Times are tough and money is tight. Public officials and private developers, trying to imagine new and creative ways to finance and construct needed infrastructure, might suggest a new approach: A private developer will front the money to build a … Read more

The clerk to a local governing board writes that her board, like most boards these days, is interested in finding ways to save money.  Two of their ideas deal with maintaining minutes of board meetings.…

How many local government clients are too many? If an attorney represents a county, is that attorney precluded from also representing a city in that county? What about representing multiple counties or multiple cities? These questions are of great concern … Read more

In my last post I defined metadata and summarized the three cases (in other states) that have addressed whether, and to what extent, metadata is a public record. I concluded that post by asking what we might glean from these … Read more

An apparent constitutional difference in filling vacancies to appointed and to elected offices—a difference that raised some puzzling questions—did not faze the North Carolina Supreme Court in its ruling March 12, 2010, in the case of Baxter v. Danny Nicholson, … Read more

On Monday morning the River City newspaper contains a story on the new phenomenon of internet sweepstakes parlors – how they operate, how they may be technically different from video poker, and their proliferation around the state. Towards the end … Read more

[Update: The N.C. Supreme Court issued important ruling on video sweepstakes in 2012 and 2013.  See this post and this post for more details.] Internet sweepstakes operations have continued to mushroom across the state. A recent newspaper article identified eight stand-alone … Read more

The expansion of  a certain nonconforming junkyard and auto salvage yard violates the zoning ordinance, a condition that has existed for some time. Warnings have gone unheeded. The local government has sought to accommodate every promise made that the violator … Read more

[2011 UPDATE: For more detail on this topic, see the following 2011 book: Housing Codes for Repair and Maintenance: Using the General Police Power and Minimum Housing Statutes to Prevent Dwelling Deterioration] An earlier post on minimum housing ordinances (MHOs) … Read more

(Updated March 15, 2010) Is metadata a public record? There is not a clear answer to this question, at least in North Carolina. But that does not mean that public entities should ignore the question. In fact, public officials, particularly … Read more