Sunday, Nov. 08, 2009

Shameful Secrecy

The Horry County Council's search for a new administrator has been fraught with secrecy in so many ways that it's hard now not to wonder what else they are planning when the public isn't watching.

The council's violation of the law by holding secret meetings to narrow the field of candidates was both blatant and shameful. A basic tenet of the state's open-meetings law - which states that "it is vital in a democratic society that public business be performed in an open and public manner" - is that the public at least be notified of every meeting of a governing body. There are no exceptions, and yet somehow the entire county government ignored this rule.

Once a meeting has been properly called, the law does allow elected officials to discuss certain matters out of the public eye, such as employment. If the County Council had wanted to follow the law, they could have simply convened a special meeting, gone into closed session and brought the applicants in after the chambers had been cleared. All the County Council members and all their senior staff members (most particularly county attorney and interim administrator John Weaver, who is also one of the applicants under consideration) are well familiar with this process, yet all chose to ignore it.

Council Chairwoman Liz Gilland says the idea of notifying the public never came up, but in hindsight, she's glad the public wasn't notified. Local media competition has gotten so cutthroat, she says, that reporters would have been camping out at the courthouse trying to scoop one another on who was coming in - exposing some high-qualified candidates who were applying without previously notifying their current employers. While that scenario seems more Hollywood than Horry County, we'd like to think our county officials have the basic wherewithal to get a few candidates in and out discreetly.

Further, neither her rationale nor any other justifies breaking the law - in fact, such a cavalier attitude toward this incident suggests the council sees open meetings as optional. If the county's legal team won't keep the council apprised of the law, perhaps some other authority should step in.

In general, the practice of searching across the country for the leader of a major metropolitan county is one we've supported, though not all the council members agree. Four could not attend the interviews with the first-round applicants, and one of the four, Harold Worley, returned this week to say he didn't need to meet the finalists; he was ready to vote for his choice, Weaver, immediately. Worley insists that he has been opposed to the $15,000 search from the outset, but even so, once the search has been conducted, it seems foolish not at least to take advantage of its results.

Weaver's role in the process, too, now raises questions. He was chosen in May to serve as interim adminstrator (also behind closed doors, with no public discussion of the decision) on the basis that he was not seeking the job permanently. At the time, the choice seemed logical - it would allow Weaver to focus on the interim role and the council to focus on the search, without putting Weaver in the difficult possible position of competing against other candidates one day, then having to serve the eventual winner if he was passed over.

Now, apparently, that reasoning has been abandoned. If the public had been allowed to participate at any stage in this process, we might have some idea why the switch occurred.

Gilland is now pushing to hold the three finalists' interviews in the open, which will show the benefits of a thorough search process as the various candidates' strengths are on display. The rest of the council should quickly agree to the idea, because such a move seems the only way to dispel the fog of secrecy that has so far beset the entire effort.