Column: Our Elected Officials Often Working Behind Our Backs

BY JOHN NAGY Editor

You likely do not spend much time thinking about how elected officials are conducting themselves and the offices to which you elected them. Most people do not. Trust me when I say elected officials are fine with that.

And yet, history has shown that an informed and engaged citizenry is integral to ensuring proper governance. A government left to operate unobserved is little different from giving a pack of teenagers a case of beer and the keys to the car on a warm spring night. Consequences be damned, someone's gonna get up to no good and then try to cover their tracks.

As a young reporter in Florida, I had a powerful ally helping me do my job: the law.

The Sunshine State was one of the first in the nation to pass a powerful "sunshine law" that included expansive public records and open-meetings regulations. Virtually every get-together of two or more elected officials of the same body was a "meeting," and that included a simple sit-down over coffee.

Likewise, it was rare to not be able to access a public record, even criminal arrest reports. Personnel records of public employees, including reviews, were open. When a city council was upset with its manager, we knew about it, and why.

I "broke" many stories in the early years of my career simply by asking for public records, like the credit card slips of county officials who went to New York for bond closings. Stays at fancy hotels, meals at high-end restaurants, tickets to shows and games — all paid with county credit cards or submitted for taxpayer reimbursement. That is, until the stories hit the paper.

North Carolina has decent public records and open meetings laws, but they do not have the same expansiveness. Officials get together — so long as it's not a majority — to discuss business outside the public eye. And while the public records law covers a lot of documents — paper and electronic — officials and agencies only have to turn them over in a "reasonable time." Much foot dragging has ensued over the years.

The bottom line here is that an official board meeting usually packs all the drama of the second hand on a wall clock. Agenda items have often been discussed, positions hashed out and compromises made long before the opening gavel.

We do have recourse, of course. An elected official's emails, text messages and other communications related to their office are public record. You are entitled to them, if not necessarily in a timely manner.

Last week, Pilot staff writer Mary Kate Murphy wrote a story about how one local resident, Alexa Roberts, requested text messages from school board members. She saw board members using their phones during a public meeting and wanted to know what they were texting about.

For the record, the board has a policy prohibiting texting during meetings "with members of the public, other Board members or school district staff regarding official School Board business, agenda items or other Board matters that are properly discussed publicly during Board meetings."

And yet, six of the seven were doing so, and the public was privy to none of it — until records were requested.

What Roberts got back, as expected, revealed both the mundane and profound. I won't belabor that here; we posted screenshots of the messages on thepilot.com, and they're all over social media.

Most of the board members sheepishly acknowledged they shouldn't be doing that and vowed to do better. Particularly galling, though, was the response of board member Bob Levy, who basically said such texts were "very informal" and that such public records requests would just force board members to find new ways to sneak around behind your back and talk about stuff they don't want you to know about.

"The only thing that this does," he said of the records request, "is to assure that when two board members or three board members get together they'll do so by telephone.

"It would probably be better for the public if it was done by text, because the public would be able to see the texts. So the policy, as far as the public is concerned, is counterproductive."

Apparently, "transparency" and "accountability" are good words to campaign on but not live up to once in office?

Public officials are acting on our behalf. They are using our resources, spending our money and making decisions that will affect our quality of living. It's time they stopped operating behind our backs.

Contact editor John Nagy at (910) 693-2507 or john@thepilot.com.