Commissioner Kirk Kirkpatrick criticized his fellow commissioners for drafting the county manager’s proposed new job description via email.

Kirkpatrick said the email communication between the commissioners was akin to a three-way phone call. On a five-member board, a three-way phone call to discuss public business would qualify as an illegal meeting by the majority of a public body.

“I did not want to participate in the way this was handled,” said Kirkpatrick, who also opposes the changes to the job description in general.

But Chairman Mark Swanger said he purposely used email because it created a paper trail of the discourse.

“When you are asking for input, the public has the ability to know precisely what was said, whereas a phone call is left up to the imagination,” Swanger said. Swanger told the reporters present — namely The Mountaineer, The Asheville Citizen Times and The Smoky Mountain News — that they were welcome to inspect the emails.

When commissioners decided six weeks ago to draft a new job description for the county manager, Swanger suggested the email format during a public meeting in the presence of the media.

It would work like this: Swanger would email the other commissioners his ideas and they would respond with their suggestions. Swanger would compile their input and disseminate them again via email for more input. County Manager Jack Horton and County Attorney Chip Killian were included in the emails as well and encouraged to reply to Swanger with comments and suggestions.

Killian said the format is legal because all communications were actually being funneled through Swanger.

The format used is the equivalency of Swanger writing a letter to the other commissioners, each commissioner writing him back, and Swanger photocopying each person’s letter and sharing it with everyone. Only the photocopies of the letters were being provided in real time.

On the other hand, if the commissioners had exchanged a volley of emails amongst themselves on the issue, then it would become more akin to a virtual meeting. That back and forth would have gotten into a grey area, Killian said.

Kirkpatrick said legal or not, he didn’t like it.

“That’s my personal opinion. I don’t feel comfortable with it,” Kirkpatrick said. “I think we ought to be sitting there talking about it face to face.”

Kirkpatrick and Commissioner Larry Ammons, opponents of the new job description, asked for a special meeting to discuss the topic. A workshop will be held at 8:30 a.m. Thursday, March 24, in the county board room in the addition off the back of the Haywood County Historic Courthouse.

Both sides appear firm in their opinion and unlikely to change their mind based on an hour or two of additional discussion, however. Ultimately those in favor of the new controls seem to outnumber those against them.