Easy, affordable access to public records is a must for open government

Editorial by Wilmington Star-News, December 2, 2013.

During both of his gubernatorial campaigns, Pat McCrory promised better transparency and said he would make it easier for the public to know what is going on in state government. Apparently he left out the disclaimer – “as long as they’re willing to pay for it.”

McCrory’s administration is setting a chilling precedent that could make it more difficult for average North Carolinians to get copies of public records that by law belong to the people. They’re your records, compiled and stored by people paid with your tax dollars. But McCrory and his top administrators have interpreted state law to mean they can charge exorbitant fees for fulfilling public records requests.

The Public Records Law requires that copies of records be made available as soon as possible after a request is made and at a cost that covers only the disk or paper needed. The presumption is that tax dollars already are paying for the time of the public servant who fulfills the request.

There is a vague provision for additional charges if a request is so burdensome and unmanageable that it requires additional expertise or extensive amounts of time. In the case of emails and other records that are routinely kept, however, that provision should not apply.

In most cases, the information is already in someone’s computer or otherwise readily accessible. McCrory’s people have added their own interpretation that anything taking more than 30 minutes – a magical figure that is not mentioned in the law – will be billed at $21.73 to $54.47 an hour, depending on the level of employee.

The Department of Health and Human Services has been particularly insistent on applying the charge, probably because nosy reporters have been poking around trying to find records relating to highly paid staff and lucrative, no-bid contracts. Reporters are often the ones who make records requests, because it’s their job to find out how government agencies are operating. But the law was not written for the media; it was written to ensure that the public has access to information about their government and its operations.

Emails, which are public as long as written on a government-owned account, have been a particular source of contention. After news media outlets sued former Gov. Mike Easley for famously “chunking” emails to and from his office, his successor, Beverly Perdue, signed an executive order requiring all state government emails to be archived for 10 years and readily available. There is an online manual outlining for employees how to get those records. Yet state officials continue to insist that these records are just too hard to compile.

Here’s a thought: There is no good reason to require residents or reporters to go through channels to get most information. Most records should be posted online, with a user-friendly index so that people can do their own searches. That would certainly save a lot of staff time; any paper records needed would be easier to locate and copy.

And while they’re busy trying to get in and out of the short session without doing anything that will harm their chances for re-election, the Honorables ought to consider either eliminating or very narrowly defining the clause about added charges.

The people have already paid for this information, and they are already paying the salaries of those who are charged with fulfilling public records requests. They shouldn’t have to pay twice.