news-record.com

Gov. Mike Easley is not the CEO of North Carolina.

He is the state's top public servant, and his bosses are those who live here.

Yet the governor may not want us to have a full accounting of his administration. His actions seem to indicate he favors keeping at least some public records from public view.

Here's the story: Earlier this month, Easley fired Debbie Crane, chief spokesperson for the state Department of Health and Human Services, for insubordination. This occurred after Crane had provided information to The News & Observer of Raleigh for a series it ran on botched mental health reform in this state: Some $400 million has been misspent in this area during Easley's watch and many seriously ill people haven't been served.

Once fired, Crane went to the media with news that the governor's directors of communications had told spokespeople to destroy e-mails between them and the governor's office. Easley adamantly denied setting such a policy, though he has said that guidelines allow state workers to delete some e-mails.

Then, Easley added fuel to the fire by admitting that he threw out a letter hand-delivered to him from Carmen Hooker Odom, former head of the beleaguered DHHS, which explained why she wouldn't provide media interviews. Easley said the letter wasn't worth saving — a decision with which many might beg to disagree. (It's also worth noting that if the letter had come in the mail, his staff probably would have saved it.)

Easley says he hasn't violated public records law, either by destroying the Hooker letter or by deleting e-mails. That law makes it illegal to "destroy, sell, loan or otherwise dispose of any public records ... without the consent of the Department of Cultural Resources." To support his actions, Easley points to a Cultural Resources policy which states that e-mail "of ephemeral or rapidly diminishing value may be erased or destroyed when the user has determined that its reference value has ended."

But is that policy misguided? Was it the law's intent to allow Cultural Resources to provide prior approval for document destruction?

One thing is clear: The law strongly supports saving public records. It states: "When in doubt ... retain the record in question."

Whether or not Crane's allegations are true, it would better serve the state if its public servants, from governor on down, didn't make so much use of the delete key.

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