From the John Locke Foundation: Triangle (7/26/12): North Carolina has been shown to be at the lower end of the 50 states in many different metrics, most recently job growth and education, but now there's a new one at which we are characteristically underperforming: public records availability:
A report released Monday ranked access to public records in the Carolinas as among the worst in the country.
The study by the State Integrity Investigation, which ranks states by their corruption risk, found that both North and South Carolina public record laws fail to provide an appeals process for denied requests or impose penalties on agencies violating public records laws.
North Carolina’s access to public records ranked 43rd and South Carolina ranked 50th in the study, which also evaluated state budget processes, lobbying disclosure and judicial accountability. Both received an “F” in public access to information.