Graham Council Members' Emails, Texts Raise Open-Meetings Concerns

Emails and texts exchanged among three veteran Graham city council members between meetings appear to violate North Carolina's Open Meetings Law, according to the state's press attorney, after an investigation into correspondence about Sesquicentennial Park uncovered communications that ranged well beyond that single topic.

Mayor pro tem Ricky Hall and council members Bobby Chin and Bonnie Whitaker are the three officials whose correspondence is at issue. The Alamance News filed public records requests on February 19 with all three, initially seeking to determine whether Chin and Whitaker had genuinely received an outpouring of public support for relocating Sesquicentennial Park, as both members have repeatedly claimed. The request covered all emails and texts among the three council members about the park since December 1, 2025, and also sought correspondence to and from other council members and then-mayor Jennifer Talley for the same period.

None of the three members acknowledged or responded to the February 19 request. Alamance News publisher Tom Boney, Jr. hand-delivered a follow-up letter at the council's monthly meeting on March 10, citing the state's Public Records Law requirement of a prompt response. North Carolina case law and legal experts have established one to two weeks as a reasonable timeframe for simple requests.

Hall and Whitaker furnished their correspondence late last week. Chin turned his over on a Wednesday afternoon, shortly before the newspaper's press deadline, weeks after the original request.

What the records showed went beyond a park dispute. Text messages among the members touched on a Mebane lawsuit and surveillance cameras, in addition to past and future council agenda items. The state's press attorney reviewed the nature of those communications and concluded they could constitute violations of the Open Meetings Law, which is designed to prevent public officials from conducting the public's business outside of publicly noticed meetings.

Whether the Graham City Council faces any formal legal consequences over the exchanges remains an open question, but the pattern documented in the records, three sitting members discussing government business through private channels over a period of months, now sits on the public record.