BRATTLEBORO — Outrageous.
No other word comes close to describing the Brattleboro Selectboard's attempt this week to circumvent public meeting laws to avoid warning a planned meeting with two members of the board and the town's legislative delegation.
Why two members and not all five? Selectboard Chair Dick DeGray specified that the meeting take place with only him and vice chair David Gartenstein.
As he explained to at least one of the other three board members, the town would have to warn the event only if more than the two of them showed up for it. At least one board member was expressly told not to attend.
By Monday, the town had a change of mind, if not a change of heart, and announced that the meeting would be rescheduled - with the full complement of members, which would require it to be a warned meeting of the Selectboard.
As it should have been all along.
DeGray was upset with The Commons this past weekend for pushing the issue. He insisted to reporter Olga Peters that there was nothing inappropriate, illegal, or out of the ordinary about a closed discussion planned with two Selectboard members with multiple state legislators to take place on town property, with the intent - by several vague accounts - of discussing state fiscal policies and how they relate to the budget of a cash-strapped town.
Vermont's deputy secretary of state, Brian Leven, agrees with DeGray's interpretation, that state open meeting statutes would not have applied because until you have a quorum, there is no meeting. Period.
It's one thing for two board members to bump into each other at Hannaford or Price Chopper. Those real-life, happenstance situations are precisely what the open meeting statutes are intended to accommodate, and rightfully so.
But what we have here is the attempt by two members of Brattleboro's Selectboard to avoid a quorum, to circumvent the spirit of these laws. And the other three members seemed powerless to do or say anything that could have put the brakes on this very, very bad idea.
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DeGray, as a veteran of this board, tirelessly advocates for Brattleboro and his constituents. Whether you like or dislike his views, often delivered with a sly humor, easy manner, and refreshing candor, you generally know what he thinks.
That is all the more reason why his adamancy about keeping this discussion out of the public eye is so perplexing.
Perhaps he was trying to organize a simple, off-the-cuff conversation with legislators outside the realm of the (shall we say) colorful public process that too often leaves participants exhausted and spinning.
Even if that is the case, town officials shouldn't cherry pick the circumstances under which they conduct the public's business. Wrong is wrong.
We expect better than this flagrant contempt for the spirit of the public process, and so should this board's constituents.