On October 1, 2010, a North Carolina city receives a request under G.S. 160A-168(b)(11) for a copy of the written notice of the final dismissal of former police chief Chris Jones, setting forth the specific acts or omissions that were … Read more

How should a North Carolina local government respond to the following public records requests? First, a request for a list of all building permits issued to governing board members or their relatives. Second, a request (submitted after October 1, 2010 … Read more

Imagine that you’re a local government IT administrator, clerk, manager, or other employee, and your job requires you to have access to employee and board members emails for your unit of local government. A member of your governing board contacts … Read more

In this blog post, I summarized the changes in the personnel privacy laws contained in the ethics bill,  S.L. 2010-169. This post summarizes two more changes included in that legislation. One establishes both an optional and a mandatory mediation procedure for … Read more

UPDATE August 2013: A summary of the Attorney General’s opinion about these legislative changes can be found here. The final hours of the 2010 legislative session produced agreement on changes to the personnel privacy statutes for most public agencies. Prompted … Read more

A lot of information about public employees is confidential. It’s well known, however, that what public employees get paid is public. So does that mean that their time sheets are public records? This post addresses the question of whether time … Read more

Responding to requests for public information is an important and time-consuming aspect of the jobs of many local government officials and employees. While some requests are straight-forward, others require analysis and interpretation of the public records law, including its many … Read more

People sometimes assume that local government boards can never vote or take action in a closed session. That’s not quite true. Consider the following scenario: A city council has gone into a closed session under G.S. 143-318.11(5) and (6) to … Read more

After a grueling budget season, the county board of commissioners has cut, and cut, and cut. The board members have come to the conclusion that, to avoid serious diminution in services, they must increase revenue. The next step is to … Read more

Members of elected and appointed boards often disagree with each other. That can be considered to be a good thing – perhaps a sign that the board represents different points of view and reflects the various perspectives of its constituents. … Read more