From the Outer Banks Sentinel (12/2/09): The Dare County Tourism Board has become only the second board in the state to be ordered by a court to tape all of the closed sessions held by the board and its committees.
Those recordings will be the official general accounting of the closed sessions and will be subject to the state’s Open Records and Open Meetings laws just as are written accounts
Signed by Superior Court Judge Quentin T. Sumner on Nov. 17, taping of the closed session was part of the court’s ruling in the case of Womack Newspapers Inc. versus Dare County Tourism Board.
The Sentinel filed suit in an effort to obtain draft settlement documents related to the departure of the former Visitor Bureau director, Carolyn McCormick; minutes from a Nominating Committee meeting held in December 2008; and to request the court order the body to tape all closed session minutes due to substantial differences between drafts of closed session minutes and the versions approved by the board. The suit also challenged the legality of a closed session held during the Nominating Committee meeting and another held by the full board during a meeting that was called as an emergency although the emergency was not defined and the minutes do not reflect such.
During the trial held in early October, Tourism Board Chairman Renee Cahoon admitted that closed session minutes were changed before board approval in order to support a confidentiality clause in a settlement agreement with McCormick.
State law prohibits government bodies from entering into confidential agreements.
“The public has a right to know about the public’s business and their interest is before the state. They [press] are part of the process of informing the public and sometimes it can be a pain, sometimes – I’m not saying The Sentinel is, but they can be. But that is what they do, they advise the public of the public’s business. And I think the request made by the plaintiff in this situation is perfectly legitimate,” said Sumner, referring to the Sentinel’s request for a court order mandating the verbatim accountings of the closed sessions.
“…I find only a technical – technical violation at best and that being that perhaps the request of drafts and the editing of the closed meetings does not lend itself to be an accurate and full accounting of what transpired, although I think that generally it meets the statute,” said Sumner.
In reference to the minutes from the Nominating Committee which took the board from December 2008 to October 2009 to produce, according to the court transcript, Sumner said: “There should be probably another way – there should be a very quick turn around in a reasonable amount of time and that there shouldn’t be any delay of ten months for these minutes to be prepared for inspection. Alright? So I’m not saying that you’ve [Tourism Board] done anything, that you are hiding anything. I find these to be very minor things but I think just from a technical standpoint that the plaintiff has made that case and I’m going to find for them in this situation.”
After the suit was filed by the Sentinel, the draft settlement documents were released after a Consent Order was signed by Superior Court Alma Hinton. That order instructed that the documents be released.
Twice during the October trial, Sumner announced that he found for the plaintiffs [Sentinel], the order, written by attorney John Leidy who represented the Tourism Board and signed by the judge, states that there was no prevailing party.
Both the judge’s order and the certified transcript of the judge’s ruling in court are posted on the Sentinel website.
by Sandy Semans, Sentinel Staff Writer