PAWTUCKET –– The attorney general’s office is investigating allegations that the School Committee violated the state’s Open Meetings Law by voting in secret and neglecting to disclose what it discussed behind closed doors.

The allegations, made by Joseph C. Knight, a retired corrections officer running for School Committee, have injected an element of controversy into the committee election.

They have prompted Gordon M. Gould, the outgoing committee chairman, to warn that the controversy could spill over into committee meetings, causing the seven-member board to split into factions, if Knight, an endorsed candidate, is elected, as Gould expects.

For the past year, Knight, 53, has been something of a fixture at committee meetings, demanding that the committee specify on its agenda what subjects it is going to discuss in executive session, and insisting that it disclose any votes taken behind closed doors.

In an interview yesterday, Gould denied that the committee has violated the Open Meetings Law, as Knight has charged.

He criticized Knight for making personal attacks on School Supt. Hans W. Dellith and incumbent committee members during the public input portion of committee meetings, and said that, if harmony is going to prevail on the committee after the election, the attacks have to stop.

Knight sought to dispel the impression that he was personally attacking Dellith or committee members.

“I was not targeting anybody. My purpose was to inform parents and taxpayers what issues the School Committee was focusing on,” he said.

However, in a letter to Laura Marasco, the special assistant attorney general handling his Open Meetings Law complaints, Knight criticized the superintendent for claiming he had the power to control the agenda of committee meetings.

“Dr. Dellith stated that he was in charge of the School Committee agenda and he would remove any item he deemed to be inappropriate,” Knight wrote.

In another letter to Marasco, Knight quoted Gould as saying that no vote was needed to authorize Dellith to seek a refund from the Northern Rhode Island Collaborative because committee members had reached a “consensus” on the matter.

“As this alleged ‘consensus’ resulted in the introduction of a resolution on behalf of the Pawtucket School Department at the NRIC meeting, I believe in point of fact a vote was taken and not reported out of executive session after the committee reconvened,” Knight wrote.

The Northern Rhode Island Collaborative is a nonprofit organization that provides special-education services to Pawtucket and other school departments.

The resolution seeking a refund was presented at the collaborative meeting on March 25.

The committee never voted publicly to adopt the resolution, even though it involved a matter of great interest to the taxpayers, authorizing Dellith to get the collaborative to repay the $3.4-million surplus it accumulated by overcharging Pawtucket and nine other school districts, Knight asserted.

The School Department is projecting a major budget deficit. “The taxpayers are entitled to know what’s going on,” Knight said.

The Open Meetings Law violations Knight is alleging occurred on Nov. 6, Nov. 14, Dec. 11, Feb. 11 and March 11.

The committee neglected to disclose votes taken in executive sessions on those dates and posted agendas that failed to specify what was going to be discussed, he said.

The attorney general’s office has reviewed Knight’s complaints and determined they have enough merit to warrant further review, Michael J. Healey, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said yesterday.

His office is awaiting additional information from the school department’s lawyers, Healey added, before it determines whether violations of the Open Meetings Law took place.

jcastell@projo.com