The Buncombe County Commissioners got into a heated debate, along partisan lines, about whether or not Register of Deeds Drew Reisinger acted appropriately in extending office hours until 7:00 p.m. on October 10, after Judge Max Cogburn, Jr. ruled gay marriage to be legal in North Carolina. (Correct me if I am using the wrong terms for the process by which the judicial branch makes law.)
Now, it seems in the eternal scheme of things, we should be concerned about whether or not any harm was perpetrated. Instead, the argument concerned whether or not Reisinger sent out a single email to each commissioner or spammed them all at once. Had he emailed everybody individually, that would have been a polling of commissioners, and all would be well. But he didn’t.
Had a majority of commissioners replied-all to the multi-recipient email, the communication would have constituted a public meeting, which would require properly notifying the public. But, since only three replied, the communication did not constitute a violation of open meetings laws.
At the commissioners’ meeting Tuesday night, Bob Deutsch, the county attorney, was of the opinion that any legal problems could be cleaned up by having the commissioners vote to approve the extended hours retroactively. And that’s what they did. Since this occurred at an open meeting, consider yourself noticed. Any concerns you would care to share with the commissioners will be weighed and considered as much as anything else you have to say – unless your group has a high enough hip factor to justify bending the rules.
Commissioners Mike Fryar and Joe Belcher disagreed with the process, citing rules. Commissioner Holly Jones called Fryar, “wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,” asserting, “The disgrace I see is the frivolous use of taxpayer money for a political witch hunt.”
