Watchdog reporting steps on toes, reveals truth

WAlan Miller

e routinely receive some pushback when we step on toes while in watchdog mode.

That happened when reporter Bill Bush discerned that the Columbus Board of Education had made decisions about its superintendent search during a closed meeting.

That's illegal. Public bodies in Ohio can't make decisions in closed meetings.

The law allows public boards to meet in private for a few, narrowly defined reasons, but it prohibits the boards from deciding anything in private. It requires them to make all decisions in public.

So when we first wrote about the evidence suggesting that the school board had made decisions about narrowing the field of candidates for superintendent in a private meeting, some board members denied it and some members of the community suggested that we should stop picking on the board and move on.

But we persisted because the evidence that the board had violated the law continued to mount, and because public officials who are supposed to be doing the public's business in public don't get a pass when they fail to fulfill that requirement.

After Ohio Auditor Dave Yost read about this, he fired a warning shot by saying that he would investigate. And last week, he sent the board a letter saying that each board member could be held personally liable for "financial losses" resulting from breaking the law.