GOP state lawmakers raise a curtain of secrecy between themselves and the public | Opinion

There’s a quiet shift happening in North Carolina. It’s not a single bill or one headline. It’s a pattern.

And it all points in the same direction: less transparency, less accountability, and more control over what the public is allowed to see.

The latest example is the ongoing effort to overhaul the North Carolina State Bar, the independent body responsible for licensing and disciplining attorneys. What’s being proposed would increase political control over the process, reduce public access, and limit transparency into how decisions are made.

That raises a basic question: who benefits when oversight becomes less visible?

This effort does not exist in a vacuum.

Consider campaign finance oversight.

In 2018, legislation reshaping North Carolina’s elections and ethics enforcement framework moved through the legislature in June before stalling for months.

Then, in mid-December, after the November election had made clear that Republicans would lose their supermajority, the bill suddenly reemerged. Within days, it was advanced, passed, vetoed, and then enacted through a veto override before the new legislature was sworn in.

The result was a system that, among other things, keeps campaign finance investigations confidential, limiting what the public can see even when serious questions are raised.

One of the primary sponsors of that legislation, Rep. John Torbett, was later the subject of a formal ethics complaint alleging that his campaign and state funds were used to cover the same expenses during overlapping periods. He denied any wrongdoing.

But that is not the point.

The point is that the same lawmakers who created that less transparent system went on to benefit from it.

In a recent instance, publicly reported conduct raising questions about campaign finance compliance was referred to the State Board of Elections. The response made clear that, under current law, investigations are confidential.

As a result, even when potential violations are reported publicly, the process for reviewing them largely unfolds out of public view.

Or consider redistricting.

During the 2021 map-drawing process, legislative leaders described the effort as fully transparent. But in subsequent court proceedings, Destin Hall acknowledged that he and his aides relied on private “concept maps” during closed-door strategy sessions — materials that were never disclosed and ultimately could not be produced.

Those maps, by the state’s own admission, mysteriously no longer exist.

In the next legislative cycle, those transparency requirements were removed. Indeed, rather than resolving those concerns through greater transparency — or by simply following the law — the Republican majority changed the law to allow the same practices going forward.

Now return to the effort to reshape the State Bar.

This push is being led in part by Larry Shaheen, an attorney and a longtime political operative with close ties to legislative leadership, who serves as co-chair of the General Assembly’s State Bar Grievance Review Committee. At the same time, Shaheen serves as Finance Director for the North Carolina Republican Party and as treasurer of a political action committee that spent millions backing Senate leader Phil Berger in a closely contested primary — a dual role that has drawn criticism from within his own party and prompted calls from local Republican leaders for his removal.

A disciplinary system that becomes less visible. A campaign finance process that is harder to scrutinize. A redistricting process with fewer transparency requirements. A legislature that has moved to shield its own records from public access.

At some point, the pattern becomes the story.

When those in power repeatedly move to make oversight weaker and information harder to access, the public loses its ability to hold them accountable.

Transparency is not a partisan issue. It is the foundation of public trust. But when political systems are structured to insulate those in power from accountability, that trust becomes easier to disregard.

And once it is weakened, it is not easily restored. North Carolina deserves better than that.

State Sen. Terence Everitt is a Democrat representing District 18, which includes northern Wake County and Granville County.