Doing the public’s business in private

If you believe the public’s business ought to be done in public, you ought to be troubled by what’s been happening in Raleigh of late.

That’s not to say the Republicans now running the capital brought a new code of secrecy with them. They’re just following the playbook their Democratic predecessors left.

Still, it remains jarring to see how quickly politicians will set aside the ideal of transparency when a big legislative win is within reach.

Gov. Pat McCrory said Thursday that he’ll sign the $21.74 compromise budget deal hammered out by the House and Senate. Last weekend, he’d suggested he might not. He’d wagged a finger then at GOP deal-makers who were behind closed doors, studding the budget with new initiatives.

McCrory told the Associated Press that lawmakers should keep new ideas out of the long-overdue budget and vote on them separately. Well, the unveiled budget did contain new sales taxes on auto repairs and other services. Turns out McCrory is OK with it, though.

According to him, the budget deal gives him 90 percent of what he wanted.

But the people of North Carolina aren’t getting what they want. They want to know what is being done in their name, and they want a chance to debate it. Nancy Pelosi’s now-infamous statement – “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” – helps explain why so many remain so angry over President Barack Obama’s healthcare law.

But legislative leaders – Democrats and Republicans, Raleigh to Washington – always seem to think they must go behind closed doors if they want to get anything important done.

Public debates are too messy, they say. Slows things down. Hardly explains why GOP leaders still struggled to craft a deal, even after taking their meetings behind closed doors. When Senate leader Phil Berger finally emerged before reporters to talk about the new budget, he swatted aside a question about how the new sales taxes benefit rural counties.

“Probably a little more complicated than I can explain in the next 15 minutes.”

Dismissive. Unnecessarily so.

The same could be said for the McCrory administration’s stonewalling on public records requests. The Observer waited 19 months for records on the state’s successful 2013 bid to keep Electrolux’s expanding operations in Charlotte.

Such delays have led this newspaper and other news organizations to file a lawsuit. The administration’s response? That it has been a “champion of transparency,” but its employees are being deluged with requests. In other words, quit slowing us down.

Here’s a rule we’d like politicians of all stripes to remember: When you try to do the people’s business without the people, just call it what it is – doing what you want to do.

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 3:40 PM with the headline "Doing the public’s business in private."