When it comes to transparency in the NC legislature, foxes are guarding the hen house
Monday is a federal holiday recognizing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Enjoy this weekend and perhaps ponder why many of us have three days off.
And please spend time with The News & Observer.
Our hope in 2024 is to provide you with a heightened awareness and cadence of public accountability journalism affecting the Triangle and/or North Carolina. Our motivation is simple but sincere: To look after your interests.
That’s why state politics reporter Avi Bajpai and Capitol Bureau Chief Dawn B. Vaughan worked on a special report that tests how lawmakers respond to the state’s transparency law.
Spoiler Alert: This isn’t one of the 12-part Netflix series that you need to binge-watch for 15 hours for an unsatisfying cliffhanger. Your lawmakers — the ones you elected — lived up to the public’s probable expectation.
Avi’s reporting offers the background and premise: The N&O requested all 170 members of the North Carolina House and Senate to provide all of their communications from Sept. 19, the day that Republican leaders reached an agreement on the state budget after months of negotiations.
Fox Manages Hen House Law
Buried in the new state budget is a provision that fully exempts lawmakers from North Carolina’s public records law. Call it the Fox Manages Hen House Law, and you can understand why there was swift, bipartisan growling from the public.
Want a public record, such as emails, from a state lawmaker? You can request it. But the lawmaker decides if you get it.
Elon University professor Brooks Fuller, who leads the North Carolina Open Government Coalition, told Dawn the new law is “a massive backslide in public access to information.” He said the law means that “there’s absolutely no incentive to share information with the public unless it benefits the specific legislator.”
If Brooks — or any educator — graded lawmakers solely on participation, The N&O’s report shows publicly chosen legislators have created quite the private campus at 16 W. Jones St. in Raleigh.
The report shows 38 lawmakers — 12 Republicans and 26 Democrats — provided The N&O with copies of emails from Sept. 19.
Grab a calculator or use your phone’s calculator app. Tap in “38” for the number of participating lawmakers, hit the “divide” button and type in “170” for the number of legislative seats in the House and Senate combined. You’ll get a value that equates to 22.352941 percent, which rounded any way equates to a grade of F- squared to infinity.
Essentially, lawmakers deserve a level of detention reserved for juvenile students already serving double-secret probation.
No emails all day?
Avi compiled the emails received from lawmakers and put them into a readable file available on newsobserver.com sites. The N&O published all of the emails received, redacting only personal information of constituents who wrote to lawmakers.
The grade of “22” might be generous. According to The N&O’s reporting, lawmakers responded this way:
Some provided just a handful of emails.
Few lawmakers turned over any direct communications with staff, fellow members of the General Assembly or other officials in state or local government.
Some responded to The N&O by saying that they were withholding emails exchanged with other lawmakers or staff because of “legislative privilege.”
Others said they reviewed their records and didn’t find any emails from the day in question.
Hmmm. No emails all day. Take a look at your in-box and tell us if that happens to you in any given hour.
This is why we’re launching “NC Reality Check,” an ongoing series that focuses on holding those in power accountable and shining a light on public issues that affect the Triangle or North Carolina. You can contribute questions and story ideas by email at realitycheck@newsobserver.com.
Dawn’s story on how lawmakers control what the public knows kicks off “NC Reality Check” and is a smart, context-rich explainer on the cone of silence that public officials have created. (We’re borrowing “Reality Check” from our smart colleagues at the Kansas City Star because it makes sense.)
We’ll continue to monitor the willingness of lawmakers to be transparent. At the time we posted the stories from Avi and Dawn on newsobserver.com, 34 lawmakers had responded. After we published, four other lawmakers responded.
That means the original participation grade was 20 percent.
Bill Church is executive editor of The News & Observer.
