Attorney General Roy Cooper was on target recently when he said there should be either civil or criminal consequences for officeholders who refuse to abide by the state’s public records and open-meetings laws.
North Carolina has fairly strong laws. During his days in the General Assembly, Cooper pushed for them, but he and fellow legislators did not give these laws much bite. Provisions allow citizens to sue boards for violations of the laws, and a judge can even vacate the actions of boards that meet illegally. There’s nothing in the laws, however, that will lead to a fine or community service for a city councilman, for example, who refuses to obey the law.
That kind of behavior happens all the time. In fact, it’s so bad that the N.C. Press Association and Cooper’s department are preparing a handbook for distribution to public officials that will explain the law.
Those explanations could be useful because it is clear that many government agencies don’t understand the law. Cooper, in a recent interview, for example, confirmed that he regularly hears complaints about how police departments treat news reporters and other citizens. Under the law, the public has the right to see many police documents. But local police departments and sheriffs often refuse to release them.
Open meetings and public records slow down the government. It’s much easier and quicker to get government work done if the public is not watching, if reporters aren’t asking questions and telling everyone in town what is going on. But without openness, there can be no democracy.
For too long, North Carolina has treated violations of the open meetings and public-records laws as matters of minor concern. It is time to change that attitude and put some bite into laws that are there to protect our rights to see what the government is doing to us.
— Winston-Salem Journal
Judge Gets It Right
We suppose it is only in keeping with the walking-on-the-edge-of-legality nature that has marked virtually every step of the state lottery that a hair-splitting court ruling this week cleared the path for ticket sales to get under way next week.
For the record, this newspaper backed the idea of a lottery. For the record, we haven’t been happy with the skullduggery that has surrounded it, from the vote to approve it to issues regarding its commission membership to the ethical cloud that has formed over some of its proponents.
In this light, a decision by State Superior Court Judge Henry Hight seems fitting. Hight shot down arguments that the law that birthed the lottery was unconstitutional. There are methods proscribing how taxes should be implemented in the North Carolina Constitution. The lottery law didn’t adhere to them. Lottery opponents argued that since 35 cents or so of every dollar generated by the new lottery will go to education, it’s a tax.
Hight said nope, it’s a voluntary contribution.
In his ruling, Hight wrote, “A tax is a forced contribution to government which has no necessary immediate relationship to a benefit conferred.’’ He’s got a point, as no one is going to be forced to play the lottery, and there is an “immediate relationship” to a benefit in that there’s a chance you can win something when you play.
The ruling is a setback for a group led by one-time state Supreme Court Justice Robert Orr, who heads The North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law. In a statement, Orr said, “We are in the process of talking with our clients and our board of directors about the next step or steps to be taken.’’
Technically, Judge Hight seems right in his ruling. But this is sure to add another chapter in the book of controversies that have marked the state lottery saga. It’s reached the point that we’d expect nothing less.
— Asheville Citizen-Times
A Flimsy FEMA Secret
As hurricane season approaches, more than 87,000 families who lost their homes in last year’s assaults are still scrunched in lightweight FEMA trailers.
If a serious storm hit these little tin cans on wheels, they might end up at the bottom of the ocean or up in Oz. All their residents will have to be evacuated.
Trying to prepare for whatever might happen, scientists at the University of Southern Mississippi asked FEMA for the location of trailers in their state.
FEMA refused.
Not because it’s trying to protect itself from more potentially embarrassing revelations, needless to say. A flack explained — this is what passes for logic in the Department of Homeland Security — that revealing the location of the trailers would invade the privacy of their residents.
And compared with privacy, what’s a little death and destruction?
Wilmington Star-News
