State government still not open enough

Editorial by Burlington Times-News, November 17, 2015.

How open and honest is state government in North Carolina? Not very.

This in and of itself isn’t a shocking development. Government on all levels carries a weighty load of secrets that should really be in the public domain. We rant. We rave. We stamp our feet at the actions by local government boards here in Alamance County and elsewhere. Ultimately, we head to court if we can afford it. It’s almost like government thinks it’s some kind of game or like the coyote chasing the elusive road runner in Looney Tunes animation.

Now we learn officially that North Carolina’s state government isn’t very open from a new report by the Center for Public Integrity. It’s not like those late-night legislative sessions and closed committee meetings didn’t provide enough of a hint. But it’s good to get it in writing.

The shocking development? North Carolina is far from the worst offender nationally.

Sigh.

The center’s 2015 State Integrity Investigation gave our state a D grade. In part, that’s because there’s a pretty significant gulf between what the law requires and what state agencies actually do. State records laws are specific about what’s public and what’s not.

But heel-dragging in producing documents is routine. Consider the long-standing fight to get records from the University of North Carolina regarding cases of suspected academic fraud.

And no state official or board has the power to compel compliance. If you can’t get the documents you want, you’ve got to go to court, which many individuals can’t afford. And even when institutions like the news media do file suit, the courts move slowly.

Then there are the disclosures that lobbyists are required to make about spending, donations and other efforts to influence the passage of legislation. The disclosure laws are pretty good, but budget cuts in the past few years have eliminated nearly half of the staff charged with reviewing the reports. Bills can be passed and signed into law before the public knows what special interests were behind them.

And consider judicial oversight, which has all but collapsed behind a secret curtain. Until 2013, we had a state Judicial Standards Commission that disciplined judges for wrongdoing. Much of its proceedings were public. But the General Assembly handed judicial oversight to the state Supreme Court and made disciplinary hearings private. Case records are confidential unless the high court takes disciplinary action.

All of that is eye-opening and discouraging. But what’s really remarkable is that North Carolina’s D grade is pretty good, if we put it in national context. We rank 18th out of 50 states. And if you grade on a curve, a D becomes a B, because not one state got an A or a B and only three got C or C-minus grades - Alaska, California and Connecticut.

We’re hoping our lawmakers will feel a new incentive to create more open government, thanks to the UNC Board of Governors’ actions in closed meetings that led to the selection of a new system president and substantial raises for a dozen chancellors. We learn only later, and without public input, that the board was very divided over those raises. It took legal action by the media to find this out. It really shouldn’t be this difficult.

The secrecy infuriated top legislative leaders, who had called for an open selection process and imposed stringent spending limits on the university system.

We hope their outrage leads to cutting the fog of secrecy that hides too much of our government.

That’s probably too much to ask.

Parts of this editorial are from Tribune News Service publications.

http://www.thetimesnews.com/article/20151117/OPINION/151119083/15233/OPINION/?Start=2