Attorney General Roy Cooper on Tuesday reversed an earlier opinion from his office and said that information on state employees' pensions should be made available to the public.

"North Carolina has some of the strongest public records laws in the nation, and the interpretation of those laws should favor openness," Cooper said in a statement.

The opinion pertained to a state law enacted last year to make public all forms of state and local government employee compensation. The law also included language that Cooper's office initially interpreted to mean that information on the pensions for those employees was to be kept private.

It became an issue last month when the State Treasurer's Office, which oversees the state's retirement system, declined to make public the potential pension for state Rep. Thomas Wright, a Wilmington Democrat facing criminal fraud charges.

Cooper on Tuesday, responding to a request by two Senate leaders who were involved in writing the new law, released a second opinion on the pension information. State Sen. David Hoyle, a Gaston County Democrat, had sponsored the law. Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand, a Fayetteville Democrat, made substantial changes to it.

Hoyle and Rand told Cooper's office that there was no intent to make the pension information private. State Sen. Richard Stevens, a Cary Republican, said last week that he amended the legislation, but only to prevent the public from learning whom one chooses as a beneficiary or how state employees invest their 401(K) benefits.

Chief Deputy Attorney General Grayson G. Kelley wrote in the latest opinion that the first opinion was based upon the law stating that compensation information had to be made public by the "employing entity." Therefore, an agency that held such information but did not employ the worker -- in this case the Treasurer's Office, with regard to pensions for all state employees -- would be prohibited from releasing it.

"We cannot conclude that the General Assembly intended such a result," Kelley wrote.

State Treasurer Richard Moore, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, did not support keeping that information private. On Tuesday afternoon, his staff began handling requests for pension information.

Spokeswoman Sara Lang said that Wright's pension, if he were to have left the legislature on Tuesday, would be $892.20 a month when he turns 60 in 2015. It could be less if he is found guilty.

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