Open up, even when door's shut

The City Council ducked into closed sessions this week to talk about hiring a new city manager.

That's OK. Even as N.C.'s Open Meetings Law requires that government be conducted in full view of the public, it allows some exceptions. Discussing the qualifications of prospective employees is one of them.

What's not legal is holding a closed meeting and failing to keep a record of it, which is what the council has done repeatedly as it considers the city manager hire.

Mayor Bill Bell confessed as much to reporter Matt Dees.

"We haven't taken any minutes," he said. "It's because it's just been confidential personnel."

That's no good. The law requires that "full and accurate" minutes be kept of all meetings of a public body. When a closed meeting is called, those minutes should be complete enough that "a person not in attendance would have a reasonable understanding of what happened."

The law also says these minutes can be withheld from the public only "so long as public inspection would frustrate the purpose of the closed session."

Interim City Attorney Karen Sindelar contends that the law doesn't really mean what it says it means. A brief summary of the discussion of the closed-session topic is enough, she said, such as "Council members discussed the qualifications of the candidate." She said some case law supports that.

Maybe so. A lawyer can dig around for some cramped interpretation of the law that lets the city hide information from the public -- and maybe even find a judge to agree.

But here's a crazy idea: Why not have the council heed the spirit of the law and look for ways to be more transparent -- and less contemptuous of the public its members serve?