Yes, State Treasurer Dale Folwell might have sounded a little like the guy who informs you that “Whew, it’s really hot” on a 98-degree day.
As if we didn’t already know.
But props to him for having the gumption to say, for the record, what is painfully obvious: His fellow Republicans’ decision to exempt themselves from the state’s public records law is a shameless, arrogant, self-serving affront to good government and an insult to constituents.
Those are our words. Here’s how Folwell put it last week in a news release: “By allowing individual lawmakers to determine what records are public and what material can be destroyed without ever seeing the sunshine of public view creates a system without standards or accountability. It prevents the public from learning who and what influenced decision-making on their behalf. There shouldn’t be a double standard of justice where the legislature doesn’t live by laws that other state and local governments do concerning the right to have access to the records of public agencies.”
Folwell was referring to a dangerous provision wriggled into the new state budget law that allows lawmakers to skirt requirements to make their documents and communication accessible to the people who elected them and pay their salaries. Specifically, they have exempted themselves — for life — from having to reveal any documents they may send or receive in the course of conducting the public’s business.
By their own decree they now get to determine which, if any, of these documents, you, or news media, get to see. And now, by law, they may destroy such documents if and when they so desire.
State lawmakers have endowed themselves — and only themselves — with this super power. No other branch of state government has that latitude. Not the governor. Not any head of a governmental agency. Not a mayor or city council. Just the GOP-controlled General Assembly.
Meanwhile, new authority granted to the Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations, or Gov Ops, is similarly unsettling. Politically appointed staff members of this oversight agency are now empowered to investigate and seize documents from other state agencies, as well as government contractors. Further, anyone who is subject to an investigation is required to keep that information confidential.
That’s why critics call them “secret police.” Or worse, “the Gov Ops Gestapo.”
Taken alone, either of these developments is troubling enough. Taken together, says Brooks Fuller of the N.C. Open Government Coalition, they are alarming.
“This means that folks who already enjoy a lot of privilege and a lot of power as elected representatives in state government now have the ability to make public information laws, such as they exist, work for them,” Fuller told NPR. “And meanwhile, they’ve stripped that power away from average folks.
By the way, the Gov Ops commission’s chairs are House Speaker Tim Moore and state Senate leader Phil Berger, both Republicans. Such authority, weighted toward one party and subject to that party’s whims, is rife for abuse. But that seems to be the point.
These are some of the myriad steps GOP lawmakers have taken to consolidate power and steamroll policies they favor, in the shadows of backrooms, free from scrutiny.
So it matters when one of their own has the fortitude to call them out for it.
As for why Folwell’s speaking up, he could be hoping it might provide a jolt to his struggling campaign for governor. But Folwell always has been a staunch and consistent advocate for transparency in government. He is in fact, a past winner of the N.C. Open Government Coalition’s Sunshine Award (as he pointed out in his release). So his indignation at his party’s fevered rush to secrecy comes honestly.
As Folwell said: “I don’t need a law to tell me what’s right or wrong, and that’s true yesterday, today and tomorrow. We will continue to have a culture of conservatism, common sense, courtesy and open communications as keepers of the public purse.”
That many others in his party either don’t agree with him — or lack the courage to say that they do — is one secret the state GOP hasn’t managed to keep.