The County Commission’s arrogant, unyielding insistence on holding secret interviews and making a needlessly fast selection of a new county mayor on Dec. 27 appears now to be vulnerable to a lawsuit as a substantive, deliberate violation of the state’s Open Meetings and Records Act. If that happens — and it well may due to County Attorney Rheubin Taylor’s dubious assumptions in reversing his original opinion disallowing a secret selection process — a court could overturn any secret decision made by commissioners to select a new county mayor.
Commission members should not let that happen. They have plenty of time — fully 120 days from the date that current Mayor Claude Ramsey’s resignation takes effect on Jan. 11 — to do the right thing for voters by opening their selection process to public candidate interviews and public forums for questions to candidates on vital issues.
There simply is no need for the rush to name an interim appointee in just 10 days.
Secrecy fails public and law
The County Commission’s nine members, moreover, should carefully review their county attorney’s reversal on a secret selection process over the past week. It fails the test of legal prudence and logic.
Taylor first advised the commission correctly last week that the state’s Open Meetings and Records Act requires the commission to make public any process for selecting an interim county mayor until the next countywide election in 2012. He rightly pointed out that private conversations among the commissioners regarding candidates — including two commissioners who are prospective candidates — would violate the law and subject any subsequent decision to a lawsuit to overturn their appointment.
Taylor subsequently called Elisha Hodge, counsel for the state’s Office of Open Records. He said Monday that she had advised him of a prior 1984 state court ruling that allowed a vacancy in the Roane County trustee’s office to be filled by a county commissioner who had privately asked other commissioners for their support for him to assume the trustee’s job.
Taylor then told the commission that it was Hodge’s opinion that commissioners could privately — that is, secretly from public view — interview and select an interim appointee.
Questioned by a reporter for this paper on Tuesday, Hodge flatly denied Taylor’s description of their conversation. She said she did not advise him that a private, or secret, process was legal or allowable. She said she merely described a prior court opinion on a vacancy in Roane County.
“I have never been asked to address nor have I addressed whether they can privately interview one another concerning their interest in the county mayor’s vacancy,” she wrote in an e-mail to our reporter, Dan Whisenhunt.
Controversy over legality
Given significant changes and tightening of the state’s Open Meetings and Records Act over the past quarter of a century, Hodge’s response is significant. On the face of the law, it’s hard to imagine that a secret process would prove legal if it were contested, as it should be.
On Wednesday, Commissioners Larry Henry and Jim Coppinger, both potential candidates for the seat, said they would not participate in an any private interviews with their fellow commissioners without further legal assurances. Henry told this page that he believed the process should be open. He also said he would favor a special election if that were possible.
If Coppinger and Henry become formal candidates, that would leave just seven commissioners to make a selection. Thus a majority of four could select an interim county mayor. Ramsey’s aide and cousin, Mike Carter, is assumed to be the preferred candidate among the four that have submitted applications.
There is far too much at stake to let four politically biased commissioners make that selection. The next county mayor should have a far-reaching vision for the county as a whole. The city-county sales tax agreement is up for re-negotiation next year. The pace of economic development entails major decisions in consolidation of county services, infrastructure investments, tax equity, education, land-use, zoning and regional growth plans.
Far-sighted leader needed
Selection of a capable, far-sighted chief executive is crucial at this juncture. County commissioners themselves have shown little vision with regard to these issues, and their selection of an interim mayor is certain to hinge on political factors rather than strategic vision and governing capacity.
That’s not good enough. If the County Commission made plain its interest in hearing other candidates, the slate could be broadened.
With the scope of issues that lie ahead, it would constitute gross negligence, as well as gross arrogance, for county commissioners to shun the public interest and rush to appoint an interim county mayor, and to do so privately. Citizens here should be calling their county officials and demanding an open process to select a new county mayor. What the commission now plans is a travesty and an insult — and it’s quite likely illegal.