How transparent are NC's lawmakers?
For the past nine months, I've been asking North Carolina's 170 members of the General Assembly to prove they are capable of responding to public records requests. Most didn't.
In partnership with The Assembly, I’ve released an analysis today of lawmakers’ level of transparency. I’ll have a comprehensive recap later in the day for folks.
For now, I wanted to share some of the toplines from the analysis itself, which I’m making available here to everyone in the name of transparency.
In the spreadsheet, you can see which members of the General Assembly did and didn’t respond to records request.
House Republicans proved least transparent, with just one of 72 lawmakers turning over any of their communications. By comparison, 75% of Senate Democrats, 56% of House Democrats and 50% of Senate Republicans disclosed any of their communications.
Overall, 103 of 170 legislators were completely unresponsive to any of four records requests, including three from me and one from The Raleigh News & Observer. The requests ranged from up to 10 years worth of communications to one email of lawmakers’ choosing.
Again, I’ll have more to share later today on some of the highlights from my reporting today for The Assembly.
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