Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:59:36
From: Elliot M. Cramer
Subject: Open records: a second fiasco
See N&O article
“It’s not up to local governments to supplement the law,” said John Bussian, a Raleigh lawyer and lobbyist for the N.C. Press Association. “The obligation of local boards to release public documents is set forth in chapter and verse in the state law.”
“Most local governments don’t have a separate policy. They have the law,” said Cathy Packer, a media law professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Under the section “creating or compiling records,” Whiteheart wrote, “If a party requests minutes to be placed in a certain format or combined with other records, then the party should be informed that no record exists.”
That’s not the law, Bussian said.
The county does not have to create records in formats it doesn’t have, Bussian agreed. But that “doesn’t mean it’s OK to say, ‘We don’t have anything,’ ” he said.
How many strikes does our County attorney get? You don’t need to be an attorney to understand the public records law. This is the SECOND screwup.