Do Public Work In Public, Always

The Abingdon Town Council is far more concerned with public appearances than public transparency and accountability. At least the nearby Washington County town of Damascus is honest with its dysfunctions, allowing the public to see the full force of its council disagreements.

Abingdon’s meeting Monday night to select a new mayor and vice mayor from among council members was just another example of its entrenched secrecy.

Instead of placing the mayoral appointment at the front of the agenda in front of the public, Town Manager Greg Kelly buried it at the end of a long list of agenda items and actually planned to have council members deliberate in secret.

The Herald Courier threatened to sue before the meeting, and enough council members saw the light – and convinced Kelly of the error of his ways.

Still, Kelly continued to defend a vague Virginia code section that he probably should have another attorney interpret for him.

“Appointments under that code section allow for various different appointments of personnel and public officers to be held in a closed session,” the town manager said. “So traditionally they like to go into closed session to talk about these things.”

Here’s the part of the Virginia Code that Kelly was referring to: § 2.2-3711. “Closed meetings authorized for certain limited purposes. A. Public bodies may hold closed meetings only for the following purposes: 1. Discussion, consideration, or interviews of prospective candidates for employment; assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining, or resignation of specific public officers, appointees, or employees of any public body; and evaluation of performance of departments or schools of public institutions of higher education where such evaluation will necessarily involve discussion of the performance of specific individuals.”

A fair reading of the code is that it is meant to protect the privacy of government employees and ordinary citizens who are under consideration for appointment to various boards.

The authors of this statute never intended for elected officials to hide behind this section to air their dirty laundry.

Asked by a Herald Courier reporter whether a closed meeting would be illegal, Kelly called it “one of those questionable areas of the law” and added, “There are opinions that go both ways on that particular issue.” The town, he said, relies on a booklet distributed by the Virginia Municipal League that he said “indicates that is a long-accepted standard practice throughout the commonwealth despite Attorney General’s opinions that go back ten years ago.”

Kelly continued: “Since I’ve been town attorney or the town manager, I’ve never known of any illegal activity or any attempt to hide something from the public being held in closed session.”

The council’s aim all along was to avoid public airing of a contentious selection process that ultimately saw Ed Morgan selected as mayor and French Moore as vice mayor late Monday on 3-2 votes.

On the surface, it appears the council did the noble thing after being prodded by this newspaper.

But according to one council member, the others got on the telephone like teenagers to discuss beforehand who they wanted in leadership roles. Such back-channel discussions violate the spirit of the open meetings law.

“The process has been by phone by back channels,” said Jason Berry, the newly elected councilman. “Perhaps we should look at changing the charter and electing the mayor at large from the people and we remove the politics from the internal body and give it to the people.”

The Abingdon Town Council has a history of cloaking its secrets in the shadow of closed executive sessions.

This body should heed the wise maxim about how to avoid corruption or even the appearance or perception of it, rightly or wrongly: Sunshine is the best disinfectant.