State lawmakers returned to the Legislative Building this week, but their business was limited to overriding a gubernatorial veto on a bill involving boat trailers. They could not consider other issues, such as a bill from the regular 2008 legislative session that would have forced government agencies to pay the legal bills when they lost public records lawsuits. Becki Gray, vice president for outreach at the John Locke Foundation, followed the bill closely. She discussed the legislation with Donna Martinez for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)
Martinez: First of all, Becki, why was this bill so important to you and to North Carolinians?
Gray: Well, I think it’s important to everybody who’s interested in state government, and taxpayers who were paying for that government, and to let us know what our government is doing and to provide some avenues to get that information. The bill did two things. It created an agency within the [N.C.] attorney general’s office that would deal with open government issues, and it also provided a legal remedy for plaintiffs who would have to sue government agencies in order to get public records. The public records are supposed to be available to anybody who wants them; they’re public records. And when an agency withholds those, or does not disclose that information, and a plaintiff would have to sue in order to get it, they would have been able to get their attorney fees back for doing that.
Martinez: In fact, that’s happened a few times in North Carolina. Organizations have sued.
Gray: Right, exactly – for things that their government is supposed to be doing anyway. So that’s what this bill would have provided. A Democrat, Sen. David Hoyle, sponsored this bill in the [N.C.] Senate. It got a unanimous vote. As it moved through the committees, there was a little bit of concern, and some rumors, that they were going to take out the plaintiff-recovery part of it and leave only the open government agency establishment in there. But it got through the Senate just like it was, with both pieces in there. We were very pleased with that. Then it went over to the [N.C.] House.
Martinez: And what happened in the House?
Gray: As you know, bills have to pass both houses, and it just never came up. Joe Hackney just kind of put it in his back pocket.
Martinez: Joe Hackney, who is Speaker of the House.
Gray: Right, yes, a Democrat from Orange County, a first-term Speaker of the House, and an attorney by trade — just kind of put it in his back pocket and said you know, we’re just not going to deal with it, there’s not time to deal with it – which is just an excuse because the last couple of days of the session there were all kinds of bills that sailed through. So there was plenty of time had he had the will to do it. He just didn’t want to do it. And I was hearing things from opponents of the bill – you know, this isn’t a good idea because it’s going to cost the taxpayer money. Well…
Martinez: That’s an interesting argument we don’t hear that often.
Gray: Exactly. I mean, they just didn’t want to do it.
Martinez: Do you think it’s going to come up next year?
Gray: I hope so. I spoke to Sen. Hoyle after this happened, after session, and asked him about that. And he was very disappointed that it did not pass as well, and said that he hoped to pursue it. So I don’t know, maybe between now and January, or certainly during the long session. During the long session, I think the argument that there’s not time to explore this is not going to be a valid argument.
Martinez: Yes, that will be interesting.
Gray: So I would certainly hope so. There was a lot of interest in this, so I hope so. And as we talk more and more about transparency and government, and as the news media and people who are interested in state government start to discover the secrecy and the behind-the-doors deals and all of those things that are going on, I think that people are starting to just demand more openness and transparency in their government.
Martinez: Let’s talk a little bit more about one of the components of that bill, Becki. You mentioned it a little bit earlier. There would be a unit set up in the attorney general’s office to handle these issues.
Gray: Right.
Martinez: Now, I know that you and the Locke Foundation are very interested in transparency in government.
Gray: Right.
Martinez: Doing a lot of projects on that issue. Tell us why you think that [unit] is a good thing – a new unit in the AG’s office.
Gray: Well, I think any time you’re talking about transparency in government and opening the system up so that taxpayers – the people who are paying the bill for these things – can actually get access to it, I think that’s clearly a good idea. What I understand about this, this unit in the AG’s office, is that those positions, the people that are employed, are already in place. This would just be gathering them under one unit so that there would be a place dedicated for open government, which was one reason why the bill, I think, passed at least the Senate – it didn’t create a new government agency so much as just a little bit of a reorganization, which I thought was a good thing. The other thing is, we’ve been working at the Locke Foundation. We have a grant and have been working on a transparency-in-government project that will be ongoing over the next – probably year or more. The initial phase of it — and this information is on our Web site [www.johnlocke.org] —what we did is, we went in and we looked at county budgets, the state budget, agency budgets. You know, where is your money going? And that information is not available, for the most part. The study is online if you’d like to take a look at it. But we went and did a study of what’s available out there, what can you get to, what is transparent.
Martinez: You’re talking about budgets, for example, at the local level – county government, city government.
Gray: Yeah, absolutely – county government, municipalities, as well as the state government. If you want to know where your money goes in the judicial system in North Carolina, right now there really is no easy way to find that information. Our task was – is the information there and is it easy to find? Could a person with sort of regular computer skills find this information? And a lot of the agencies are not doing a good job with that at all.
Martinez: You know, that’s an interesting point, I think, Becki. I always find it curious that, for example, many people don’t seem to realize what an impact local government has on their daily lives. Access to those budget documents at the local level is so important. And I do this for a living and I find it very hard to come up with information.
Gray: Right, right, exactly. Well, for example, in Wake County — and I know in a lot of counties across the state — our property taxes have just increased dramatically. I just got my bill and it was not a happy day.
Martinez: One of the lucky ones, right!
Gray: At any rate, you can’t go to the Wake County Web site and find out where that money is going to go. And I think when people pay taxes, they should be able to find out how that money is being spent. And that’s not being done in North Carolina. So we’re looking at that, at the John Locke Foundation, and there is – what we’re finding is, we’re talking to people within state agencies, within state government, on both sides of the aisle. There are people who are very interested in making this information more available. And there are some models out there. Some other states have introduced a web portal model and format, where you can go online and search things. You look for contracts within state government. It’s almost as if you open up the textbook for these governments and you, as the taxpayer, can find out where that money is going.
Martinez: That sounds like a really interesting idea. Becki, what we’re talking about here is really being able to access that information once it’s a done deal, once the budgets are done. Let’s talk a bit, though, about what happens in terms of transparency when, for example, the state budget is being put together. There have been a lot of people who have been raising their hands and saying hey, wait a second, this really isn’t an open process.
Gray: Right. And that’s exactly right. It’s a committee process, and it sort of slogs through the legislative process as the General Assembly meets. But when push comes to shove and they’re down to the wire, there’s all kinds of things that show up in the budget that nobody knew about. There are sort of nebulous indications of where money is going to go – there’s not really a clear explanation of it. You know, a reasonable person looking through it really does not know where that money is going.
Martinez: What it appears, at least to those of us on the outside Becki, is that there’s really maybe about a dozen people or so in the state legislature, who are controlling things.
Gray: Right. And then it gets down to where it’s really two people controlling it. The Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate are the ones that generally make those final decisions. So what you have is, you have elected officials — you know, one man, one vote — each of these members of the House of Representatives and Senate are supposed to be representing somebody’s viewpoint, and that’s not being done.