The News & Observer and nine other North Carolina news organizations sued Gov. Mike Easley on Monday over his administration's deletion of e-mail, which they say violates the state's Public Records Law.

The news media coalition accuses Easley's administration of "the systematic deletion, destruction or concealment of e-mail messages sent from or received by the Governor's Office" in violation of the law, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Wake County Superior Court.

The practice was meant to stop North Carolinians from seeing information and records to which they are entitled, the suit alleges.

The lawsuit also accuses the state Department of Cultural Resources, which oversees government records, of establishing an illegal policy permitting government workers to delete e-mail messages that they decide are of "short-term value" or "when they no longer have reference value to the sender or receiver."

The Public Records Law, which trumps administrative policies, does not allow the destruction of public records for those purposes, the plaintiffs say.

The lawsuit accuses Easley and his administration of failing in their legal duty to install adequate electronic storage systems to preserve public-record e-mails.

And the lawsuit accuses Easley himself of violating the law last month by discarding a hand-written note from Carmen Hooker Odom, former state secretary of health and human services, concerning her views on the failure of state mental-health reforms her department implemented.

In a meeting last week with several newspaper editors, Easley said Hooker Odom's letter was "a personal note" to him that "didn't have any news in it."

"If it needed to be saved, I would have saved it -- if it had any kind of value to it at all," he said.

Under the Public Records Law, that's not Easley's call, the news organizations argue.

Hooker Odom's note concerned public business and therefore was a public record, so destroying it was illegal, they say. They say that based on Easley's other public statements, the governor probably has discarded additional public records.

The news organizations seek a judge's ruling that Easley and his administration's policies violated the law and will follow it in the future. The media groups also seek reimbursement of their legal expenses in pursuing the lawsuit, as the law allows.

"They are taking this step reluctantly after not getting any indication from Governor Easley that he is willing to admit that the law has been violated, or to fix the violations," said the lead attorney in the lawsuit, Hugh Stevens of Raleigh.

Asked for comment Monday, Easley spokesman Seth Effron said, "We have not seen the lawsuit."

Easley's term ends in January, likely before the case will end. But Stevens said he'll ask the courts to expedite it. And the result should give the next governor useful legal guidance, he said.

"The issue of the scope of the governor's authority is never moot," Stevens said.

The controversy arose last month as a result of an N&O series reporting on the failure of mental health reforms that the state enacted in 2001, during Easley's first year as governor.

Days after the series ran, the Department of Health and Human Services, which implemented the reforms, fired its top spokeswoman, Debbie Crane. Franklin Freeman, Easley's senior assistant for governmental affairs, said he ordered Crane fired in part for dissuading Hooker Odom from giving the N&O an interview on the subject.

The day Crane was fired, she told the N&O that Easley's press officials had told subordinates to destroy e-mail messages to the Governor's Office daily as a way to evade the Public Records Law.

At first the Governor's Office denied the charge, but the administration later produced notes from two other agency spokespeople that support Crane's assertion. Their records from a meeting with other public information officers last May, led by Easley press secretary Renee Hoffman, included notes to delete e-mail messages to and from the governor's office every day.

In last week's meeting with newspaper editors, Easley said Hoffman's deletion instruction "never should have happened." But the governor said that everyone involved followed the administration's policy to save important e-mail anyway.

Easley defended the policy that allows employees to discard official e-mails and written documents if they decide the communication holds no lasting "administrative value."

"Everything doesn't get saved," he said. "We've got two rules: One, if it's of administrative value, save it. Two, if it's of no value, you have the option to delete it or save it, whatever you want to do. But you're not required by law to."

The Public Records Law, however, says that, with some exceptions, all government e-mail concerning public business is a public record, and must be retained and provided upon request.

Easley said last week that he hopes a commission he appointed to study e-mail retention will develop a clearer policy.

"People who work for the state are very honest, and they try to do the right thing," he said. "But they need to know what that is, and the guidelines are going to have to be much more specific."

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