Asheville council members meet with staff in groups of three before each council meeting. This page records how the practice works, what the record shows, and the RTIC items it covered.
What they are, documented
Since roughly 2018, council members have met staff in groups of three on Thursdays. As Asheville Watchdog’s 2023 investigation documented: the Thursday before each Tuesday council meeting, city staff run three separate 90-minute “check-in” sessions, each with no more than two council members plus the mayor, the same agenda and materials each time. No public notice. No minutes. No recordings. The Watchdog found the sessions covered homeless policy, hotel development, affordable housing, and the allocation of ~$20 million in COVID relief.
The structure matters: groups of three never trigger North Carolina’s open meetings law, which defines an “official meeting” as a simultaneous majority: four of Asheville’s seven. And note who attends all three sessions: the mayor, who thereby privately canvasses the entire council before every public meeting.
The law, and the loophole
G.S. 143-318.10(d) has an anti-evasion clause (gatherings “called or held to evade the spirit and purposes” of the law are illegal), but no NC appellate court has ever ruled on serial small-group meetings, and unlike Florida (where any two members discussing public business must meet publicly) or Washington (where courts recognize illegal “serial meetings”), NC has no express ban. The NC Open Government Coalition’s analysis concludes it “largely depends on the purpose or intent of the scheme.”
The experts who’ve looked at Asheville’s version, on the record: Hugh Stevens, longtime NC Press Association counsel: “clearly contrary to the intent of the open meetings law.” Pate McMichael, NC Open Government Coalition: “doing it over and over again starts to look like you don’t want the public to know and you want to go around the open meetings law.” The John Locke Foundation has proposed closing the “nonmajority loophole”, citing Asheville by name.
2023 to 2026
- January 2023: The Watchdog exposes the practice. Manheimer: “If these check-ins are a barrier to folks having confidence… then I think we need to move away from that process.”
- February 2023: Council votes to replace check-ins with public work sessions, a transparency reform passed on the consent agenda, bundled with ten other items, after a resident’s request for a separate vote was ignored. (Watchdog)
- 2025–2026: The practice resumes without announcement. Patrick Conant confirms it in the Watchdog’s 2025 open-meetings lawsuit coverage; NC Local documents budget check-ins the week of March 16, 2026 covering cost-cutting, staff wages, and the property tax rate. Manheimer tells NC Local the check-ins are “permissible” per legal counsel, and that every council member besides Roney supports them.
What the participants say
Kim Roney, at the 2026 mayoral debate (BPR):
“Right now we have a series of three-by-threes and sometimes one-on-one meetings where staff might spend anywhere from, like, eight to 10 hours with agendas and presentations, counting votes throughout the day. It’s a lot of staff time, but none of those meetings are public. And there’s no minutes.”
Esther Manheimer’s response, in full:
“I do agree that transparency is critically important. But we also have to have discussions with one another. We gotta call each other back and be able to work through difficult issues. That’s not a transparency issue. That’s a functioning issue.”
City Attorney Brad Branham’s defense over the years has been consistent: the meetings are lawful because “the board can’t rely on these individual meetings to take official action, which we don’t.” No minutes exist.
What the council candidates said, Sept 16, 2026
At a West Asheville candidate forum, five of the six council candidates were asked for their thoughts on “council holding three-person check-ins that are not open to the public.” Their answers, with audio, are on the forum record; the lines that bear on this page:
- Keith Young, on council 2015 to 2020, gave an account of the origin: “This started when I was on council … When I arrived on council, there was no information hub … In a 2017 UNCA council retreat, we talked about how we would bring that information in, and everybody would get the same information at the same time … That was supposed to be for information purposes.” On the practice today: “What has transpired to now, I don’t know.”
- Maggie Ullman: the routine sessions have not happened “since early 2023”; “The last three-by-three I was in was around the budget process this spring … We have had ad hoc ones that have come up.” On that budget session: “I thought that was appropriate to have that as a private conversation instead of on the headlines.”
- Antanette Mosley: “There is no formal 3-by-3 process at this point with your city council … What we do now is we do regular agenda briefings, live, on air.” And: “I’m willing to forgo them, but also keep in mind that some parts of our community will suffer if we do forgo them.”
- Jeffrey Burroughs: “If this is the work that’s happening to leading to the result of the vote, it just needs to be done in public … maybe just have that meeting once, maybe go ahead and tape it.”
- Drew Ball, a county commissioner: “3-by-3s have been permitted by law … at the county level, I’m always really quick when we have a 3-by-3 to say, is there any reason we shouldn’t be doing this during the briefing? … I think doing these things in public is really critical.”
Two sitting members described the sessions as ad hoc since early 2023, with a budget session in spring 2026. That matches the reporting above on budget check-ins. Neither said whether any session covered the RTIC items, and no minutes exist for any of them.
The RTIC votes
What’s documented: the check-in system existed before, during, and after the RTIC approvals; every RTIC vote arrived at the public meeting and passed 6–1 with no council deliberation visible beyond Roney’s dissents; on May 12 the motion was seconded before public comment began and the vote came six seconds after the last speaker.
What’s not documented: no outlet has established that the RTIC votes were specifically pre-counted in check-ins. There are no minutes; that’s the point. No minutes exist, so whether the RTIC items were discussed in check-ins cannot be determined from the record.
Asheville’s open-meetings record
In March 2021, the city closed part of a council retreat and five news outlets sued; a judge ordered the whole retreat opened. In April 2025, Asheville Watchdog and Sunshine Request sued again over a committee run outside public view; the case survived the city’s motion to dismiss and is ongoing. After Helene, the city suspended all advisory boards, for several months.
Public work sessions elsewhere
Durham runs public work sessions (posted agendas, minutes, Zoom access, public comment), proving the “we need to talk things through” function works fine in the open. Asheville itself adopted that model in February 2023; the practice resumed. The asks, for Speak at Council and candidate forums:
- Re-adopt the 2023 public-work-session policy, and this time by named vote, not consent agenda.
- Amend council rules to require notice and minutes for any staff-run briefing series covering the same agenda across multiple member groups.
- Every candidate, one yes/no: “Will you refuse to participate in unminuted check-in meetings?” (Per Manheimer’s own account, six of seven current members support them.)
Related: 2026-05-12 City Council · Timeline · People