Defending the indefensible is never an easy proposition, but Hartford School Board members are not doing themselves any favors by responding contemptuously to residents’ misgivings about the lucrative severance package the board conferred on longtime Superintendent Tom DeBalsi earlier this summer to secure his departure.

Take, for instance, Peter Merrill’s comment about the public backlash, addressed to 45 or so people who attended the board’s Aug. 28 meeting: “If any of you think we’re so stupid that we would not have known what the reaction was going to be, think again.”

Memo to: Peter Merrill

From: the Valley News Editorial Board

Re: A more civil non-response

“We anticipated that our action would result in some unhappiness, and we regret that this proved to be the case.”

With that said, no amount of lipstick is going to prettify this pig of a decision. While much of the process and rationale that led to DeBalsi’s departure with nearly a quarter of a million dollars in taxpayer money remains shrouded in secrecy, enough has emerged to suggest that procedural irregularities were rife. Which in turn calls into question whether the board’s action constituted a legitimate and binding exercise of its authority.

It appears that during a June 12 executive session, held annually to evaluate the superintendent’s performance, the board in some fashion authorized Chairman Kevin Christie to negotiate a severance agreement with DeBalsi and to hire as his interim successor Caty Sutton, then the district’s curriculum director.

According to Merrill, “no action was taken” at that meeting, and indeed no record exists of a vote being taken, our colleague Christina Dolan has reported. On the other hand, board member Nancy Russell said, “My comment on how I voted is ‘no comment.’ It’s none of your business how I voted.” And Doug Heavisides characterized his vote as “privileged information.”

Beyond the extraordinary assertion that elected board members have no obligation to explain their decision to spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer money, their comments strongly suggest that indeed some kind of a vote was taken. If not, by what authority did Christie proceed?

According to Christie, he took a straw poll of board members’ sentiments at the June 12 meeting, which he said constituted authorization to conduct the negotiations. But we note that the board’s own policy provides that, “Decisions or instructions of individual board members, officers, or committees are not binding on the Superintendent except in rare instances when the board has specifically authorized such exercise of authority.” It seems to us that specific authorization would have had to come in the form of a formal vote.

Moreover, the board’s policy defining the role of the chairman specifies that, “The authority of the chair consists in making decisions that fall within topics covered by board policies on Governance Process and Board-Management Delegation, with the exception of (a) employment or termination of a Superintendent and (b) areas where the board specifically delegates portions of this authority to others.” This rule is not easy to parse, but it sure sounds as though the board chairman’s role in the hiring and firing of superintendents is limited.

All this exists alongside the question of whether the process complied with Vermont’s open meeting statutes. The fact that no formal vote was taken in public to ask for or accept DeBalsi’s resignation or to hire Sutton until July 18, a full two weeks after the fact — and that only as part of the board’s regular “consent agenda” — strikes us as highly problematic. At the very least, the board ought to make public whatever legal opinion it obtained validating this unusual procedure.

And then there’s the shifting rationale for DeBalsi’s departure with a year remaining on his contract. It was initially characterized as a resignation, allowing him to return to his roots in teaching; then later it was described as his retirement, with the extraordinary severance package being a reward for his distinguished service to the school district. Which made the agreement seem all the more curious when it came to light that it imposed strict nondisclosure and no-comment terms on both parties.

The lack of transparency, the shifting narrative and the fact that the “negotiation” conducted by Christie ended in surrender — that is, granting to DeBalsi all salary and benefits that would have been due him had he been allowed to fulfill the remaining year of his contract — have given rise to the suspicion in some quarters that DeBalsi was in possession of information that the board was at pains to keep under wraps.

No school district can remain healthy while operating under such a cloud; the board needs to dispel it, sooner rather than later.