It now appears certain that the nine-member County Commission will interview candidates for the county mayor’s position in private and will flagrantly avoid public interviews altogether before deciding, on Dec. 27 who will succeed County Mayor Claude Ramsey, who is quitting his job just four months into a new term to join the new governor’s staff.
The commission’s reprehensible and utterly wrong decision to shut the public out of this vital decision rests on a change of mind by the county attorney Rheubin Taylor. He told commissioners last week that it would be illegal under the state’s open meetings act to have a private selection process. He changed his mind Monday. His U-turn, however, does not mandate or require a private process; it rather appears to be a hastily conjured political cover to let the commission shun the public interest in an open selection process.
The commission’s decision to make the selection process private is a blatant travesty. It arrogantly tramples the public interest in open government, and insults voters with an harsh slap in the face. It’s bad form, and a politically selfish act.
Taylor apparently caved to political pressure by Ramsey and commissioners who want to hand-pick the county’s next mayor without public scrutiny. He said Monday that he changed his mind on the requirements of the state’s Open Meetings and Records Act after consulting Elisha Hodge, counsel for the state’s Office of Open Records.
Taylor said she cited an old court case that seemed to legalize a private interview process despite the most widely accepted sense of the Sunshine Law, which explicitly bars county commissioners and other public officials from making decisions on public business in private and apart from publicly announced open meetings.
Whether Taylor is right on this issue remains debatable. Even if it’s technically legal for the commission to privately arrange and select a successor for Ramsey, a public decision-making process would still be allowable and infinitely superior.
If commissioners had any ordinary sense of the public interest in accountable government, or if they had a higher personal sense of public responsibility for the discharge of their official duties, they would gladly, voluntarily, apply the principles of the Open Meetings and Records Act for the selection. A private selection process clearly violates the widely accepted spirit of that law.
Commissioners should recognize that and change their mind. They are, after all, merely serving as surrogates for voters in selecting an interim county mayor until the next scheduled countywide election in 2012.
This is a most crucial public decision. The interim mayor will guide the county’s public policy and spending on education, infrastructure, economic development, zoning, consolidating government, and growth and land-use planning. The public deserves the right to candidates’ candid views.
That the seven Republicans and two Democrats who sit on the County Commission have no respect for the public interest in an open selection process speaks volumes about their utter lack of principles with regard to public accountability and participation. Making the selection process private is just plain insulting.
It runs counter, moreover, to the atmosphere than dominated recent elections, in which tea party and Republican candidates made significant gains by running almost entirely against government on the notion that citizens’ demands and the public interest were not being served by their elected officials.
If county commissioners are to exhibit care what voters think, they will divulge a list of all applicants, hold public and open interviews of the mayoral candidates, and possibly hold a public question-and-answer forum among their three top candidates.
If they choose to keep this process private, it will because of their own vested political interests in going along with Commission Chairman Fred Skillern and Mayor Ramsey. The former has long been known to hold secret conversations on public business to suit his political agenda. Ramsey reportedly is backing the selection of Mike Carter, a close aide. Both assert much control over the commission’s approach to public issues.
County voters deserve an open process for the selection of their next mayor. If our county commissioners don’t understand that, voters should rush to dump these arrogant back-room dealers in the next election.