From M2MPolitics.com (12/17/10): Former state Sen. David Hoyle was into his second term in the Senate when he took his first stand for open government.
As the days of the 1995 session of the General Assembly were winding down, Hoyle took the floor of the Senate to argue against a bill that would have required people viewing certain public records to certify that they weren’t going to use them for business purposes.
He’d been forewarned about the bill by the editor of his hometown newspaper, Jennie Lambert.
“It was a terrible bill from the open government standpoint,” said Lambert, who was editor of The Gaston Gazette at the time. Lambert, now retired, went on to be publisher at the Shelby Star before returning to The Gazette as publisher.
“For the first time, it would have required people to say why they wanted those records,” Lambert recalled. “Then it would have been up to the government to decide if that reason was sufficient. That would be the fox guarding the henhouse.”