Months before approving $650 million in spending on renovations to Bank of America Stadium, groups of Charlotte City Council members toured the home of the Carolina Panthers.
As Charlotte City Manager Marcus Jones negotiated legislation to put a sales tax increase on Mecklenburg County ballots, he regularly briefed some council members.
Those meetings weren’t announced at the time or open to the public, falling into the category of small group gatherings that don’t officially meet the attendance threshold — a majority of council members — for declaring a public meeting under North Carolina’s open meetings law. The law says any gathering of a majority of members of a public body, in-person or virtual, must be announced to the public and open to the public if the elected officials are conducting public business.
The city says its small group meetings are conducted “in accordance with applicable law.”
“Notably, the law authorizes Council to interact informally and socially without the construct of the Open Meetings law, exempting such gatherings and events from the notice, public access, and minutes requirements of official meetings of public bodies,” the city said in a statement to The Observer.
But some still question legality of small groups.
While case law on the subject is limited, they can be a tactic for officials to evade transparency, according to attorney Mike Tadych, who specializes in media law.
“In a representative form of government, they’re there as the stewards of the people’s business, and they should conduct that business in the open to the degree that they can,” said Tadych, a member of the Stevens, Martin, Vaughn and Tadych firm who also works with the North Carolina Press Association.
The Observer spoke with Tadych and multiple Charlotte officials about the city’s practices as part of Sunshine Week. The annual event is a national, nonpartisan effort highlighting and promoting the importance of public records and open government.
Charlotte City Council’s practices
City leaders last year used small group meetings during two of their biggest decisions: public funding for Panthers stadium renovations and the city’s efforts to get a one cent sales tax increase to pay for billions in transportation projects.
City spokesman Lawrence Corley previously confirmed to the Observer all 11 council members and Mayor Vi Lyles visited Bank of America Stadium for tours in January 2024 — months before the team’s request for millions in tax dollars was officially introduced. The tours weren’t noticed as public meetings because they went in groups of four, Corley said in June.
Corley also said previously Jones was regularly briefing a working group of three council members and updating other council members during one-on-one meetings on transit deal negotiations after some council members expressed frustration with feeling left out of the talks.
The topic of private discussions came up again at the city council’s January retreat during a discussion of how to be a more “efficient” board. Some bemoaned a drop-off in casual in-person discussions outside of meetings in the post-pandemic era, while others raised concerns about a lack of transparency when debate happens privately.
“We’re about the people’s business, so I think it’s appropriate that people hear the discussion,” Council member Renee Johnson said at the retreat.
‘They’re informational’
Multiple City Council members did not respond to interview requests for this story.
Council member Ed Driggs told the Observer the council is “very mindful of our obligation to let the public share in the work that we do.” But, he believes, there’s “a certain place” for small group meetings, especially when staff are educating council members on a subject or in the “early stages” of developing an idea.
“You would never have like a decision that was made as a result of small group meetings,” he said. “They’re informational.”
Driggs acknowledged “some people raise questions about” private discussions.
“I can tell you, in practice, I would like to see those people try to do our job and limit themselves for communication with each other to the public setting,” he said.
Council member Tariq Bokhari attributed the need for discussions away from the public during major decisions to getting things done — not to a desire to hide things.
“In this case, I think it’s a bunch of people saying, ‘how the hell do we manage this dysfunctional group?’” he told the Observer. “And it’s like, ‘well, we take the cameras away so they can at least start by processing the information and not pretending they’re on some kind of stage.’”
But one senior city official, granted anonymity to speak freely, told the Observer “transparency and accountability have certainly suffered” under the leadership of Jones and Lyles, including using small groups to silo council members when discussing initiatives.
“They work together to define the process … They can circumvent the whole public meeting law and public records requests and so on,” the official said.
What does NC law say about small group meetings?
Small group discussions of public issues “venture into legal gray area,” the North Carolina Open Government Coalition advises on its website.
“Generally,” the group says, “a public body can meet without giving notice or taking minutes as long as less than a majority is present” or if the meeting is a “purely social gathering.” But there are issues “when members of public bodies meet to discuss public business successively in small groups.”
“If members meet privately back-to-back to discuss a common issue, they may be violating the (open meetings law),” the group says. “This is especially true if these meetings are followed by pro forma deliberations at a later public meeting where the body takes action without discussion.”
Instances like small groups touring Bank of America Stadium ahead of the renovation deal are concerning, Tadych said. Elected officials’ individual meetings with staff can also become problematic, he added, when staff are “engaging in shuttle diplomacy or shuttle debate” between officials.
“When you have elected officials partaking in city business or potential city business, public policies, it’s supposed to be done in public with an opportunity for the public to attend,” he said.
Wanting to improve efficiency isn’t a viable reason under the law for doing things in small groups, Tadych said.
“There is zero promise of efficiency in the open meetings law,” he said. “In fact, I think the public policy is exactly the opposite, that efficiency isn’t the key, it’s the public’s access and ability to attend.”
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The Charlotte Observer
Mary Ramsey is the local government accountability reporter for The Charlotte Observer. A native of the Carolinas, she studied journalism at the University of South Carolina and has also worked in Phoenix, Arizona and Louisville, Kentucky.