The Citizen Newspapers Monday asked the Fayette Superior Court to order the Fayetteville City Council to quit covering up the facts leading to the forced resignation of City Manager Mike Bryant.

We profoundly wish we did not have to expend time and money to make the council do what Georgia law — statutory and case law — already requires them to do. The council has refused in writing to turn over any records relating to the case. And it has refused to meet in public to hear evidence in the case or to explain their actions.

What we hear about the Bryant case, from unofficial sources, indicates that at least three persons, some of them city employees, made charges against Bryant, resulting in his immediate suspension.

After a month-long “investigation” by the city attorney and his designate, the council accepted Bryant's negotiated resignation. And nobody at City Hall wants to say anything about who, what, when, where or why.

That's just flat against the law. And we are filing suit against the council on behalf of Fayetteville citizens who have a right to know what the highest ranking appointed city official has been up to and why the council is taking this stonewall way out of an embarrassing situation.

The law requires that the council must hold an open meeting while “receiving evidence or hearing argument on charges filed to determine disciplinary action or dismissal of a public officer or employee.”

At no open meeting did this required action take place.

It boggles the mind to believe that the council first suspended, then forced the resignation of its top appointee without knowing the nature of the case against its own most senior employee. But that's what they would have had to have done and still comply with the Open Meetings law.

They didn't do that. We all know they heard what the charges were, who made them, what evidence supported the charges and what actions they ought to consider taking.

But none of that is in a released public record, and none of that happened in an announced public meeting.

The council members took their embarrassing dirty laundry behind closed doors, and they washed it out of public view.

That's not only a violation of the law, it's just flat wrong, and they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.

That's why The Citizen is suing the Fayetteville City Council.

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