Jonathan Jones

From WUNC (3/7/2014): Conservative think tank Civitas  Institute made a public records request last fall for the emails of UNC law professor Gene Nichol. Professors from around the state decried the records request as politically motivated.  One thousand emails were recently turned over to Civitas, which after analyzing them says an anti-poverty program put together by Nichol amounted to a political activity. Nichol is director of UNC's Center on Poverty. 

The Watauga County Board of Education is holding a special meeting to consider the use of a book, "The House of the Spirits," by a high school class. Rather than require the public to obtain tickets in advance, the meeting is being moved to a larger space in the county courthouse. 

In 2011 LexisNexis sought to copy a court records database controlled by the Administrative Office of the Courts. AOC claimed it was not the custodian of the database and declined to turn it over. The Court of Appeals ruled in favor of LexisNexis. 

Carolina Public Press: In response to Attorney General Roy Cooper's letter criticising the public records policy of the governor's office requiring special charges for records requests that take more than 30 minutes to fill, the governor's general counsel, Bob Stephens cited Asheville and Charlotte as examples of local governments that also have special surcharge policies. The Carolina Public Press caught up with municipal workers who handle public records in those places and said that charges are rarely, if ever, assessed. 

The Sunshine Center of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition is pleased to announce Sunshine Day 2014. The March 17 event will focus on using technology to bring transparency to state and local governments. 

In January, Attorney General Roy Cooper wrote Gov. Pat McCrory a letter indicating that the governor's office practice of charging for public records requests that take more than 30 minutes violates the spirit of the N.C. Open Records Law. Cooper's letter became public on Friday. 

Spring Hope Enterprise (12/13/13): Despite several citizen complaints and concerns from the N.C. Attorney General's Office over the town's public records policy, council members declined to address the issue at a meeting this week. 

Public Policy Polling (12/12/13): In a poll released Thursday, Public Policy Polling asked voters about the policy of Gov. Pat McCrory's administration to charge for public records requests that take more than 30 minutes to fulfill. Sixty-two percent of voters don't approve.

An Elon University Poll shows that only 30.5 percent of respondents were aware that the state has laws making government records and meetings public. A significant number (41.4 percent) also view the state as being less transparent now than it was five years ago. The poll also asked about how much public records should cost and whether certain records should be public. 

From the News & Observer (11/27/2013): The Civitas Insitute requested six weeks worth of e-mails and phone records from University of North Carolina School of Law Professor Gene Nichol after Nichol published an op-ed column critical of Gov. Pat McCrory. Thirty faculty members from the law school then signed a letter published in the Chapel Hill News complaining that "surveilling a professor’s communications is a really troubling approach to protecting liberty."