As the largest local government unit in The Smoky Mountain News’ four-county coverage area, Haywood County sees more action — in public, and in private — than probably any other government out there. 

The Town of Waynesville Board of Aldermen meets every two weeks, or about 24 times a year, depending on the calendar. 

Haywood County’s five local governments more or less fall into two tiers — there’s the county and there’s Waynesville, and then there’s everybody else. 

Last week, Shining Rock Classical Academy held an event for “parents and community supporters” to meet the top four candidates in the running to be the charter school’s new director, but there seemed to be some confusion over whether the hiring process would be public or private.

At their last meeting of 2010, the Haywood County Commissioners made what might seem like a rather mundane decision. They chose to release a slew of minutes from their closed sessions over the preceding few months.

While the information the minutes revealed was relatively unremarkable — details of negotiations around the price of Clyde’s old Wal-Mart site, discussions about litigation at the fairground over some allegedly unpaid bills, easement purchases and other fairly ordinary transactions — the simple fact that they were released without request is a small victory for the cause of more open government.

To Marty Stamey, interim county manager, it’s not a remarkable step at all.

“It’s been that way as long as I can remember,” said Stamey. The board, he said, reviews closed session minutes regularly and, if there are no legal barriers, releases them to whoever would like to see them.

That’s not surprising, given the background of Chairman Mark Swanger, who won the North Carolina Press Association’s First Amendment Award in 2006 and spent much of his professional life combating corruption in a 32-year career with the FBI.

But while it may be a matter of course in Haywood County, the practice isn’t necessarily standard protocol elsewhere. In Macon County, County Manager Jack Horton — who held the same post in Haywood County — said they usually only give out closed session minutes when a request is made.

Swain County’s manager Kevin King confirmed that the modus operandi is much the same there. If the county manager’s office gets a request, they’ll filter it through the county attorney, but proactive steps aren’t the norm.

Amanda Martin, attorney for the North Carolina Press Association, said that the story isn’t much different across the state, although it should be.

“It’s not that normal, but it’s what should happen,” said Martin. “They [local governments] should have some procedure in place to routinely review and release information that can be released. I would say it’s unusual, but that that is the proper procedure rather than waiting for someone to ask for them.”

Martin posits that the motives behind keeping closed session minutes closed aren’t necessarily sinister, but often stem from laziness or fear of stirring trouble.

“That’s the path of least resistance,” said Martin. “It would be an extra step to have to undertake. They also probably know that there aren’t going to be any problems until someone asks.”

Under North Carolina law, public bodies can go into closed session for nine reasons that are spelled out by statute. No action may be taken in closed session, and minutes must be kept. Closed session minutes can be released whenever the issue at hand has been dealt with.

There are some things that will never come before the public eye, like personnel records and issues, but nearly everything else that’s done in closed session can, legally, go public at some point. When and whether that’s done is up to the governing body, in this case, the board of commissioners.

In Haywood County, Stamey said the board is almost always in favor of making things public, and he can’t remember any incarnation of the board thinking differently.

“You have to do things with transparency,” said Stamey. “You can’t just go in there and do things and never tell people what you did.”

And according to Martin, that view is laudable and is an important step towards more open, transparent governance.

The way road projects get selected and prioritized in the state’s six westernmost counties might shift slightly following meetings this week and last by local government officials and transportation experts.

The method of weighing the projects will be tweaked to heighten safety issues. Crash data compiled by the state Highway Patrol will be factored into the equation. Elected officials serving on the Transportation Advisory Committee said, however, they want to see what that actually does to the alignment of projects before endorsing the approach.

How exactly the state Department of Transportation moves forward on road building and road improving has raised pointed questions recently about political and personal gain versus public good and needs. Controversy in the past couple months erupted over two projects in particular: Needmore Road in Swain and Macon counties and N.C. 107 in Jackson County.

The transportation department has proposed paving and widening a 3.3-mile section of Needmore, a gravel one-lane road beside the Little Tennessee River. Needmore cuts through the protected Needmore Game Lands, and opponents say the environmental risks posed are simply too great (see accompanying article on page 9).

In Sylva, the transportation department this month held a public information session on how traffic on N.C. 107 between Sylva and Cullowhee could be reduced. Concepts included widening and building a whole new connector road. At least 200 people turned out for the session, and Smart Roads, a local activist group, promised to monitor and publicize the process going forward.

For all the outcries, no one from the public was present at either of two meetings where a bit of the rubber meets the road when it comes to transportation projects in the far west: Jackson, Macon, Swain, Cherokee, Clay and Graham counties. One meeting was for county and town planners and other government officials, a second was held Monday night for county commissioners and town council members.

Southwestern Development Commission, a regional planning group headquartered in Sylva, organized the get-togethers.

Who does the planning?

In the state’s six westernmost counties, road planning is headed up by the Southwestern Development Commission, headquartered in Sylva, which serves as the lead-planning agency for the rural transportation planning organization (RPO).

Southwestern Commission provides staff and GIS (geographic information system) support. The RPO consists of a technical coordinating committee (government officials) and a transportation advisory committee (elected officials). The government officials, as in real life, exist simply to make staff-level recommendations to the elected officials, who make the policies.

Here are the stated goals of the RPO:

• To provide a forum for public participation in the rural transportation planning process and serve as a local link for residents of the region to communicate with the transportation department.

• To develop, prioritize and promote proposed transportation projects that the RPO believes should be included in the State Transportation Improvement Program.

• To assist the transportation department in publicizing its programs and service and providing additional transportation-related information to local governments and other interested organizations and persons.

• To conduct transportation-related studies and surveys for local governments and other interested entities and organizations.

• To promote transportation as a regional issue requiring regional solutions.

What a great way to earn public trust: a public body decides that minutes from closed sessions no longer need to be secret, and therefore it periodically votes to make them public.

That’s what the Franklin Town Alderman Bob Scott asked the Franklin board to do. Scott was concerned about the information in one particular set of minutes, but he also understood what he was doing. If the town adopted a formal policy, the public would be a lot better informed as to what went on behind closed doors when aldermen lawfully shut out the public from their debate.

Here’s the deal about closed meetings and public bodies. The North Carolina Open Meetings Law gives public bodies seven lawful reasons to close their discussions. Those seven reasons are clearly defined, and minutes must be kept. How detailed those minutes are depends on each group of elected officials, but it must be discernible what was being discussed and who was saying what.

Once the reason for going into the closed meeting is past — say an industry has finished negotiations and announced plans to build — then the minutes become a part of the public record.

Most boards — including Franklin’s — adhere to the letter of the law. But what becomes of those closed session minutes? Reporters and the public seldom request them. In truth, most of what took place in those meetings is never revealed despite the fact that taxpayers and voters could gain valuable insight from them.

We think Franklin should have set itself up as the most open board around. It did not change its policy, but merely formalized what’s already taking place: once every few months, its attorney will review closed session minutes and determine if they can be released. That’s OK, but the public would be better served by the policy Scott proposed.

Franklin Alderman Bob Scott is to be commended for his commitment to open government. The public and elected officials need to understand that nothing has to be discussed in closed session, that the law gives public bodies a few exceptions where they are allowed — if they choose — to go behind closed doors. Some personnel matters probably should be discussed privately, but many times it seems public bodies close their meetings when the reasons for doing so seem suspect.

Franklin’s isn’t a bad policy, but we think a better one is to formally include closed session minutes in board packets whenever the reason for closing the meeting has passed. Rather than have an attorney make the decision, we think elected officials or the manager could more easily — and cheaply — make that call. The onus for conducting the public’s business in the open is on the elected officials, and they will suffer the fallout if they wrongfully shut the door on their constituents.

The Franklin aldermen on Monday night (Feb. 2) unanimously voted to formalize a process for releasing the minutes from previously closed-door meetings.

The town attorney, John Henning Jr., has always had the authority to make closed meeting minutes public once it is determined that releasing them wouldn’t do harm. In fact, state law requires the minutes from closed meetings to be released once the reason for being private has passed — such as discussion of lawsuit strategy once that lawsuit has been settled, or negotiations over property after the purchase goes through.

In reality, however, few public boards in this region do this as a matter of course.

Alderman Bob Scott, who brought up the matter, wanted the board to adopt a formal policy for releasing closed meeting minutes, but he compromised with a process that leaves it up to the discretion of the town attorney if the minutes should be made public.

Scott preferred a system, however, where closed meeting minutes would become open after board members agreed in consultation with the town attorney.

Mayor Joe Collins disagreed, saying that would put more responsibility on the board members to determine when minutes should be made public when the town has always counted on the attorney to address that.

Collins said he thinks the attorney being in control makes for a smoother process.

However, under the Monday vote any board member or member of the public may ask the town attorney to review a particular set of minutes to determine if they should be unsealed.

Henning said the new process is not much different than the way it has been done before.

Collins agreed: “I don’t see it breaking any new ground, just formalizing (the process).”

If anything, the vote on Monday was an expression of the board’s intent of how to deal with closed session minutes, Henning said.

Henning said he periodically went through closed session minutes about once every three to four months to determine if they should be opened.

The town owes it to the public to open up the minutes of closed sessions once it is no longer necessary to keep the minutes secret, Scott said.

State laws says that, “The public body may seal the minutes of a closed session if public inspection of those minutes would frustrate the purpose of the closed session,” Scott said.

Why now?

Scott called for a formal policy as an advocate of open records in general, but he also wants a particular set of closed meeting minutes made public.

He said the minutes of a legal dispute that was discussed in closed session remain sealed, despite the fact that the case was settled for $5,000.

Scott said no one has refused to release the minutes, but there was no formal policy for releasing them.

“We exist to conduct the public’s business,” Scott said. “I just felt like we should have a policy.”

The dispute involved the town and a former resident, David Whitmire, now of Alaska, who allegedly took slate and doors from town property.

In the case, Mayor Collins said he authorized Whitmire to take a small amount of slate from town property as a memento because Whitmire grew up at the site now owned by the town. Collins asked former Town Administrator Mike Decker if it would be OK for Whitmire to take a couple of pieces of slate, and Decker said it would be all right.

However, Whitmire took a lot more than a couple of pieces, carting off slate valued at $19,000.

Scott and Alderman Verlin Curtis said the mayor and Decker acted beyond their authority when allowing Whitmire to take property. Curtis and Scott said that the mayor and Decker should have asked the rest of the town board if it was OK for Whitmire to take something from the property. Collins said he didn’t think it was necessary to get permission from the board to allow Whitmire to take a few pieces of slate.

Scott had called for an independent investigation into what actually transpired when the mayor and Decker authorized Whitmire to take slate. But the investigation never went forward because the case was settled by Whitmire paying the town $5,000.

Scott said he wanted to know who said what in the transaction. Asked if he thinks the mayor actually gave Whitmire permission to take more than a few pieces of slate, Scott has said, “It would be nothing but pure conjecture.”

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

A Superior Court Judge has ruled that Jackson County Commissioners acted illegally when they closed meetings to discuss Economic Development Commission dealings.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Jackson County commissioners’ failure to follow state Open Meetings Law was a failure to use common sense, said Mike Tadych, counsel to the North Carolina Press Association.