Written by Andrew R. Jones, Asheville Watchdog.
The City of Asheville has asked a judge to dismiss Asheville’s Watchdog’s lawsuit alleging violations of the state’s open meetings law following the 2022-2023 holiday water outage.
The city’s motion, filed recently in Buncombe County Superior Court, did not directly address whether it violated the state’s open meetings law with its Independent Review Committee, which investigated the cause of the failure that left thousands of residents and businesses without water for up to 11 days. The IRC met multiple times over several months, at times with city officials present, and made recommendations to the Asheville City Council, while denying journalists and the public access to the meetings…