The Cincinnati Board of Education has found a legal way to keep public business out of the public view, according to a ruling last week by the Ohio Supreme Court.

When it needed to hire a new superintendent last year, the school board contracted with the consulting firm, International Center on Collaboration Inc., which in turn hired the search firm of Proact Search Inc. The consultants then came up with an elaborate, and legal, ruse to keep the names of the job applicants from becoming public.

After culling the applicant pool to a handful of finalists, Proact had the candidates come to Cincinnati and register in hotels under assumed names. They were told to bring their application materials, resumes, etc., to present to the school board during face-to-face interviews. At the end of the interviews, the candidates were instructed to take all their materials home with them. The reason for all this rigmarole was to ensure that as far as the "public record" was concerned, they didn't exist.

The court, in denying an Enquirer challenge to this process, said public records are those that are "kept" in the course of public business. Because no records of the candidates were "kept" by the school board or the consultants, the candidates' identities can remain secret. The only names ever released were that of Alton Frailey, the winner of the board's secrecy sweepstakes, and another candidate, who chose not to play the game.

According to the board and its consultants, this secrecy was necessary because an open process, during which the names (and qualifications) of candidates would have been made public, might have kept the best applicants from applying. Top candidates would be unwilling to offend their current employers by publicly applying for a job elsewhere, according to this reasoning.

We didn't accept that argument then and do not accept it now. Top-level public jobs are just that, "public." How is the public to know that the search process is fair and thorough if it is not permitted to know who the candidates are?

Frailey certainly now is on the short list of any recruiting firm looking for superintendent candidates. The members of the Cincinnati School Board know it and should not be surprised, or offended, if and when he is approached about other job openings.

Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the process used by the school board, other public bodies and consulting firms are sure to duplicate it. This thwarts the obvious intent of the Public Records Act, which is to ensure that the public has a clear view of what its elected officials are doing. The General Assembly should act quickly to change the law to remove the blinders that the Cincinnati School Board has managed to slip over the public's eyes.