RALEIGH – “I shouldn’t have to pay for that. You shouldn’t have to pay for that. The government should pay for it.”

I used to think comments like these were manufactured by political humorists strictly for laughs. But that was a couple of decades ago. Now, having spent the intervening years engaged in lots of public speaking and political debate, I know better. There are many North Carolinians who are, indeed, under the impression that “the government” has a pot of money from which to pay for things that the people of North Carolina would otherwise have to fund.

The misconception helps to explain public sentiment on a host of large-scale issues, such as health care and transportation. But it also colors the discussion of important policy matters that don’t involve massive amounts of money.

Take the subject of public-records requests. For years, North Carolina governments have sparred with media organizations, watchdog groups, and citizen activists about what governmental records must be supplied upon request, how long a reasonable request for records should take to fulfill, and who should cover the cost of assembling and copying the records.

In cases where litigation appears to be needed to pry public records out of the hands of government agencies, plaintiffs have had to weigh the potential value of the records against the legal costs of procuring them. Some of them have concluded that litigation was too expensive a remedy. Others have proceeded and “won,” only to regret the expenditure of thousands of dollars.

Not surprisingly, there has long been political support for a bill that would change state law to provide for the recovery of legal fees for North Carolinians who are denied public records and then successfully sue to recover them. It doesn’t make sense for citizens to have to expend extra money out of their own pockets to obtain public information to which they are legally entitled, just because a public employee is either misinformed about the public-record law or attempting to cover something up.

But hold on, say state and local government officials. There are at least two reasons why such a fee-recovery rule might not be in the interest of taxpayers.

First, what if a public official denies a public-records request in good faith? For example, what if a city attorney denies a reporter’s request for personnel data based on a written opinion from the state attorney general’s office, or on an opinion from the court of appeals that is later overturned by the supreme court? To allow for the recovery of legal fees in such cases would seem to be unfair.

Second, and more broadly, what sense does it make to compel state or local taxpayers to finance both sides of the litigation? The public official who mistakenly decides to withhold public information isn’t going to be paying the plaintiff’s legal fees out of his own pocket. The “government” isn’t going to pay, either. The taxpayers will.

My answer to the first objection is that it does make sense to exclude the recovery of legal fees when a state or local official bases the rejection of a public-records request on an official opinion from an appropriate judicial or executive-branch authority. That’s just not my answer – that’s the way the 2009 legislation in question, House Bill 1134, is written. (I do believe that the attorney general’s office itself needs to be vulnerable to penalties when it reads the law too narrowly, as it often does in my experience.)

My answer to the second objection is that it proves too much. Any just compensation paid to a citizen wronged by the government – be it in the denial of public records, an abuse of eminent domain, a wrongful criminal conviction, or some other action – will have to come from taxpayers. Public officials are still, in a sense, penalized for having made the mistake – their agency budgets get squeezed, they lost face, etc. And when public officials act in bad faith, knowing full well that they are violating the law, then they can and should be compelled to pay compensation out of their own personal funds. Again, HB 1134 has such a provision.

Of course, it is quite possible that the prospect of having to shell out tax money from their agency budgets will encourage public officials to be more forthcoming with public documents, which would reduce litigation and thus the risk of having to compensate plaintiffs. But even if providing for the recovery of legal fees leads to greater access to public records and somewhat-higher compliance costs for state and local government agencies, the policy would still be in the best interest of taxpayers in the long run. There are few more important priorities in public policy than ensuring open, honest, and accountable government.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation