From the Greenville Daily Reflector (2/15/11): Just before the start of the legislative session, Barry Smith, the reporter and columnist for Freedom Newspapers, and I spoke to a group of the incoming freshmen legislators.
These talks are typically pretty straightforward: You try to convince the newbies that the Capitol Press Corps, the reporters who cover the legislature, isn’t so scary, but that legislators doing something really stupid will likely be found out.
At some point during the talk, the subject turned to the caucus system at the legislature, where members of each political party in each legislative chamber break off and meet privately behind closed doors. The system, in place for about three decades, is made possible because legislators have carved out an exemption for themselves in the state’s Open Meetings Law.
The closed-door meetings are not a North Carolina invention. Most state legislatures and Congress do the same. Interestingly enough, legislators in Kansas are fighting about closed caucus meetings at this moment.
But we ain’t in Kansas anymore. Haven’t been for a long time.