Commissioners’ meetings may have been illegal

By NICOLE CARTRETTE

A disagreement among Columbus County Commissioners on a motion to rescind the extended health benefits to commissioners who have left the board led to questions about the legality of meetings that allegedly took place prior to the called meeting on Friday.

Commissioner James Prevatte said at the meeting on Friday, and again on Monday, he was supposed to have been given the privilege of making the motion and explained that a series of conversations took place leading up to the Friday meeting. He said that it was his understanding that he was going to be the one to make the motion and did not find out otherwise until Friday before the called meeting.

“Who gave you that privilege?” Commissioner David Dutton declared. “You never called me. Nobody ever calls me.”

Prevatte pointed out that on two different occasions commissioners were assembled together and discussed who would make the motion. The first meeting took place on Monday, Sept. 25 after a joint meeting of the planning board and commissioners. According to Prevatte, six commissioners remained after the meeting and discussed doing away with the health insurance benefit for commissioners who leave the board. The other meeting allegedly took place just before the called meeting on Friday, Sept. 29.

“If you will remember last Monday night,” Prevatte said, adding that Commission Chairman Kip Godwin asked them to stay a few minutes after the joint meeting.

“I stated that I felt a wrong had been done and could we put this on the agenda for Monday,” Prevatte said, adding that there was reluctance to put it on the Monday night agenda. Prevatte said he told the other commissioners present that he would exercise his right to bring it up at the meeting if the item was on the agenda or not.

“That’s backroom politics again,” Dutton said. “That’s illegal.”

“You were just as guilty as I am,” Prevatte told Dutton who was one of the six.

Godwin said there was no gentleman’s agreement to allow Prevatte to make the motion. “I apologize,” Godwin said. “It was not an intention on our part to make him look bad.”

Attorney Amanda Martin, with the N.C. Press Association, said anytime the majority of a public body meets to deliberate the public’s business they are violating open meetings law, even if they don’t vote or make a decision.

According to North Carolina’s open meeting’s law, “official meeting” means a meeting, assembly, or gathering together at any time or place or the simultaneous communication by conference telephone or other electronic means of a majority of the members of a public body for the purpose of conducting hearings, participating in deliberations, or voting upon or otherwise transacting the public business within the jurisdiction, real or apparent, of the public body.