As the CHORD project stumbled on, its completion dates as reliable as elastic on the cheaper brands of underwear, we finally reached a point just one week ago when the delays, cost over-runs etc and etc would be put under the microscope by our elected representatives on the ten strong CHORD project board.

We couldn’t rewrite history, but at least we would understand the how and the why of it. But came the hour and came the day, two things happened to derail the commitment to transparency and openness enshrined in the council constitution and promised by the new administration after a shocking report on its competence from Audit Scotland.

One was that the CHORD project board chairman, whose resignation had already been tabled, had to unresign because not sufficient councillors bothered to turn up to make the meeting quorate. You might reasonably wonder why, given that being on this board has not proved particularly onerous in terms of attendance. The last meeting was June and the one before summer of 2012.

And then, when the board reached the agenda items for which we had all been waiting, they invoked a technicality from legislation covering commercial confidentiality and closed their doors to press and public alike. So much for transparency. Both this newspaper and individual citizens were reduced to using Freedom of Information legislation to try and prise out the facts and figures which self evidently deserve to be in the public domain. It is, after all the public and the town’s traders, who have borne the brunt of the serial inconvenience.

At least one of these requests has already been refused, and refused in terms which frankly give gobbledegook a bad name. Let me give you a flavour courtesy of the response received by one of our readers from the grandly named ‘special projects officer, Governance and Law’: Enlightened? Thought not. Me neither. This sorry state of affairs unfolded in the week a further communiqué came in an Accounts Commission report, provoked by Audit Scotland’s findings covered by the Advertiser in some detail last week.

The latest damning verdict on Argyll and Bute said this: “The quality of leadership of the council has been inadequate. The current political management arrangements are not fit for purpose.

“The role that the full council plays is unsustainable and progress in securing effective scrutiny has also been inadequate.”  As a result, another audit will be carried out in six months time to find out if the new administration can make good its promises to bring sanity, co-operation, and some strategic vision to the equation.

In the meantime, the public needs to know what has caused the delays in the CHORD project. There may be a perfectly acceptable explanation. But we need to have one.