GOVERNANCE
Accountability Council
No Council has been convened and the charter is unwritten. What follows is the design being worked from, published in draft so it can be criticised before it is adopted rather than after.
An organisation that reviews other people’s governance and answers to nobody is an opinion column with a logo. The Council is the answer to the obvious question — who reviews the reviewer — and it is worth nothing unless it can actually overrule the people who created it.
Draft design principles
These are the provisions the charter is being drafted around. They are not adopted, and the numbering is for reference, not authority.
- Binding, not advisory, on defined matters. A body that can only advise will be thanked and ignored on precisely the occasions it matters. The Council would hold refusal power over publication of systemic claims, adoption of new standards, and activation of a new area of focus — not merely the right to comment on them.
- A majority not employed by, contracted to, or founding TASFGA. Independence that depends on the goodwill of the person being reviewed is not independence. The founder would hold no veto over Council decisions within its remit.
- Fixed, staggered terms with a hard limit. Long-serving reviewers stop reviewing. Terms would be fixed, staggered so the whole body never turns over at once, and capped.
- Conflicts declared in writing and recusals published. The same standard TASFGA asks of every body it reviews, applied first to itself. A recusal that nobody can see is indistinguishable from a conflict nobody declared.
- Dissent published with the decision. Where the Council divides, the minority position is published alongside the majority one. Unanimity that has been manufactured by suppressing the dissent tells a reader nothing.
- Cross-sector membership by design. Advocates, former public servants, attorneys, academics, and journalists drawn from across the areas of focus. Subject-matter expertise in housing is explicitly not a prerequisite; a body that understands only one sector cannot tell which findings generalise.
- The charter published before applications open. Nobody should be asked to join a body whose powers have not been written down.
What the Council would not do
It would not adjudicate anyone’s dispute. The Council reviews TASFGA’s work. It is not a tribunal, it cannot order a board or an agency to do anything, and it offers no remedy to a person in a dispute with their own building or their own agency.
It would not operate as a complaint desk against third parties. An earlier version of this page said the Council would “review complaints submitted by the public against elected officials, agencies, boards, firms, or other bodies.” That overstated what an unincorporated body with no investigative power could responsibly promise. Reports from the public inform the research; they are received at /report and reviewed by researchers, not adjudicated by a council.
It would not indemnify TASFGA’s judgement. Council approval of a publication does not transfer responsibility for it. If something published is wrong, that is a correction, whoever cleared it.
Where this stands
The Council is Education Fund-attached under the planned dual-entity structure, which keeps day-job conflict risk lower for advisors employed by organisations that cannot be associated with lobbying. Recruitment conversations to date have been letters of intent only — non-binding, and conditioned on incorporation and a determination of tax-exempt status. No seats have been offered and none can be until the entity exists.
The charter will be published in full here before founding-member applications open, and its status is tracked on the Formation Ledger alongside every other undelivered governance artifact. Comment on the draft principles above is genuinely wanted, particularly from people who have sat on a body like this: contact@tasfga.com.