Overview
In North Carolina, nearly all documents that city and county government officials create or receive while carrying out their duties are considered the property of the people. State law requires officials to make those documents — including written communications like emails, text messages, and social media posts — available “as promptly as possible” when anyone requests to inspect or copy them.
Although the law is the same across North Carolina, the time it takes local officials to fulfill that requirement can look quite different across the state. Long delays and incomplete responses for communications records requests are common, frustrating the public’s legal rights and the media’s ability to hold leaders accountable.
In conjunction with Sunshine Week, an annual celebration of open government and public records, NC Local, The Assembly, WFAE and WUNC requested the same set of emails from North Carolina’s 20 largest cities at the same time.
Some provided the documents within minutes. Others placed the requests into queues that could take months or even years to clear.
What does the law say?
Chapter 132 of North Carolina’s General Statutes governs public records. The law covers “all documents, papers, letters, maps, books, photographs, films, sound recordings, magnetic or other tapes, electronic data-processing records, artifacts, or other documentary material, regardless of physical form or characteristics,” related to the public business of governments across the state.
The law does exempt some documents, such as communications covered by attorney-client privilege, sensitive security information, and negotiations over economic development incentives. But even if a document contains confidential information, government officials must still release the nonconfidential portions and bear the cost of any redactions.
“Every record created by a government official doing government business is presumptively a public record, and that of course includes email correspondence,” Brooks Fuller, policy director for Common Cause North Carolina and a former executive director of the NC Open Government Coalition, said. “The law sets a pretty high bar that you would have to clear to keep that email from seeing the light of day.”
Requesters don’t have to share any reason for wanting to obtain public records, and they can request the information in any medium they’d like. Requests themselves are generally free. However, governments may charge for the actual cost of making copies (such as a flash drive for large digital files) or for the “extensive use of information technology resources or extensive clerical or supervisory assistance.”
What is the reality?
In practice, getting communications records from local governments can be a challenge.
Although the law says officials must share records “as promptly as possible,” it doesn’t define the meaning of that phrase. Local governments generally don’t establish any timeframe for fulfilling records requests.
Exceptions include the city of Greensboro, which says it aims to respond within five business days, and Guilford County, which sets a target of 10 business days “for most routine requests.”
Mike Tadych, a lawyer who helps monitor the N.C. Press Association’s legal hotline, said many jurisdictions take substantially longer to release records.
Some requests in Charlotte, for example, have waited years for fulfillment. A 2024 analysis by The Charlotte Observer found over 1,500 unfilled requests, including one ask for emails and text messages initially submitted in 2020.
In other cases, officials don’t share public records that requesters know exist. Pate McMichael, a communications instructor at Elon University and director of the NC Open Government Coalition, said elected officials often omit communications from their private cell phones and email accounts.
The law considers those communications to be public records if they were sent or received regarding official business. But government staffers have no way to verify if a city council member, for example, is turning over all relevant messages from his or her personal phone number or Facebook page.
“Unless you’re willing to sue, it’s very difficult to get them to disclose,” McMichael says. “I just don’t feel confident that, even if you get back whatever it is they’re turning over, you’re getting the full story.”
A test of basic communications requests
To see how different local governments would respond to a routine request for communications, NC Local and its media partners asked 22 cities for the same set of records: all emails sent to or from the city’s clerk between 9 a.m. and noon on Feb. 24.
Journalists with NC Local, The Assembly, WFAE in Charlotte, and WUNC in the Triangle used identical language and sent all requests the morning of Feb. 27.
Each request was submitted to the cities’ formal public records portals; if a city didn’t have a portal, the request went by email to a public information officer or directly to the city clerk.
The experiment covered North Carolina’s 20 largest cities by population, from Charlotte through Wake Forest. The Border Belt Independent, part of The Assembly network, also submitted requests to Lumberton and Pembroke.
Which cities provided documents?
More than two weeks after those inquiries went out, less than half of the cities had provided the requested emails. The quickest to respond was Chapel Hill, which shared its documents in less than 30 minutes. Apex provided the emails in just over an hour, and Huntersville also responded on the same day.
Burlington, High Point, and Kannapolis all responded within a week. Durham provided records on March 9, Fayetteville on March 11, and Charlotte on March 12. (Pembroke’s clerk responded March 12, saying she had neither sent nor received any emails during the time period in question.)
The formats of responses varied. Some cities shared each email as a separate PDF document; Kannapolis compiled everything into a single 52-page PDF. Others cities provided the records as Microsoft Outlook files, which require specialized software to open.
The emails themselves provided a glimpse into the workaday business of city administration and the variety of jobs city clerks are tasked with accomplishing. Durham Clerk Diana Schreiber, for example, spent the morning of Feb. 24 asking for updates on city committees, coordinating responses to records requests, and approving a purchase order for Chai Latte K-Cups.
How did other governments respond?
Most cities that had not provided records after two weeks gave no communication about the requests other than automated response emails. Other cities had staff acknowledge receipt.
Cary, for example, wrote that WUNC could expect a response “in about 10 business days.” Jacksonville’s clerk said she would send the information “once it has been compiled.” As of publication, NC Local had not received further communication from either city.
Raleigh responded on March 10, saying that it hadn’t begun the search for records and asking for any keywords that might narrow the scope of the request. “The more specific your criteria, the faster we can begin processing your request,” the city’s email read, despite the initial inquiry already being tightly limited to three hours of records for a single employee. State law does not require requesters to target any specific keywords.
The City of Asheville processes requests for communication records separately from requests for other types of information, although the law makes no distinction between the two.
“By separating the two, we’re able to keep things moving more efficiently,” said city spokesperson Kim Miller.
Communications requests, which include requests for items like emails and text messages, are placed into a queue, which currently lists 30 entries dating back to July.
Although the queue document was updated March 12, it did not contain NC Local’s communications request as of press time.
Allison Byers, who as Asheville’s public records officer is the sole employee processing communications requests, wrote that the queue “is not intended to serve as a realtime indication of request status or progress.”
Miller confirmed that communications requests are processed in the order received, regardless of their size, and that only one request’s emails are reviewed for release at any given time. Many requests in the queue are substantially larger than NC Local’s inquiry: One request covers over two years’ worth of communications from dozens of city officials.
Tadych, the NCPA lawyer, said he believes Asheville’s approach may not comply with state law.
“If they’ve got a quagmire for somebody else’s request, and somebody else can turn and pull the three emails that you want, they should do that. The law doesn’t contemplate a queue or getting in line,” Tadych said. “If you’re talking about a finite set of every email between Bobby and Sue on this day, that’s 10 minutes’ worth of work.”
What’s next?
Despite the clear lack of consistency between how local governments handle records requests, there are currently no efforts at the General Assembly to refine or tighten the relevant law.
Sen. Graig Meyer, a Democrat from Chapel Hill who received the 2024 “Sunshine Award for Public Service” from the NC Open Government Coalition, said colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been reluctant to support that work. (Meyer recently announced his resignation from public office, effective at the end of the month, to serve as executive director of the North Carolina Justice Center).
“I wish that all politicians believed that transparency actually made us more effective at our jobs, but the truth is that they don’t. Sometimes, including in the General Assembly, that’s because people are hiring their corruption,” Meyer said. “Sometimes it’s just because people are hiding their fear, and sometimes there are people who just don’t want to have to articulate what it is that they stand for and why, which should be a basic requirement for people to hold public office.”
And while the core of the public records law has remained in place, the legislature has added meaningful exceptions in recent years.
McMichael with the Open Government Coalition pointed to a provision in the state’s 2023 budget that allows General Assembly members to deny any request for their own records. Last year, the state also exempted “name, image and likeness” contracts for college athletes, thereby shielding millions of dollars in taxpayer spending on athletics from public scrutiny.
In contrast, recent bills that would have expanded public records access have died in committee. Those efforts included the Government Transparency Act, which would share the general reasons for the dismissal and discipline of state employees; the H.A.L.L. Accountability Act, which would open records related to redistricting; and a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the public’s right to access records.
Looking to request records? Here's how to speed up the process.
Any member of the public can ask for any public document.
If you’re requesting communications or other public records from your local government, lawyer Mike Tadych says there are some best practices you can employ to reduce the turnaround time.
- Be as specific as possible. When asking for communications records between city council members, for example, try narrowing the scope to a limited timeframe or asking only for emails that contain a certain keyword.
- If you do need a large volume of records, break up your request into several smaller inquiries. That can give officials more flexibility in providing records over time.
- Ask for “serial production” — in other words, have officials provide individual records as they are received and cleared for release, rather than waiting for the entirety of a request to be processed.
- Consider making requests in person. State law allows for the inspection of records “at reasonable times and under reasonable supervision.” This approach can help avoid administrative fees for making copies of large records requests.
More resources for making public records requests are available through the NC Open Government Coalition’s website. Pate McMichael, the coalition’s director, encourages anyone having issues with a records request to reach out through his organization’s contact form or call its hotline at 336-278-5506.
Note: This story was updated to reflect the proper spelling of Tadych.
This article first appeared on NCLocal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.