BETHEL – The Board of Selectmen met twice in May without giving the required public notice and interviewed candidates for the town manager’s post.

On Monday, the board is expected to ratify a contract for the manager’s job and hire former Rumford Town Manager James Doar to the post. A call to Doar’s residence on Countryside Road in Bethel was not returned Friday.

Board Chairman Stan Howe said Friday that a quorum of selectmen met at the Town Office on May 6 and May 8 to interview candidates for the job. He said he didn’t know whether public notice of the meetings was given, as required by the state’s open meetings law.

Howe confirmed that the board had offered Doar the job and would vote to ratify a contract for him at the meeting Monday.

Yvonne Robinson, an administrative assistant at the Town Office, said Friday that at least four of the five members of the board met at the Town Office on two occasions in May. She posted no notice of the meetings, Robinson said.

“Yes, they had a quorum,” she said. She said one of the meetings was on a Wednesday, a day she does not work.

Robinson said she is the person typically responsible for posting the meetings on the town’s calendar and that the meetings were not posted there. There is also no mention of the meetings on the town’s Web site, which lists all of the town’s meeting dates and includes meeting agendas. Robinson said no formal notice was given of the meetings because the selectmen considered the meetings “private” workshops for which no notice was necessary.

“They didn’t want to bother anybody with staying late,” she said.

But Maine law states that public notice ” shall be given for proceedings of a body or agency consisting of three or more persons,” Robinson said.

Howe said the local weekly newspaper, the Bethel Citizen, was given notice of the workshops, but the editor there said he received no notice of the May 6 or May 8 meeting. The town regularly sends notice of its meetings to the Sun Journal, but the newspaper received no notice of the meetings.

During the meetings, selectmen interviewed candidates for the manager’s job and decided to hire Doar, Howe said. He said the process would be formalized by a public vote on Monday. Howe denied there was any correspondence by phone or electronic mail among selectmen about the candidates in the running for the job. The Sun Journal has filed requests under the state’s Freedom of Access Act seeking access to any correspondence among elected officials on the topic and for access to the public notices for the May meetings.

The requests were made Friday.

To satisfy the state’s open meetings law, a board of selectmen or city council will typically convene in open session and then vote to go into an executive session to interview potential job candidates. Hiring discussions are held behind closed doors to protect candidates’ privacy. State law prohibits a board of elected officials from taking any official action or votes in executive session.

A message to the Bethel town attorney, Geoffrey Hole, was not returned Friday. Howe said he did not know whether Hole was given notice of the meetings.

Bethel’s outgoing town manager, Scott Cole, said Friday that the entire board had completed state-mandated training on the state’s open meeting and public information laws in 2009.

The Sun Journal has requested documentation of that training.