Rhino Times: Rhino Crashes Closed Meeting

It was an interesting meeting – however, once my presence was discovered, it clearly agitated many federal and congressional officials, as well as their aides and press officers.

It all began several days before the meeting, after a Guilford County commissioner, who asked not to be identified, sent me a copy of an email invitation they had received. (See the invitation here) The commissioner who sent me the email had been disturbed by the invitation – as was I when I saw it – because the event was unquestionably a meeting to discuss public policy and the address line of the email showed the invitation had been sent to every Guilford County commissioner – and, by law, a Guilford County commissioners meeting must be held in public (except in a rare cases that did not apply here). If there are six or more Guilford County commissioners in attendance, a quorum, the public has to be invited to the meeting.

The subject line of the invitation read: “Subj: Invitation Only Regulatory Reform Roundtable Tuesday September 1st with US Treasury Dep. Sec. Neal Wolin.”

The email accompanying the invitation read as follows, with its italics and bold font preserved: “Commissioners, Congressman Brad Miller’s Office invites you to attend a private discussion regarding financial Services reform and consumer protections on 8/1, 1:00 p.m. at the United Way of Greater Greensboro. Note: this is a non transferable invitation. Kindly RSVP.”

I’d never seen anything like that in seven years of covering the Guilford County Board of Commissioners. North Carolina open meetings laws require that the press be notified anytime there’s a quorum of commissioners – but I hadn’t heard anything about the event from Guilford County, Miller’s office or from the US Treasury Department.

Guilford County is very good about notifying the press, even when there’s merely a chance six or more commissioners will show up at an event. A notice goes out, describing the time, place and nature of the function, and the last line reads, “A majority of the Board of Commissioners may be in attendance at this event.”

Guilford County Coordinated Services Manager Beverly Williams, who distributed the invitations electronically to commissioners, said the invitations had come from Miller’s office. She said she had merely forwarded the emails to the commissioners and she gave me the phone number of Miller’s aide in Raleigh that she’d been in contact with regarding the private roundtable discussion.

Miller’s aide, when called, explained the nature of the meeting to me – it was, she said, to discuss credit card reform, mortgage reform and related matters.

She said the Greensboro City Council had also been invited; however, when the woman in Miller’s office was asked how Miller and Wolin were intending to hold a closed meeting at which the entire Greensboro City Council and the Guilford County Board of Commissioners might show up, she acknowledged that that was a good question, and she commented that she was aware of “open meetings laws and sunshine laws.”

When asked the correct spelling of her name, she became reticent and said she was not to be quoted because she wasn’t an official spokesperson for Miller’s office. She said I would need to call his office in Washington, DC, to get an answer as to why the meeting was closed, and as to whether there were legal concerns over doing so. She gave me the number to Miller’s Washington office.

When I called and asked that office why the press hadn’t been notified, I was put in contact with LuAnn Canipe, Miller’s communication director. She told me that press had been notified of the event because, after the private roundtable, there was a press conference at which the media would have access to the officials.

Canipe said that The Rhinoceros Times was apparently not on Miller’s press list, which was largely, she said, composed of news organizations that had requested to be on it, and she added that if I gave her my email address, she would be glad to put The Rhino Times on the list, and The Rhino now has been added.

When asked about the reasoning behind having the meeting closed, Canipe said she would have to refer my question to the US Treasury Department, and she gave me the name of Rachel Barinbaum – a spokeswoman, she told me, for the Treasury Department, who was handling the event in Greensboro and who would be attending the meeting.

When I called Barinbaum, she eagerly told me about the nature of the event. However, when asked about the reasoning and the legality of closing the roundtable meeting, she started to waiver and became reluctant to continue the conversation.

“None of this is for attribution,” she said. “We have a clear understanding of that – right?”

I told her that I had no such understanding, clear or otherwise. I said that actually I found her assertion quite surprising indeed because, unless I was mistaken, I was talking to an official spokesperson for the office – who’s the person that usually has the job of giving quotes to the press.

She said that due to the “complicated” nature of my question, I would have to email it to her and then, she said, she would be happy to answer it.

So Monday night, I sent an email to her at the Treasury Department. In the first part of it, I summarized the open meetings laws in North Carolina, and then asked the following questions:

“1. Would the Tres. Dept. hold that meeting against NC law if six or more commissioners showed up?

“2. These closed meetings are being held in other places across the country by the Tres. Dept. and each time elected officials are being invited and most if not all states have open meetings laws much like ours so I was wondering if anyone in the Tres. Dept. had thought about the legal issues that might arise regarding open meetings laws by inviting whole elected bodies and then saying the meeting is closed to the public.

“3. What is the official rationale as to why the meetings should not be open anyway? I mean, it is elected and appointed officials doing the public’s business, so why not have the meeting in the open anyway?”

Tuesday morning, Sept.1, the day of the meeting, I checked my email, and I finally had my response from Rachel Barinbaum of the Treasury Department.

Here’s what the email said: “Hi Scott, Thanks so much for your email. As they are the hosts of the event, I’m going to direct you to Congressman Miller’s office for detailed responses to your questions. Thanks so much, Rachel.”

So much for that dead end road.

Guilford County Clerk to the Board Effie Varitimidis suggested that I go early to the meeting and count the county commissioners who went in and, she said, if there were a quorum of commissioners, I clearly had a legal right to enter the meeting and I could insist on being included.

But I decided that, since no one would answer my perfectly legitimate questions, and since there didn’t seem to be any legitimate reason to hold the meeting in private, I should attend it and see what was up.

However, since it was clearly a highly closed meeting with high-ranking federal officials, I thought it would be impossible to get in. I’d snuck into events before – but this was a whole new level.

Then the idea came to me: Well, I thought, I have the email invitation, and no one from the Treasury Department knows who’s who in Guilford County.

So, Tuesday morning, I put on a dark suit and a serious tie, and I went to the 1500 Yanceyville Street address on the invitation – the Sidney Stern building – and, as soon as I walked into the place, I became somewhat nervous because this meeting looked much more important than the county meetings I was accustomed to attending, and there were all these very serious and important-looking people milling around in the lobby, including muscular guys in suits who had that Secret Service look about them – and who, for all I know, very well may have been Secret Service.

I started to feel as though perhaps I was in over my head and that I should just leave and come back later for the press conference, but I knew a few of the people in the lobby and I managed to fit in well.

There were about 40 people in the room – state banking officials, state Rep. Pricey Harrison, County Commissioners Bruce Davis and Kirk Perkins – and there were a lot of people from the federal and state level I didn’t recognize.

I took a secluded spot at the table trying not to make eye contact with anyone.

The two commissioners at the meeting know me very well – but I’m always at functions like this and have been appointed to a county committee before and apparently the commissioners didn’t realize that I wasn’t supposed to be there, and before the meeting started, I looked right in place and Perkins sat next to me and even brought me a bottle of water and a cookie without me asking. He and I were shooting the breeze waiting for the meeting to start.

(I didn’t know it at the time, but outside the meeting room national media – print and television – was assembling for the press event afterward: Bloomberg News had sent a reporter from Washington; Reuters was there; Mark Binker from the News & Record was among the group of reporters who waited outside as I sat in the meeting.)

Usually at roundtable discussions, the moderator has everyone introduce themselves and asks you to state the organization you’re with, and I had no idea what to do if that happened because as soon as the aides heard “Scott Yost,” I would be in very hot water.

The deputy of the Treasury Department turned to the guy to his right and asked him to introduce himself and I was like, oh no, and I was toward the front on the right side and I really had no idea what I was going to say when I introduced myself. The best plan I could come up with was to mumble my name and occupation so badly as for it to be unrecognizable and then hope no one in the room was rude enough to ask me to repeat what I had just said.

Kirk was to my left and it was one other person, Kirk, and then Scott from the Rhino.

Right before Wolin pointed to Kirk, miraculously, from across the room, City Councilmember Dianne Bellamy-Small called something out to Wolin and the two started talking and that was the start of the roundtable discussion and the end of the introductions.

I didn’t take notes because no one else was and I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. But the meeting itself was nothing that needed to be top secret: Some in the room were critical of the emphasis given by banks to people’s FICO scores, and Bellamy-Small told Wolin how much she liked Cash for Clunkers, and she gave it a thumbs up.

“I’m a beneficiary myself,” she said excitedly.

Once the meeting ended, and we came out, I went back into the room for the press conference, because I still wanted an answer to my questions. I sat in the chair along the inside of the square of the four tables.

After a moment, I felt a tap from behind on my shoulder and I looked up and there was a very stern woman looking down at me.

“You were in the meeting, weren’t you?” she said.

“I was,” I said.

And then she turned and walked away and behind me I could see her excitedly informing other aides and they seemed to be figuring out who I was and I was really getting nervous, and I thought they might detain me or even arrest me right then – but they let me sit there for the question-and-answer period, I think because they didn’t want a scene with all the media there, and they didn’t know whether they would get one or not if they confronted me.

I waited my turn to ask a question and, as soon as I began asking the two men the rationale for closing the meeting, a couple of aides began talking over my question in raised voices, trying to drown out my question.

One female official called out loudly to the group of reporters as I was trying to ask my question, “Do we have any more questions on regulatory reform?”

I’ve been going to press conferences for seven years and, in all that time, never once, have I had anyone shout down my question before it could be asked – nor have I ever seen it done to any other reporter.

So I said back, somewhat loudly, so I could be heard, “Well, later will I be able to ask my question?”

One woman called out to me that I could email it in.

So, as the press conference ended, but before Wolin and Miller left the podium, I started toward them saying, as politely as I could given the tension now in the room, “May I ask my question now?”

I was in the center of four tables arranged in a square, but I saw press handlers on the outside of the tables moving toward me and I can’t say for sure what they were going to do when they got around the tables and got to me, but I feel confident they were going to stop me from approaching the deputy secretary of the treasury and the congressman. But Wolin held his hand up to them, signaling for them to stop, and told them to let me approach and ask my question.

I told Wolin and Miller, “Look, I’m not trying to be the bad guy here – I just can’t get an answer to my question from anyone.”

I asked again the reasoning for closing the meeting.

Miller told me it was closed at the request of the Treasury Department, so then I looked at Wolin. I told the two men that I had snuck in and I explained the meetings laws in this state and I said there were similar laws elsewhere.

He said that, even though commissioners were invited, it was not a meeting of the county commissioners, and therefore it was not a commissioners meeting.

Of course, if a quorum of county commissioners come to a meeting, I have a right to be there no matter who called it.

Commissioner Linda Shaw, who didn’t attend, said she was very surprised the meeting was closed to the public and said: “It’s the public’s business and it should be conducted in the open.”

Ed McDonald, the chief of staff for 6th District Rep. Howard Coble, also said he was very surprised that the meeting would be closed to the public.

“They were government officials in a meeting about public policy,” he said.

He said that the philosophy of Coble’s office was to conduct business in public. He said the only exception that came to mind was when the congressman had a meeting with a constituent and that constituent made a specific request that media not be present.

McDonald also said that, in the past, whenever Coble would bring federal officials to the area for a roundtable discussion, the press was invited – the whole point, he said, was to get the word out to the people, so the press was always welcome.

“We even invite the press to our fundraisers,” McDonald said.

by Scott D. Yost, Rhino Times County Editor