Getting Charlotte records may take weeks — or years. Council questions city’s transparency

More than 1,500 open records requests filed with the City of Charlotte in the last five years languish unfulfilled, according to a Charlotte Observer review of the city’s open data portal , which tracks requests filed since 2019.

Among them: a 2020 request seeking text messages and emails between local and state leaders about Centene’s plan to spend $1 billion on a new campus in Charlotte — a deal that ultimately fell apart — as well as years-old requests looking for contract bids, legal settlements for police misconduct and fire code violations.

An Observer records request for a now-failed deal to move Charlotte FC’s headquarters to the former Eastland Mall went unfilled for more than two years until the day before an interview with Charlotte City Manager Marcus Jones.

The delays have drawn the attention of some city leaders. City staff say they’re taking steps to address the backlog and improve the system amid a surging number of requests.

“What we’re trying to do is just not throw your head in the sand and not trying to comply. We’re trying to do a much better job of it,” Jones said.

But some city leaders and experts still have concerns at a time when North Carolina’s changing public records law is facing scrutiny and City Council members are raising broader questions about transparency in Charlotte.

‘A delay tantamount to denial’

State law says records “shall be produced as promptly as possible,” but unlike some neighboring states, it doesn’t set a deadline. And it doesn’t say whether agencies have to “drop everything” to fulfill requests, attorney Amanda Martin said.

“It’s just unclear,” 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 .

An Observer analysis found 1,577 open records requests were unfulfilled out of 12,725 in the city’s open data portal as of early September. The vast majority — 1,422 — were labeled as “submitted to departments.” An additional 86 were labeled “assigned to individuals,” 65 were classified as “legacy unresolved request,” 13 were under “legal review” and four were categorized as “pending requestor response.”

That includes requests to various city departments, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police, Charlotte Fire and the Charlotte Area Transit System.

In comparison, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ public records portal shows just 10 open requests out of 1,871 in the portal. Mecklenburg County has received 463 records requests so far in 2024 and has 71 open requests, according to county spokesman Andrew Fair.

The backlog affects more than just media outlets.

About 20% of public records requests are filed by individuals, compared to 7.6% by journalists, a 2017 study by the Columbia Journalism Review found.

Folks without a background in journalism or law often face the biggest challenges navigating delays with getting records, potential fees and questions about what is and isn’t available under public records law, said Kym Meyer, the immediate past president of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition .

But the biggest challenge individuals face, according to Martin, “is not getting the proper respect from public officials or from public agencies.”

“A number of times when a citizen requests something, it’s not provided. Maybe they wait a while, maybe they make another request that doesn’t get provided. But when a lawyer gets involved, the response is different,” she said. “And that’s inappropriate. A public agency or a public official should treat citizens the same way they treat organizations or attorneys.”

It can take news organizations, including the Observer, years to get records, too.

When Tepper Sports and Entertainment confirmed in July 2022 it was pulling out of plans to build a youth academy and soccer fields at the former Eastland Mall site, it set off a chain reaction of questions and consternation.

It took more than a year of contentious debate for the city to land another project for the site. At the time of TSE’s announcement, a high-ranking city official told the Observer “no one at the city knows why” the decision was made. The Observer filed an open records request with Charlotte in July 2022 for more details.

But after more than two years, the Observer received no records, a delay that was likely grounds for a lawsuit “to compel production of the records” under North Carolina law, attorney Mike Tadych said.

The Observer reached out multiple times about the status of the request — in August 2022, October 2022, December 2022 and June 2024 — and was told most times the city was working to fulfill the request. One of the inquiries received no response. The Observer also received an email from the city in April 2024 asking if the outlet still wanted the information, which an editor confirmed.

Extended waits for public records such as the Eastland information are “a delay tantamount to denial,” Tadych said.

Less than 24 hours before a scheduled interview with Jones and City Clerk Stephanie Kelly about the Eastland request and other delays, the Observer received some records. But many of them were from outside the requested time frame. In response to follow-up questions, the city provided additional documents days later.

The Observer specifically asked for emails, text messages and other communications sent or received by certain city leaders during the days leading up to and immediately following TSE’s announcement. But the outlet received just an email from city communications staff outlining talking points for council members and a handful of emails about other issues at the Eastland site.

Asked why the request produced scant written communications about TSE’s decision, city spokesman Jason Schneider said the city wasn’t withholding any records. City staff called City Council members “to let them know what’s going on and brief them verbally.”

Howard Goldberg, who sits on the Society of Professional Journalists’ Freedom of Information Committee , called the long wait for the Eastland request concerning.

“Officials have always been able to devise excuses, loopholes and workarounds to evade public records laws. But when there’s a case where experienced journalists who know how to frame a request are rebuffed or face long delays, I’d be very suspicious,” said Goldberg, who worked at the Observer before spending decades at the Associated Press .

Jones acknowledged “it doesn’t sound good at all” when requests take more than two years to fulfill.

“We’re trying to do a much better job of it, and there are going to be some requests that we’re not able to release immediately, but it’s not because we’re trying not to give you information,” he said.

Kelly said a two-year wait “may seem like a long time” but claimed the city releases information “as we are allowed to.”

Asked whether prolonged waits leave the city open to legal action, Kelly said North Carolina’s law “is very broad” and that the clerk’s office works closely with the city attorney’s office to ensure compliance.

‘Very frustrating’ questions about transparency

It’s difficult for elected leaders to assess whether the city is doing its public records job since they’re not experts, City Council member Tariq Bokhari said. Some requests are difficult to fulfill because they’re broad, and the city must weigh confidentiality against other legal requirements, he noted.

“Speaking very broadly … there’s just kind of a natural tendency to withhold information,” the District 6 Republican said.

Bokhari has “broader” concerns about city staff not being transparent with elected leaders when they’re considering major initiatives such as $650 million in Bank of America Stadium renovations and the recent Red Line purchase and transportation deal votes .

“This has been a historic problem that has existed, and it is very frustrating, especially at certain times with things that are high stakes,” he said.

Bokhari said the council has failed to take action despite expressing frustration with a lack of transparency. It will take “a majority of (council members) to step up and say no” to the way things have operated in order to change things, he believes.

“We could step up and have a policy conversation,” he said.

Council member Dimple Ajmera, who also raised questions about transparency during the stadium and transit deal votes, requested at a Sept. 9 council meeting city leaders get an update from staff on how they’re working to address the backlog of records requests.

Council member LaWana Mayfield said at the same meeting the council also needs an update on a backlog of meeting minutes . Charlotte has a years-long backlog of minutes from City Council meetings due to staffing shortages, the Observer reported previously.

Bokhari said the city should explore new technologies such as AI transcription services that can help with records requests and meeting minutes.

“This is 2024 … One of the worst things that is an example of this on our side is our inability to embrace these technologies,” he said.

Being transparent is “fundamental to building trust with our community,” Ajmera told the Observer.

“Recent discussions surrounding unfulfilled open records requests highlight the pressing need for our city to improve its transparency practices,” she said.

Asked what the City Council can do to improve transparency, the at-large Democrat said, “The buck starts and stops with the city manager, and we have to hold him accountable.”.

What is Charlotte doing to improve transparency?

Jones said his takeaways from council members’ comments are “more so about a process than transparency.”

“It’s very clear to me that the council would like to have a more consistent process as it relates to making those big decisions,” he said. “... What we try to do when we get feedback from the council is to make sure that we are addressing their needs.”

Jones and Kelly said the city is dealing with a significant increase in requests, including ones that are more complex and time consuming to fulfill.

The number of requests received by the city has more than quadrupled in the last five years, from 848 in fiscal year 2019 to 4,347 in 2024, according to city data.

The average time it took to fulfill requests increased over that time period, from 22 days to 27 days, the city said. The rate of requests fulfilled within 30 days peaked in fiscal year 2021 at 73%, but it fell to 41% in 2022 and 45% in 2023 before jumping back up to 68% in 2024.

The city has added multiple staff members to help deal with records requests since 2018. In the fall, it plans to launch a new tracking system to reduce the time needed to review confidential information “and better identify issues sooner,” Schneider said.

The clerk’s office will go through each request as the city migrates to a new system, Kelly said, and “actually try to make contact with those folks that have outstanding public records requests” to see if they ever did receive information and whether they still need the information they requested. She said some of the 1,500 requests marked as unfulfilled in the city’s public database “maybe have been closed out, but we’re not aware that they’ve been closed out because we’ve had some turnover in the departments.”

“It is our goal to to get better ... It’s never anything that we turn our heads away from,” she said.

On the question of whether Charlotte is transparent, Jones said he’s committed to public engagement and strengthening trust.

“We have made a lot of great strides in terms of making sure that we continue to engage our community when we’re taking on the big issues and when we’re taking on not so big issues,” he said.

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