RALEIGH - Charlotte City Attorney Mac McCarley said Thursday that public information requests for e-mail had become so burdensome that top officials had quit sending sensitive messages for fear they might become public.

Appointed by Gov. Mike Easley to a panel reviewing the state government's policies for deleting e-mail, McCarley said top city officials had changed how they use e-mail to shield their deliberations from public scrutiny.

McCarley recounted how The Charlotte Observer had filed a standing request last year to see all e-mails and paper correspondence sent or received by Mayor Pat McCrory, City Manager Curt Walton and two city department heads.

"Those are legitimate requests and we have no objection to them," McCarley said.

He then read a list of "the other kind" of public record seekers that included unsuccessful bidders for city contracts, bloggers, potential litigants, political opponents and others "who will admit to you they are looking to bog down government."

Ned Cline, a panel member and former newspaper editor from Greensboro, asked: "Do you have any idea whether or not any of your people covered by this have started doing more of their business by phone or in the men's room than doing it by paper or electronic?"

"It gets printed out as assistant city manager says X and it sounds really stupid," McCarley said. "So what you do is you change the way you do business."

Cline asked whether Charlotte city government was less transparent than it was a year ago.

"Yes, but we do it for the purpose of efficiency and creativity so you get an opportunity to think through new ideas without getting shot for it," he said.

When asked about McCarley's comments Thursday, McCrory, who became the GOP nominee for governor this week, initially said his city attorney was being misquoted. When told the comments were on tape, the mayor called McCarley a "bureaucrat" and pledged to archive all state employee e-mail messages if he is elected governor.