The article, written by Ned Barnett, argues that lawmakers have been creating obstacles to disclosing public records and the best way to combat these obstacles is to use public records laws “vigorously.”

���Transparency is fading and government secrecy is increasing,��� McMichael told The Charlotte Observer.�����We see a lot of government agencies decline (record requests) for reasons that don���t make any sense. It is really a dogfight. People have to either give up or file a lawsuit.���

Read the in The Charlotte Observer.

Presented by the and the , with presenting sponsor , the daylong summit will be held at NC Central���s Alfonso Elder Student Union. It kicks off with a welcome, followed by the presentation of the NC Open Government Coalition���s annual Sunshine Awards. After that, attendees will enjoy a keynote fireside chat between Sailor Jones of Common Cause North Carolina and Cierra Hinton of Blue Engine and Scalawag Magazine, with PBS NC���s Deborah Holt Noel moderating the conversation.

While the summit is sold out, .

During their fireside chat, ���Building a Fourth Branch: The Power of Information, Community and Trust in 2024,��� Jones and Hinton will draw on their experiences as connectors and activators in news and public advocacy, sharing their visions for rebuilding trust across North Carolina. They will explain why we should be hopeful about ongoing efforts to sustain the free flow of information, access to government records, and a robust free press in the years to come.

���The keynote section of our agenda is intended to give space to big ideas, challenges and opportunities for local news in North Carolina and beyond,��� said Shannan Bowen, executive director of the NC Local News Workshop. ���This year we���re particularly worried about threats to democracy at the local level, most recently noticeable with public records exemptions for state legislators. We wanted our summit���s keynote to address threats to democracy, but also focus on visions for strengthening trust in our communities and efforts that give hope and a plan of action for anyone working in our ecosystem.���

Bowen added, ���During a year in which polarization, misinformation and politics may take center stage in national media and other platforms, it will be refreshing to center voices of hope and inspiration from Cierra, Sailor and Deborah as they share what can be done to build trust and actively engage communities here at home.���

Brooks Fuller, director of the NC Open Government Coalition, echoed Bowen���s sentiments, noting Jones and Hinton���s extensive experience in North Carolina���s news and information landscape. And, most importantly, their conversation will provide insights and advice on how to best proceed.

���I think they can help people around our state think boldly about what it takes to sustain news and freedom of information in the years to come,��� Fuller said. ���They both, to quote Cierra, have an ���undying love and passion for the complicated South��� and a deep and abiding commitment to people around the Tar Heel state. I suspect this will shine through in their message as they lay out some challenges and opportunities for better informing the people of North Carolina.���

Following the keynote conversation, the conference will shift to workshop sessions and discussions on topics including audience engagement, personal career growth, skills-building and tackling threats to democracy by championing transparency and open government.

���Our summit programming revolves around harnessing the power of networks and communities to reinvigorate news organizations and information leaders in light of some big changes to public records laws,��� Fuller said. ���We are focused on doing everything we can to shore up the news and information ecosystem against anti-democratic and anti-transparency policies.���

Both Fuller and Bowen pointed out that policy and legal work means little without strong newsrooms and information leaders. Their collective efforts aim to help build better networks, introduce journalists and government officials to new tools and practices, and help make the ecosystem stronger.

���I���m personally excited this year for some of the sessions that bring new ideas and focus for our news and information ecosystem,��� Bowen said.

She then highlighted several summit speakers, including Anna Brugmann of Rebuild Local News, who will facilitate a working session on how public policy could potentially fund local news; Colleen Murphy of Open 消消犯, who will help participants create their own personal mission statement; and Hannah Raskin of The Food Section, who will discuss how food coverage can enhance media literacy. Additionally, Sarah Day Owen Wiskirchen of Minerva Media Co. and David Grant of Blue Engine will address how to create successful newsletters, sharing lessons publishers can apply.

Likewise, Fuller looks forward to hearing from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press team, which will lead sessions on supporting journalists covering the 2024 elections. Plus, Israel Balderas, assistant professor of journalism at 消消犯, will discuss threats to the First Amendment during the coming election cycle, and Jenny Jacklin-Stratton of CatchLight and Andrea Bruce of Down in the County will co-led a workshop on using visual storytelling techniques to build audience engagement and trust.

���Every journalist in the state can benefit from being at this event, whether they���re a 30-year veteran or a student who just joined their school paper or news program.���

��� Brooks Fuller, director of the NC Open Government Coalition

The year���s summit presenting sponsor is Google News initiative (GNI), which supports local news through resources, tools and programs. During the summit, Casey Pallenik, news industry relations manager at Google, will offer office hours with journalists, and Colleen Kimmett, Google News Lab Teach Fellow, will facilitate a workshop on election tools for journalists, focusing on tools that tackle misinformation and tips for utilizing AI-powered tools for reporting functions.

���Google is one of the most powerful and innovative tech companies the world has ever known,��� Fuller said. ���Being able to learn about tools and platforms they are developing to combat misinformation is such a great opportunity for the groups we serve.���

Bowen credits the Google News Initiative team for its hands-on support of journalists, which benefits both reporters and their readership.

���One of the main objectives of our annual statewide summit is to provide localized resources and workshops for people working here in our state���s news and information ecosystem, and we know many people will find value in the training and support that the GNI team will bring on March 8,��� Bowen said.

Keynote Conversation Bios

Cierra Brown Hinton (she/her) serves as a creative strategist at Blue Engine Collaborative, concentrating on imagination, play and community in her work. Hinton is also executive director-publisher at Scalawag, a Southern, Black-led digital media organization. Scalawag delves deep into the intersections of culture, race, and systems of power and privilege. Before this, Hinton held positions as an individual giving officer at several education nonprofits, including Teach For America. Fundraising isn’t just a job for her; it’s a personal mission. Hinton is all about finding, gathering and distributing resources to communities that have been historically disenfranchised.

Jackson Sailor Jones (he/him) is deputy director at Common Cause North Carolina, an organization dedicated to building a multi-racial democracy that���s inclusive of all in the Tar Heel state. Prior to joining Common Cause in 2022, Jones led Southern Coalition for Social Justice���s and Democracy North Carolina���s pro-voter communications, campaigns and advocacy efforts. Jones has more than a dozen years of experience in social justice spaces in the South, including roles with Equality NC, the League of Women Voters of NC, NARAL Pro Choice NC, NC AIDS Action Network, North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections, and the North Carolina NAACP. Sailor is a transgender native of Warren County in rural Northeastern North Carolina ��� birthplace of the nation���s environmental justice movement ��� a licensed attorney, and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the North Carolina Central University School of Law.

Deborah Holt Noel (she/her) is the host of ���NC Weekend��� and senior producer at PBS North Carolina. She has produced numerous PBS North Carolina projects and programs covering topics from arts and education to history and science, and she is the senior producer and host of the long-running public affairs series, ���Black Issues Forum.��� Noel is a graduate of Saint Augustine���s College (now University) and earned her Master of Arts degree from the University of Maryland at College Park. She is the granddaughter of Civil Rights pioneers Joseph and Elwyna Holt, the first family to challenge the segregated public school system. Noel produced the CINE Eagle award-winning historical 37-minute documentary, titled ���Exhausted Remedies: The Joe Holt Story,��� about her family���s pioneering effort to integrate Raleigh public schools.

, The News & Observer drew upon the insights of Brooks Fuller, director of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition and an assistant professor of journalism, who has been an active advocate for freedom of information and access to public records.

Fuller told News & Observer reporter Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan that the change, which makes it up to lawmakers to determine what public records from their work are revealed, is “a massive backslide in public access to information,” noting that the change provides no incentive for legislators to share information with the public.

The impact will be that the public will often have an incomplete picture of the work of state government, Fuller told Baumgartner. In general, ���you cannot trust that documents that come out of an elected leader���s office are the entire picture of any public policy question,” Fuller told the reporter.

Fuller’s analysis was later included in an opinion column by News & Observer Executive Editor Bill Church titled, “.”

Fuller researches and writes about free expression, unprotected speech, political extremism, democratic participation and media ethics, primarily using qualitative research methods. The is a nonpartisan nonprofit housed at Elon that educates the public about access to government information in North Carolina and advocates for improved democracy and civic life through government transparency.

The article follows the passage of state laws, including one in North Carolina, that can make it more challenging for members of the public and journalists to hold government accountable by restricting access to records that were previously available to the public. In the article titled “,” reporter Kevin Hardy examines legislative actions in Arkansas, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina and other states where legislators have passed laws saying they are necessary to prevent excessive public record requests.

In North Carolina, a new law passed this year exempts a variety of legislative records from public review, with legislators deciding which documents are released.�����It���s a massive change,��� said Fuller told Hardy. ���It undermines the public access to any document that touches the hands of an individual legislator.���

Fuller added that the changes have caused widespread confusion among lawmakers due to the way it is structured.

for more details. Stateline makes its articles available for republication by media outlets, and the article has since appeared in dozens of outlets around the country.

Fuller researches and writes about free expression, unprotected speech, political extremism, democratic participation and media ethics, primarily using qualitative research methods. The North Carolina Open Government Coalition is a nonpartisan nonprofit housed at Elon that educates the public about access to government information in North Carolina and advocates for improved democracy and civic life through government transparency.

North Carolina���s Republican legislative majority, joined by a handful of Democrats, has decided that the state���s public records law shouldn���t apply to them.

A supermajority of the General Assembly passed a sweeping legislative privilege Friday allowing lawmakers to keep secret any document made or received during their public service ���in all instances.��� The move came during the final days of grueling, months-long budget negotiations.

In a devastating blow to public access, lawmakers wiped out one of North Carolinians��� primary tools for government accountability and gave themselves permission to operate almost entirely in the dark.

Proponents of so-called ���legislative privilege��� argue that robust protections from public records requirements allow legislators to deliberate freely about policy concerns. But N.C. law already made confidential legislators��� communications with staff related to legislative drafting and information requests ��� and it has never applied to private communications made by phone or in person.

Lawmakers already enjoyed immense freedom to engage in private deliberations. What they didn���t have, until now, was permission to hide the entire scope of their public work from the public they serve.

Shielding legislative documents from public view does not itself cause corruption, but it creates a perfect environment for it to incubate. Without the legal duty to provide records made or received during their public service, lawmakers have little incentive to prioritize public accountability. They have every incentive to padlock records they prefer not to share.

So why make this move now? One clue lies in a one-line provision buried in the 625-page budget bill that revokes public access to information about electoral maps. The law was an exception to the general rule that legislative drafting requests can be kept private. It gave the public the right to obtain a narrow category of communications and documents related to the redistricting process as soon as a voting map became law. It also gave the public a sliver of daylight into the process of representative democracy, such as it exists in North Carolina. No longer. That window has closed, and North Carolinians are worse off for it.

North Carolina has been at the center of costly, seemingly unceasing litigation challenging Republican-drawn legislative maps and voter ID laws. Under the newly passed legislation, the public will be shut out of that process unless lawmakers choose to share records or unless information is uncovered through reporting or litigation.

To compound the problem of gutting the public records act, no one wants to claim responsibility for doing it. When asked directly, two of the most powerful people in N.C. politics, House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger, claimed they didn���t know how the language got into the budget.

Moore told the Associated Press, ���I think the way it���s written, I���m told, is structured in a way that���s fair, that makes sense.���

Told by whom? Fair to whom? Makes sense how?

The top state representative wouldn���t say, except to repeat the talking point that public records requests cost taxpayers money.

North Carolina law makes public records ���the property of the people��� and requires government officials to produce public records. We pay for our records with our money and the unfathomable time it takes some government agencies to comply with the law. We are often forced to sit in the dark and contemplate lawsuits to pry information from our elected and appointed public servants.

Public officials do not get to insult the public by telling us that giving us our property is too cumbersome or inconvenient for them.

Voices on both sides of the aisle know this policy will devastate public knowledge about and ���public trust��� in government and have said so.

Government transparency is not a partisan issue, but it is a power issue. And N.C. Republicans currently wield immense power up and down state government. So during a last-minute, midnight-to-early morning session and amid minimal debate, they took power from the people and kept it for themselves.

—

Views expressed in this column are the author’s own and not necessarily those of 消消犯.��

The Sunshine Awards are presented each year to recognize the work of citizens, advocates, journalists, and government officials whose efforts increase transparency and accountability in public business in North Carolina.

The Frank Barrows Award for Excellence in Student Journalism��recognizes the accomplishments of a collegiate journalist or newsroom at a North Carolina university whose work exemplifies the vital role of open meetings, public records, and press access in public life.

Award recipients are chosen by the coalition���s board of directors and presented annually during Sunshine Week events in March.

For more information on the Sunshine Awards, click:��Sunshine Awards Call 2022

For more information on the Barrows Award, click: Barrows Award Call 2022

A new project led by the North Carolina Open Government Coalition aims to use state access laws to educate the public about the inner workings of UNC���s public records system and to spur collaboration among journalists covering the state���s flagship university.

In partnership with a coalition of journalists, professors, and nonprofit organizations, the NC Open Government Coalition filed eight public records requests with UNC on Friday seeking records related to Nikole Hannah-Jones’s hiring as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a MacArthur Foundation ���genius��� grant recipient, and the author and creator of the 1619 Project. Recent reporting has raised questions about . ����

The new public records requests lay the foundation for an ongoing collaborative journalism and freedom of information project. The NC Open Government Coalition and the NC Local News Workshop, both housed at 消消犯, will host a series of workshops to help journalists share and edit public records requests, analyze documents, and collaborate on coverage of university governance.

���We hope not only that these requests will help inform the public understanding of this particular case, but also help reporters and others understand UNC���s policies and procedures for handling all public record requests in general,��� said Ryan Thornburg, an associate professor of journalism in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. ���This is a great real-world example of the kind of thing we teach our students every day.���

Members of the public can .

UNC was embroiled in two high-profile lawsuits last year that raised government transparency issues. In February 2020, the Daily Tar Heel, an independent, student-led newspaper, favorably�� when it secretly agreed to transfer “Silent Sam,” a Confederate monument that recently stood on UNC���s campus, to the��Sons of Confederate Veterans and pay $2.5 million toward the monument’s preservation.

In August 2020, the . The university had argued that the records were confidential under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

���Controversies are often perfect opportunities for public education,��� said Brooks Fuller, Director of the NC Open Government Coalition. ���What���s happened at UNC in recent months has captured the attention of journalists, educators, and politicians from all over the country. What better way to seize on a teachable moment about the public records laws than putting them to the test around such a newsworthy issue?���

For inquiries, please contact:

Brooks Fuller, Director, NC Open Government Coalition, Asst. Professor, Elon School of Communications, bfuller7@elon.edu

Ryan Thornburg, Assoc. Professor, UNC Hussman School of Media and Journalism, ryan.thornburg@unc.edu

Tori Ekstrand, Assoc. Professor, UNC Hussman School of Media and Journalism, torismit@email.unc.edu

Erin Siegal McIntyre, Asst. Professor, UNC Hussman School of Media and Journalism, esm@unc.edu

Shannan Bowen, Executive Director, NC Local News Workshop, sbowen5@elon.edu

Photo credit: “Old Well”��by��yeungb, licensed under��CC BY 2.0:��https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

Rowell, a North Carolina native and graduate of North Carolina State University, started following transparency issues in local government after graduating from the Charleston School of Law and moving to rural South Carolina.

���You could show up after work and just walk down the street to the town hall and you start seeing government in action, up close and personal,��� Rowell said. ���Washington is where the excitement is. You see it from a distance, but it doesn���t have the impact that local government has.���

When Rowell moved to Huntersville in 2013, he began requesting public records from Huntersville officials on subjects that ranged from land use to policing. He posted the records with original reporting and analysis on his blog and Facebook pages dedicated to local government and politics.

���As the statute says, these are the public���s documents,��� Rowell said. ���I wanted to share those documents so that the public could see them and come to their own conclusions.���

In late 2019, Rowell requested access to a 900-page independent audit that the Huntersville police department commissioned to assess its progress on improving policing and public service. But that report remains secret. According to Rowell, the department denied his request and classified the report as confidential personnel record with the exception of a few redacted pages. Rowell continues to lobby the Huntersville Board of Commissioners to publish the report, which cost��Huntersville taxpayers $150,000.��

According to Rowell, some public officials do not fully appreciate the spirit and the scope of North Carolina���s open meetings and public records laws, but he wants to change that. ���I think it���s surprising how many people get elected and immediately seek to keep information from the people that just voted them into office,��� Rowell said. ���Maybe it���s something that the [University of North Carolina] School of Government should focus on more as part of the new elected official training.���

Rowell���s efforts have materially improved public accountability in small but meaningful ways. When the Huntersville Board of Commissioners debated imposing additional fees for ���burdensome��� public records requests, Rowell spoke out against the policy. The board tabled the proposal and declined to impose additional fees on citizen access to public information. At Rowell���s urging, Huntersville officials also began publishing meeting agendas that include the basis for convening closed sessions so that the public knows in advance when and why officials are asserting their right to meet behind closed doors.

Rowell sees his transparency efforts as the fulfillment of a citizen���s obligation to support the work of professional watchdogs. ���Local journalism has definitely taken a toll,��� Rowell said. ���I would tell people, ‘Be persistent,’��� Rowell added. ���But also probably be a little shameless. You can���t be afraid to ask questions. You can���t be afraid to question people in positions of authority.���

To follow Rowell’s transparency work, visit��www.ericwrowell.com.

Quigley first began reporting the story in August 2020 when Sheriff Clarence Birkhead told the Durham County Commission during a public meeting that an inmate was on a ventilator after contracting COVID-19 during an outbreak at the detention facility.

Quigley said that when she asked Sheriff Birkhead for an update on the man���s condition weeks later, he told her he was not allowed to speak about the inmate. ���I guess that���s when my ears kind of perked up,��� Quigley said. ���He was speaking so freely about it before. I wonder what changed.���

���I went straight to the records at that point,��� Quigley said. ���The first place that I went to was the North Carolina state prison system press releases. I looked through those to see if something had happened, if it was reported, if something stuck out to me.���

Quigley combed through press releases, a public database of inmates in Durham County custody, and a variety of other public records to determine that Darrell Kersey was the man Sheriff Birkhead referenced in the August 2020 meeting. An anonymous source confirmed Quigley���s reporting, and Durham County officials confirmed the story���s accuracy in October 2020 as it was published.

During the past year, . Quigley’s use of public records and inmate databases situated Kersey���s death in the context of a statewide ��� if not nationally significant ��� story about health and safety in carceral facilities.

Without Quigley���s reporting, the public may never have known that Kersey���s death was linked to a COVID-19 outbreak in Durham���s central jail.

���The best journalism tells truth to power,��� said Cathy Clabby, Adjunct Instructor in the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy at Duke University, in her letter supporting Quigley’s nomination. ���Dryden spoke it loudly last fall.���

When asked about what this experience could teach North Carolinians about government transparency, Quigley said, ���If you hear something that doesn���t sound right, you should follow up on it. I think anyone can do that, and the resources are more at your fingertips than you think they are.���

Quigley is the second winner of the annual Frank Barrows Award, which recognizes the accomplishments of a collegiate journalist or newsroom at a North Carolina university whose work exemplifies the vital role of open meetings, public records, and press access in public life.

Quigley thanked Cathy Clabby, her editor at the Ninth Street Journal, and Bill Adair, her first editor and Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center at Duke. Quigley will graduate from Duke University in May 2021.

While most North Carolinians were asleep on June 26, 2020, Sherman was at the North Carolina General Assembly poring over Senate Bill 168, a ���clean-up bill��� that may have created an immense loophole in North Carolina���s transparency laws surrounding death investigation records held by the state���s Chief Medical Examiner.

Under North Carolina law, records of death investigations created by law enforcement are generally exempt from disclosure under the public records law. Death investigation records transmitted to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, however, generally become public. Senate Bill 168, which included mostly technical fixes commonly included in end-of-session legislation, went further. The bill exempted death investigation records from disclosure even after they are no longer part of a law enforcement investigation.

Sherman believed the bill raised serious transparency implications by undoing North Carolina law requiring disclosure of deaths investigated by the state. ���Seeing a public records provision as the title in one of the provisions embedded in the bill made me take a closer look,��� Sherman said. Sherman spent the next day consulting with public records experts and interviewing lawmakers to tell the story of Senate Bill 168���s origins. After sources confirmed her initial interpretations of the bill���s legal effects, Sherman said, ���I went ahead and tweeted it.��� The story gained attention from transparency advocates around the country. Ultimately, Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the bill and the death records confidentiality provision never became law.

Although public records stories are often unremarkable, they have broader significance in the context of current events. The North Carolina General Assembly passed Senate Bill 168 just one month after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police. ���There are a lot of things that local journalists report on at any given time during any given legislative session that are equally as important as this,��� Sherman said. ���This story just sort of struck the nerve of people at the wrong time. Journalists are on the floor of the legislature or the house chamber all the time and that���s why we need them to sort of be watchdogs.���

Transparency advocates who followed Sherman���s reporting were swift to demand explanations from North Carolina lawmakers. After Sherman���s reporting, State Senator Jeff Jackson said plainly, ���[We] need to fix this one.���

Sherman represented the tip of the spear in an effort by the North Carolina press corps to inform the public of Senate Bill 168���s transparency implications. ���I wouldn���t have had the ability to sort of just sit on the floor and skeptically think about everything legislators were saying if it weren���t for the sheer number of people on the News & Observer���s team.��� Sherman thanked her editor, Jordan Schrader, and colleagues Kate Martin (Carolina Public Press) and Nick Ochsner (’11, WBTV-Charlotte), for their help reporting the story. Sherman, Schrader, Martin and Ochsner are part of the North Carolina Watchdog Reporting Network, a coalition of journalists focused on government accountability reporting.

���It���s easy to forget the importance of the role of journalists,��� Sherman said. ���You can never have too many watchdogs in the state house.���