“In all honesty, I never thought about open government and its importance to the way our government operates,” Lannon said. “It wasn’t until we conducted focus groups with local clerks that I saw how passionate they were about transparency and the citizen’s right to know. I got fired up and enjoyed helping in a small way to assist local communities in their understanding of public records law in North Carolina.”
One caller to the program asked if there was anything that could be done to improve open government laws in North Carolina. Book said that the state’s law was a strong one, but that recent questions related to e-mail and the governor’s special task force to consider whether e-mail was public record or not was troubling.
“The discussion surrounding the difficulties of cataloging and preserving e-mail should not be at the center of the debate as to whether e-mail records are public,” Book said. “E-mails of government and civic employees are public record under the law. The hurdles as to how to archive e-mail should be addressed only after that is firmly established.”
Book suggested other improvements to the law, including an ombudsman as a first opportunity to settle questions of open access without having always to go to court, further transparency at the state level through the televising of business conducted during the legislative session and a specified period related to response times to public queries for public records.