RALEIGH, N.C. (CN) — North Carolina lawmakers have been exempted from public records requests, through an item in the North Carolina budget which took effect Monday at midnight and was three months late.
Buried in the 625-page document allocating $30 billion in funding are provisions that shield legislators from public records requests, even once they’ve left office.
Section 27.7 of the 2023 Appropriations Act (HB 259) categorizes documents prepared by legislative employees as confidential, rather than public records, and their existence “may not be revealed” without the consent of the legislator.
The budget also names legislators “custodian of documents” to discern if a record is a public record or not, and to choose to retain or destroy it. They also cannot be required to reveal any documents or information requests made while they were in office.
Does FOIA not have supremacy?
It’s just one challenge at the federal level that makes this all go away. Hopefully. Unless higher courts are incompetent or equally corrupt. But this is America right, where things like that don’t happen because of the Constitution or some shit.
It’s not like there’s corruption in the Supreme Court or anything. Thank god we have them to trust.
Honestly don’t think that this would make it through the supreme court. They need to knock down legislation like this to get headlines and take focus away from their own corruption. Gotta love American politics.
They are getting around this by classifying all records as personal records so that they are not subject to any public records rules.