Guilford County Commission chairman Skip Alston, evidently disturbed by media reports of county manager David McNeill’s ‘retirement’ before it actually happened, wants to form chairman’s committees that will be closed to the press:

Alston also announced that he plans to hold closed meetings to scrutinize budgets in each of the county’s 26 departments, a move to circumvent the traditional role of the county manager preparing a budget for the board to alter and approve.

“We’re going to go by line item, and by March, we should have a proper budget,” Alston said as he announced that the committees would consist of three commissioners and staff personnel.

Those committees, however, could violate the state’s open meetings law.

“I don’t want the press to be able to put some actions out there before we have had a chance to hear about it,” Alston said.

“I don’t want county employees to be scared based on discussion,” Alston said of the committees, which are intended to scrutinize government for efficiency and even personnel cuts.

Meanwhile, the Rhino’s John Hammer (unposted) rips apart the City of Greensboro’s laughable efforts to define ‘protected information’ during a court hearing on the release of the infamous RMA report:

You would think attorneys representing the city — Associate General Counsel Jamiah Waterman and Chief Deputy General Counsel Becky Jo Peterson-Buie — who are making such a ridiculous argument and wasting taxpayers money with such a silly position in court would be embarrassed, but they just keep making ridiculous statements.

On Wednesday, Waterman said that an employee’s salary is protected information and could not be released. He evidently is not a reader of the Rhino Times, because we print the salaries of city, county and school employees every year.

I thought bringing in Terry Wood as new city attorney was supposed to add some professionalism to the legal department. Evidently not.

BTW — Alamance County is looking for a new manager, and one of the 20 applicants is from Guilford County.