More on that bill about public-records requests

Becki blogged this morning about House Bill 1134, which is intended to make it easier for North Carolinians to obtain public records from government agencies by involving the Attorney General’s office and, in certain circumstances, allowing citizens to recover their legal costs should they sue successfully to obtain public records.

First off, I’ll recommend Scott Mooneyham recent column on the issue. As a longtime reporter at the state and local levels of government, Scott has plenty of experience dealing with public records and open-meetings disputes. He relates some personal stories: 

Nearly
two decades ago, I trooped to the office of the then-superintendent of
Goldsboro City Schools to let him know that I could see nothing in the
open meetings law that would allow the school board to debate behind
closed doors a measure that would lead to merger of the system.

That
night, the school board did it anyway, deciding the issue in a closed
session. The next day, I wrote two stories for the Goldsboro
News-Argus, one about school merger and one about the board violating
the open meetings law.

A couple of years later, I would
regularly argue with the lawyer for the Cumberland County school board
about that board’s proclivity for closed sessions under questionable
circumstances.

Sometime later, while attending a social
gathering at my mother-in-law’s home, I ran into the late Stubbs Hight,
who for three decades was Vance County’s attorney. Hight was charming
fellow, and before long we started chatting about government meetings
and closed sessions.

He was blunt. Essentially, he thought
closed meetings were stupid. A good reporter would find out what
happened anyway. A lawyer could advise clients to follow the law, but
couldn’t make them take the advice.

Perhaps increasing the
likelihood of financial consequences will make at least a few elected
officials more apt to take some that advice.

Second, as I explained in a column I wrote back in April, the legal-fees element of the bill is reasonable even though it may cost taxpayers more in the short run.