Public-records training favored by panel

RALEIGH — Members of panel appointed by Gov. Mike Easley appears headed toward approval of a plan that would require training on the public records law for most state employees and improvements to government e-mail servers that would archive e-mails for a number of years.

However, a majority of the group expressed concern about creating a system that archived all government e-mails automatically and voiced support for allowing state employees the continued discretion to decide which of their e-mails should be preserved for posterity and which ones are zapped.

Though news reports of the administration’s public information officers and even Easley himself trashing public records triggered the panel’s creation, several of those the governor appointed to review the matter said Thursday state employees should be trusted to do the right thing.

“None of us wants to be the headline that says ‘Miscreant Employee Deletes E-Mails,’” said panel member Mac McCarley, who is Charlotte’s city attorney.

“There may be some folks who haven’t recently had training and don’t know where that line is, at least there’s the accusation in a lawsuit that some people knew where the line was and violated it, but it strikes me the situation we’re in today can be fixed with better training,” he said. “And when there’s a violation, let’s treat that for what it is so the few people who violated it are straightened out, as opposed to however many thousands of state employees burdened.”

The News & Observer and nine other North Carolina news organizations sued Easley last month over his administration’s “systematic deletion, destruction or concealment of e-mail messages sent from or received by the Governor's Office.”

The state’s Public Records Law makes no distinction between electronic records such as e-mail and other types of documents, regardless of what they are written or recorded on.

Still, at least some on the panel continue to insist that e-mails are different.

“Essentially, e-mail exists somewhere between paper and the telephone,” said Ferrel Guillory, a UNC-Chapel Hill journalism professor. Guillory worked as a reporter and editor at The N&O from 1972 to 1997, an era before reporters routinely filed requests for the e-mails of government officials.