On Monday, the Auburn City Council moved into executive session to deliberate appointments to five boards.

It was pretty routine business and it was improperly done.

Maine law is precise about how and why public bodies may go into executive session.

The first step, under the recently revised Freedom of Access Act, is to make it clear what kind of business will be conducted in an executive session and under which specific statute or other authority that permits an executive session for that business.

The City Council motion was precise about the nature of its business – to deliberate appointments – but did not and does not routinely refer to the specific statute under which councilors vote to move behind closed doors. Instead, councilors refer the public to a general reference to Title 1 printed on the back of the agenda. That’s lazy and flouts the law.

While it may seem picayune to require citing the specific statute, it is not.

The law was revised because government bodies from the local level on up had been routinely moving into executive sessions without letting the public know what piece of Maine law permitted them to do that. Without that information, it is terribly difficult for the public to dispute closed-door sessions, which it has a right to do.

The secondary reason the law was revised was to force government officials to become familiar with the state’s freedom of information statutes, familiar enough to be able to refer to them by section. Since the laws were enacted to protect the public’s right to know, it is not too great a burden to ask government officials to be intimately familiar with that protection.

What is more disturbing, though, is the City Council’s decision to deliberate appointments to boards in executive session when the law doesn’t automatically provide that option.

Government may deliberate appointments in executive session, such as those made to the zoning board of appeals, ethics committee, transit committee, recreation advisory board and the planning board, as Auburn did, but “only if public discussion could be reasonably expected to cause damage to the reputation or the individual’s right to privacy would be violated.”

It’s tough to believe that requirement was satisfied in Auburn.

Are we to believe that the reputations of devoted volunteers Ralph Stetson, Robert McArthur, Maureen Aube, Roger Laroche, Daniel Poisson, Philip Savignano, Paul Douglass, Steve Myers, Dennis Cormier, Steve Milks and William K. Skelton could be damaged by deliberations of their appointments to the board? If true deliberations were held, perhaps that argument could be made. But they were not.

In the packet of information provided to councilors before the meeting, the appointments were each precisely outlined in writing. There were no alternate nominees being considered.

The other requirement to move into executive sessions on appointments is to protect the privacy of the individual appointees. Once again, nominees were named in advance of the meeting and, through their appointments, will be conducting public business. Where is the violation of privacy?

The Auburn City Council, as every public body, has an absolute obligation to conduct the public’s business properly and in the open. That didn’t happen with these routine board appointments and public trust has been violated.