improvement with 23 recommendations made to improve oversight of the grants program and funding programs, including the exclusion of councillors from assessing and making recommendations on grant applications.