Yeah, it's raining. Still, let the sunshine in.
If you have a hankering to do your own reporting, one of the basic tools in your toolkit will be federal and state open-records laws. The critical importance of those laws is being recognized by news organizations nationwide this week during what's being called, the current weather notwithstanding, "Sunshine Week."
Now, I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one here at The Lex Files. But I've had to deal with open-records and/or open-meetings issues every month, if not every week, for my entire 21-year newspaper career, so I know a little.
It's important to remember that the Freedom of Information Act, the open-records legislation you're most likely to have heard of, applies only to federal records and only to executive-branch agencies, not Congress or the courts. North Carolina law applies to state/county/municipality records.
North Carolina is blessed with one of the country's better laws regarding open records in that, at least in theory, it presumes that state and local government records are open and recognizes only a few exceptions to that general presumption. What happens in practice is sometimes different, which is why the N&R has filed more than a few open-records lawsuits during my time here.
We do that not only for our benefit but also for yours: North Carolina law properly makes no distinction between a reporter for a major news organization and John/Jane Doe who walks in off the street. And if bureaucrats jerk around the N&R, with its high-dollar, white-shoe law firm on retainer and its reputation for being willing to sue, over public records, how much worse will they treat Mr. or Ms. Doe when one of them comes in to see records on, say, the development being planned for their neighborhood?
Below the jump, I'll list a number of links and Web resources relevant to open records. As more of our readers begin to contribute to the conversation that news in Greensboro is becoming, I expect, and hope, that these resources will become even more commonly used. Let the sun shine in! In government, sunshine has killed far more bad ideas than good ones.
Investigative Reporters & Editors' list of resources.
Links to some stories that relied heavily on records requests.
Stories from various states on how well or poorly state and local governments comply with open-records laws.
The main N.C. statute on open records. (Other statutes deal with related topics, such as personnel records, which are covered here and here, among other places.)
The federal Freedom of Information Act is here. But be warned: Anytime you can bypass the procedures laid out in the Act and just get a friendly bureaucrat to give you something, do it. The official FOIA procedure can take a long, long time even when the people on the other end really want to help. And they don't always really want to help.
