From the Jacksonville Daily News (2/6/10): Ongoing investigations into alleged improprieties during the administration of former Gov. Mike Easley has provided a fascinating, albeit disheartening, glimpse into how casually some bureaucrats treat the subversion of the state’s laws regarding public records.
The ex-governor’s press secretary recently testified that Easley used a private e-mail account. Maintaining a private e-mail account is not a crime in and of itself, except for how the former governor employed it.
The account apparently was the vehicle Easley used to conduct some aspects of his official duties; however, according to the press secretary, Renee Hoffman, the contents of those e-mails were withheld and, in some cases, deleted, in response to requests for public records under state laws governing such correspondence.
Hoffman gave her testimony in a deposition taken in a public-records lawsuit filed by several newsgathering organizations over the deletion of state government e-mail.
Easley’s administration also has been under scrutiny from federal investigators looking into corruption involving friends and professional associates of the former governor. His communications are a large part of the probe into Easley’s two terms at the North Carolina helm.
Newspapers such as The Daily News and other media outlets believe strongly in the right of the public’s access to documents and other forms of communication that take place between public officials. Those who govern, also tax, spend and make the rules that affect the people who live in this state.
The governed have a right to know what those in positions of power are doing with that power, with that authority, with that money.
So far, peeling back the veneer of respectability from the Easley years has revealed little in which the Tar Heel State can be proud: From Mary Easley’s sweetheart job at one of the state’s top universities, to the free trips and too-good-to-be-true land deal, the eight years served by Easley is turning into an extreme example of how not to put the public’s welfare first.
For any public servant to maintain that electronic communications that impact on official business or official duties fail to meet the parameters of public records is dishonest.
In this country, everyone has the right to private communication, even the governor of this great state. But there is a limit on what the governor can discuss with the expectation of complete privacy, and that limit clearly does not include doing the state’s business, no matter what vehicle is used to accomplish it.
The revelations of the former governor’s abuse of public-records requirements sends the wrong message to other public employees — and provides an indication of why state government took such a bad turn during the course of the Easley administration.
Jacksonville Daily News Staff Editorial