Governor Perdue has vetoed her first bill, House Bill 104,
an Act to Clarify Legislative Confidentiality. The bill proposes to regulate
bill drafting and information requests, considering them confidential and
exempt from public records disclosure.
The most significant proposed change in current law is that
any request made by a legislator to a state agency would be confidential and
all supporting documents would be kept secret and not considered a public
record. ? 120-131.1(a2) of the
bill spells it out:
A request, and any supporting documents, made to
an agency employee by alegislative employee pursuant to G.S. 120-130 or
G.S. 120-131 is confidential. An agency employee who receives such a request or
who learns of such a request made to another agency employee shall reveal the
existence of the request only to other agency employees of the agency to the
extent that it is necessary to respond to the request and to the agency
employee’s supervisor. All documents prepared by the agency employee in
response to the request of a legislative employee under this subsection are
also confidential and shall be kept confidential in the same manner as the
original request. The request, any supporting documents to the request, and any
documents prepared by the agency employee in response to a request under this subsection
are not “public records” as defined by G.S. 132-1.
Governor Perdue has claimed she is in favor of a more
transparent state government. JLF obviously agrees. Vetoing this bill is a move to keep the legislative process
? beginning with research and drafting of bills ? more open. And that is a good thing.
Of note: Since North Carolina?s governor was granted veto
power in 1997, it has only been used ten times, including Bev?s today.