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The Greensboro City Council will keep its search for the next city manager closed.

What the public doesn't know, the council presumes, can't possibly hurt it.

That's unfortunate. It's also wrongheaded. This is a process that ought to be open to public scrutiny and input.

Especially so, given the tumult and controversy surrounding the stormy tenure and eventual ouster of the previous manager, Mitchell Johnson.

And especially so, given the public's obvious, repeated requests for local government that is more open and transparent.

Ironically, the consultant involved in the recruitment of a new manager, Colin Baenziger, had advised the council that an open process would be the best path. But he also warned that such disclosure would discourage some candidates.

If it did, so be it. Whomever the council hires will have to deal with a community that is known for its skepticism and tough questions. It would be instructive to see how candidates fared in such an atmosphere.

The council is obviously unmoved by that logic. It is also unmoved by previous, more open searches by other elected bodies that not only didn't cause the Apocalypse, they worked. For instance, in the search last year for a new superintendent, the Guilford County school board made known the names of the two finalists.

Those finalists, Maurice "Mo" Green and Shirley Prince, superintendent of Scotland County Schools, spent several insightful hours meeting with the community before the school board hired Green.

Be all that as it may, the council still said no to a similar approach, and it wasn't even close. A group that rarely agrees when it comes to big-ticket issues voted unanimously, 6-0, to keep the public guessing (members Trudy Wade, Goldie Wells and Mike Barber did not attend Tuesday's meeting).

That's not good for the council, the city or the new manager-to-be.

The people's business ought to be open to the people.