news-record.com

Gov. Bev Perdue has sent an ill-considered bill that would have called for more secrecy among state lawmakers to precisely where it belongs: the recycling bin.

The governor rightly vetoed the bill, which never should have made it to her desk in the first place.

"These are the people's documents," the governor said last week of the shameless attempt to keep the public's business away from public scrutiny.

The bill would have classified as confidential any new document an agency created in response to a legislator's request for information to help draft a bill. It also would have shielded from public view any constituent's request for a lawmaker to propose a bill.

In effect, the proposed law would have made it harder for the public to know who is requesting a bill, why and how he or she might gain from it.

Lawmakers lamely defended the provisions as protecting the personal information of constituents. As if that weren't outrageous enough, the bill would have imposed criminal penalties on any executive branch employee who violated the bill's confidentiality requirements. Similar penalties for legislative employees were conspicuously absent.

It was the governor's first veto in office and only the 10th since the General Assembly restored governors' veto powers in 1997. And it was a good place to start.

In response, legislative leaders backed off on calling a special session to attempt to override the governor's veto. That only would have added insult to injury by incurring taxpayer expense for a dubious cause. "After consultation with (Senate President Pro Tem Marc) Basnight and with various members of the House of Representatives, we have agreed that the expense and time required for a veto session are not justified in this case," House Speaker Joe Hackney said in a written statement.

Nor was this bill justified from the start. Given all of the recent skullduggery in Raleigh, lawmakers should have known better.

They ought to be shining more light, not adding shadows.