In August 2007, officials from the Pataskala City Council, Etna Township, and two school boards planned several meetings to discuss a proposed development. The meetings were designed so that none of the four public bodies would have a quorum, enabling them to be closed to the public. Nothing could be approved at these meetings, but it was hardly an "open" process when the substantive deliberation was done behind closed doors, leaving only the official conclusions open to the public.
In August 2006, an issue arose when the Pickerington, Ohio city council used email exchanges to have conversations which excluded not only the public, but also some of their own members. The issue came to a head when some council members became aware that one of their peers had negotiated an economic agreement with a neighboring township on his own. Some of the council members had been kept informed through forwarded emails, while others were left out of the loop completely. Of course, the public had no knowledge of the agreement.
“At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end.” W. H. Auden
