From the Charlotte Observer (3/19/09): Gov. Bev Perdue said this week she'll seek new legislation to publicly disclose information about those who die in state mental hospitals and homes for the developmentally disabled, including the names of the dead and an explanation of how they died.
The change, if approved by legislators and signed into law, would be a major reversal in policy affecting the state Department of Health and Human Services. The agency has argued that a little-known patient privacy statute specifically exempts state hospitals from releasing such information.
Perdue spoke by video Wednesday to a conference of the N.C. Open Government Coalition in Charlotte. The governor’s message was taped Tuesday in a Raleigh television studio.
“I’ve decided I would rather tell the truth, even when it’s bad news, than hide behind the protection of law,” Perdue said in the message as a group of mostly journalists watched.
On the same day the governor taped her statement, DHHS officials used the law Perdue said she would change to block the release of information about a female patient who died last week at a state developmental center in Goldsboro.
The governor said she will seek to release key information about such patients, including their names, age, gender, where they died, the date of death, the manner of death, and the cause of death.
The conference where Perdue’s statement was shown featured panels of journalists, lawyers and others involved with public records was part of Sunshine Day.
The first panel discussed the application of the N.C. Public Records Law to e-mails written among government officials.
The Charlotte-area public can read city e-mails on a computer terminal at the Mecklenburg County Government Center. Some e-mails are withheld because they deal with personnel issues or might reveal the particulars of secret negotiations to buy land, for example. But the law is gray on the issue of who decides whether an e-mail that’s temporary in nature – such as a phone message – rises to the level of a public record or can be deleted quickly.
On the panel was Mac McCarley, Charlotte’s city attorney.
He said each city worker makes that determination on his or her own.
“It gives it to the individual who has the power to hit their delete button,” he said.
But a conference attendee said his position seems at odds with state law, which says the “public official in charge of an office having public records” would make that call and not the individual worker.