To hear members tell it, Evans City council’s executive sessions have been leaking like a sieve for some time now — bad enough that council President Lee Dyer says he’s had entire conversations repeated to him verbatim.

Dyer and co-solicitor Sean Gallagher have taken a dim view of the leaks. Late last year borough officials said they wanted the talking to stop — enter the confidentiality agreement, which was signed Jan. 3 by six council members. By signing the agreement they pledged to never share executive session discussions with outsiders.

Mayor Dean Zinkhann and council member Paul Foster have refused to sign the document. Zinkhann said he had concerns about the agreement’s effect on his life over the long-term, and Foster was waiting on the advice of a lawyer.

Zinkhann and Foster are in the minority, but they’re setting an example other members of council should have followed. There’s a fine line in government between privileging information and transparency, and this agreement steps way over it.

State law already provides a way for public officials to hold private conversations. Executive sessions can be used to discuss contract negotiations, legal consultations, personnel matters and several other categories of subject matter.

But what the law pointedly doesn’t do is give municipalities mechanisms for punishing officials who share information from those meetings. Neither does the law prevent elected officials from revealing such information — and for good reason.

Not only are elected officials often in the best position to inform the public about wrongdoing and problems in government function, they have free speech rights too. And their constituents have a vested interest in them being able to speak their minds — especially if they find themselves in a situation where they are dissenting from the majority on a contentious or sensitive subject.

At the very least Evans City council members should have demanded more specific and limited restrictions before signing away their right to speak out. An agreement barring council members from divulging someone’s personal information, or the substance of ongoing contract and union negotiations, might be more reasonable.

In Pittsburgh a proposal floated late last year would have given the city authority to discipline council members who divulged “information determined to be confidential by the solicitor and have a probability to impair the ability of the solicitor to defend a claim or lawsuit.”

But a blanket ban on council members recounting anything discussed behind closed doors goes too far. It tramples on elected officials’ right to free speech and creates a situation where an elected official could be punished for speaking on an issue of public concern.

Council members should reconsider their actions and tear up this agreement.