Opinion: Senator Sanderson Brings Overdue Sunshine

By John Bussian

In a day when the usual defenders of freedom of speech, press freedom, and open government rights have less available to wage public policy battles for first principles, one state senator stands especially tall. Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Pamlico, now in his fifth term, is refiling his Government Transparency Act.

This measure takes a modest step toward allowing public access to government employee disciplinary records at the state and local levels. Against the backdrop of national “Sunshine Week,” Sanderson’s bill tries to lift North Carolina from the bottom five open-government states and move it to the top.

Were the Government Transparency Act (GTA) to become law, it would give first-time access to North Carolinians to:

• On-the-job, state and local government employee performance records (but not medical records); and

• Reasons, yet only a “general description” of, why a state or local government employee or law-enforcement officer has been demoted, suspended with or without pay, transferred, or fired.

Fully, 45 states allow public access to this much of a government employee’s disciplinary record. The top open-government states offer much more — access to the entire file (except medical records). In Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and South Carolina, a parent can ask to see a public school teacher’s file, including performance records.

In New York, then Gov. Andrew Cuomo secured passage of a bill to allow first-time access to public school teacher performance records, over objections by the state teachers’ union. Cuomo argued that public access to performance records was, at a minimum, necessary to give the public confidence in the awarding of merit pay to public school teachers. Hardly a stretch.

In the vast majority of states that allow such access, there has not been a single negative effect on the operation of state and local government. And yet, North Carolina has never allowed its citizens to see any of these records!

No wonder former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper sponsored and filed a bill to allow this kind of access more than 25 years ago when he was a young state senator. His bill passed the North Carolina Senate but died in the House of Representatives.

Senate Leader Phil Berger led a similar charge — and crafted the language in Sanderson’s bill — at the end of the 2010 session of the NC General Assembly. Berger came within an eyelash of having the bill passed, only to see the core access features of the bill stopped by the NC State Employees’ Association (SEANC) on the House floor. SEANC continues to oppose the legislation.

Isn’t it high time — in 2025 — for the North Carolina General Assembly to pass this bill and give the public access to government employees’ performance records that it deserves?

Sanderson’s bill garnered the support of the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association and a lone NC Senate Democrat, Orange County’s Graig Meyer, in the last legislative session. That’s a tribute to the state’s sheriffs and Meyer, one that shows Sanderson‘s bill has support beyond the media industry. The North Carolina Senate passed the bill, though it was not considered by the House.

The bottom line is that bringing North Carolina into the top tier of right-to-know states is long overdue.

So contact your state legislators this Sunshine Week and ask them to vote for the Government Transparency Act. North Carolinians deserve nothing less.

John Bussian is legislative counsel to the NC Press Association.