Gaining access to public records should be as quick and hassle free as possible. However, if you request public records from North Carolina’s state or local government today, you might get a response tomorrow — or next year.
North Carolina is one of 15 states that have no deadline for responding to public records requests.
North Carolina law states that public records should be available “as promptly as possible.” The policy might sound good, but it needs improvement.
We understand, sometimes government offices are busy and will not always have the resources to answer every request immediately. But giving government agencies an open-ended amount of time to respond is unacceptable.
Mississippi must generally respond to public records requests within one day and many other states like Michigan, Missouri, and New York have response times of a week or less. It doesn’t matter how “open” a state’s open records laws are if the response time is indefinite.
Bills have been introduced in both chambers of the N.C. General Assembly that propose adding a sunshine amendment to the state constitution.
The legislation would make public records and meetings open unless two-thirds of the General Assembly votes for a specific exception to the law.
If the legislation passes, the sunshine amendment would appear on the ballot as a referendum during the next statewide election in 2012.
And it would likely pass. A recent poll by Elon University suggests that more than 80 percent of North Carolinians support it.
