meeting at which Fayette County commissioners

violated the state open meetings law last March,

coupled with the group's refusal to form a

citizens' committee to study plans for a new

county jail, are cited as grounds for an

application filed last week to remove all five

commissioners from office.

Denise

Fair has filed an application to recall

commissioners Linda Wells and Greg Dunn, and John

Regan has filed against commissioners Harold

Bost, Herb Frady and Glen Gosa. Fair and Regan

have been staunch opponents of the commissioners'

plan to build a new county jail and courthouse at

the existing downtown Fayetteville site.

Fair

said Monday she believes she will have no trouble

gathering the signatures of 100 sponsors, as

required by law, to set her recall in motion. The

deadline for submitting those signatures is Feb.

10, 15 business days after the filing of the

recall application last Wednesday.

"I

truly don't believe they are working in the best

interests of the entire county," Fair said

this week.

If

the signatures are submitted on time, county

elections officials have five days after they are

received to verify them. The sponsors must be

verified as residents who were eligible to vote

at the time the commissioners were elected.

Wells

and Dunn were elected in 1998, Frady, Gosa and

Bost in 1996. Since Fair was not an elector in

1996, she could not legally file that

application, so Regan stepped in.

Once

the signatures are verified, the commissioners

have four days to decide if they want to ask the

Fayette Superior Court to halt the recall

petitions for lack of sufficient grounds.

As

grounds, the petitions cite a March 1999 meeting

in which commissioners, meeting in a closed

session to discuss individual employees'

performance, drifted into a discussion of the

county's merit pay system, a discussion that is

required to be conducted in public by state law.

When commission members were informed by county

attorney Bill McNally that they had violated the

state open meetings law, they issued a press

release apologizing for the error.

Commissioners

also violated their oath of office, according to

Fair and Regan. They promised to "work in

the best interests of the entire county,"

says the recall petition, adding that

commissioners failed to serve the best interests

of Fayetteville residents by refusing to evaluate

alternative locations for the planned jail, or to

consider forming "a committee, to include

citizens, to discuss the proposed jail

issue."

If

a Superior Court judge decides that there are

sufficient grounds to continue, the petitioners

must get 30 percent of the voters who were

eligible to vote for the commissioners to sign

the recall petition - about 15,000

signatures - to force a recall election in

which a majority of those voting could dismiss

the commissioners from office.

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