Long delays, legally questionable fees and a controversial change in state law raised concerns about North Carolinians’ ability to access public records. Experts and advocates have suggestions for what lawmakers can do to improve transparency.
The state of North Carolina’s laws earned the General Assembly the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2024 “Black Hole Award,” which “is bestowed annually upon government institutions or agencies for acts of outright contempt of the public’s right to know.”
In Charlotte alone, more than 1,000 requests dating back to 2019 sit unfulfilled, according to an Observer analysis . Slow or no responses affect more than journalists — about 20% of requests are filed by individuals, a 2017 study by the Columbia Journalism Review found.
Vagueness about how quickly records must be provided under North Carolina’s public records law and whether requesters can be charged for services creates confusion and frustration, veteran First Amendment attorney Amanda Martin told The Charlotte Observer.
Then came a 2023 decision by the state legislature to exempt themselves from public records laws, which Martin described as “a significant problem and disappointment.”
“I think things may be getting worse,” said Martin, who spent 25 years as a lawyer for the North Carolina Press Association and serves as supervising attorney for Duke University’s First Amendment Clinic , of public records access.
Multiple public records advocates told the Observer that clarifying deadlines for responses and better staffing could improve the flow of public information.
North Carolina public records laws problems
North Carolina’s current law has “strengths,” Martin said, including that it applies to drafts and final documents.
But one of the biggest complaints she hears from people is the long wait to get their records.
North Carolina’s law says government agencies must provide records “as promptly as possible.” But unlike neighboring states such as South Carolina , Virginia and Georgia , it doesn’t set specific deadlines.
“Does ‘as promptly as possible’ mean an agency has to drop everything else to comply with a public records request, or does it mean they have to allocate a certain amount of time each week to fulfilling public records requests? It’s just unclear,” Martin said.
Long waits to receive documents are “one of the biggest issues” the North Carolina Open Government Coalition hears, too, the group’s immediate past president, Kym Meyer, said. There’s “not a super clear answer from the courts on” the legality of delays, she said.
“If it takes a year to get documents, then that’s almost like you’re denying the request,” she said.
Martin and Meyer also have concerns about agencies and municipalities imposing fees for records requests, something they said is becoming more common in North Carolina. Huntersville leaders, for example, voted unanimously in May to institute an $18-an-hour fee for time spent on records requests that take staff more than four hours to fulfill.
“That’s a problem, to have a statute that allows public officials to pick and choose who they’re going to charge and who they’re not going to charge,” Martin said.
Fees can be “a barrier to access,” Meyer said.
2023 change creates ‘black hole’
The situation worsened in 2023 when a provision in the state budget left it up to lawmakers to decide which of their own public records, if any, to reveal, attorney Mike Tadych said.
The SPJ said legislators “set another dangerous precedent by shirking” their obligation to transparency in its announcement of the Black Hole Award.
Howard Goldberg, who sits on the SPJ’s Freedom of Information Committee, told the Observer the “blatant” nature of North Carolina’s action stood out to the committee amid a number of “jaw dropping nominations.”
The change could, for example, limit journalists and citizens’ ability to look into how legislators handle consequential redistricting decisions, he noted. The Raleigh News & Observer tested the change earlier this year, requesting communications from all 170 members of the General Assembly. More than 70% did not respond.
“Public information should belong to the public, and lawmakers should not be exempting themselves from transparency or giving themselves more access than journalists or their constituents have to examine the workings of government,” said Goldberg, a longtime reporter and editor who worked at the Charlotte Observer before a decades-long run with the Associated Press.
Can North Carolina’s public records laws be improved?
“It’s important,” Goldberg said, for governments to make the process of getting records “as streamlined and efficient as possible.”
Clarifying the timeline for when state and local governments have to respond to requests and provide available records could help, Martin, Meyer and Tadych agreed. But concerns that imposing a set number of days would lead to longer waits for simple requests mean it’s not as simple as setting a five-, 10- or 30-day deadline.
Tadych suggested adding language saying agencies must respond “no later than” a certain number of days so requests “are not allowed to languish.”
Better staffing government agencies responsible for responding to records requests could help, too, Meyer suggested.
“If I could wave a magic wand, I would require that all units of government have the funding to adequately staff offices that could respond to public records,” she said.
Some lawmakers are taking notice of the need for potential changes, too.
A group of Democrats in Raleigh earlier this year tried to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot enshrining the right to access public records and meetings. In 2011, Republicans in the General Assembly proposed a similar constitutional amendment .
Neither bill advanced.
State Sen. Graig Meyer, who is Kym Meyer’s husband, told the News & Observer when Democrats introduced their proposal in June he didn’t expect it to move forward but said it was important nonetheless.
“We stand at a crucial moment for sustaining some of the fundamental tenets of democracy,” he said. “If the public can’t see what the public pays us to do, then we’re failing a fundamental test the public expects of us.”
A spokesperson for House Speaker Tim Moore did not respond to a request for comment on Democrats’ proposed amendment.
It’s important for legislators to ensure any changes in law don’t have unintended consequences such as overloading government staff, Charlotte City Council member Tariq Bokhari said.
Improving public records access “really is a bipartisan issue,” Kym Meyer said.
“It doesn’t benefit anyone in any particular party … It’s also really important to a functioning democracy,” she said.
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