One her first day as governor, Beverly Perdue pledged to increase government transparency.

"Government must be more accountable to the people," Perdue said in her Jan. 10 inaugural address. "The state's business must be conducted in the sunshine, to inspire confidence, not cynicism."

Perdue appears to largely be living up to that promise. She makes her weekly schedule available and frequently takes questions from reporters, and her administration released travel and other records that disclosed former Gov. Mike Easley's use of private planes and other activities.

And Wednesday, Perdue issued executive orders requiring more transparency in government. She is also expected to soon sign a bill that she backed that would force state mental hospitals to release information about those who die in the facility or within two weeks of being discharged.

But Perdue's administration continues to withhold some key records, such as reports on probationers who committed serious crimes and state employees who had sex with inmates.

"Compared to what it was, [Perdue] has been great," said Don Carrington, vice president of the conservative John Locke Foundation, who said the Easley administration routinely rebuffed his calls and requests for documents. "They return calls and acknowledge requests." (N&O)

On the other hand, employees at the state's psychiatric hospital in Goldsboro could face discipline if they say negative things about its staff or operations.

Lobbyists for North Carolina's local government officials are resisting legislation that would force governments to pay legal fees after losing a lawsuit to release documents.

The House Finance Committee on Wednesday again considers a bill that would make it easier for news media outlets and individuals suing in public records lawsuits to collect attorney fees if the documents are released.

Judges now can deny the payment if they think the government body has substantial justification to deny access.

Members of the state Wildlife Resources Commission discussed closing committee meetings to the public because they did not like what a bowhunting group was saying about the meetings.

Commission chairman Wes Seegars said Tuesday that the commission has always been committed to openness. But members did not appreciate what the N.C. Bowhunters Association had told its members about a proposal to alter the rules of deer hunting season.

"Our concern has just always been disseminate the correct information," Seegars said. "We don't have a problem with anybody sitting in and being a part of it."

The commission regulates hunting and fishing. Seegars said the state has some 800,000 licensed sportsmen and sportswomen.

Committee meetings, Seegars said, allow an open exchange, and discussion at a meeting doesn't necessarily mean an idea will become a change to the rules.

"Committee meetings are where we thrash around a lot of ideas," Seegars said.

After members of one of the commission's committees discussed extending gun hunting season into what had traditionally been bow hunting season, bowhunters flooded the commission with comments.

Seegars said that episode prompted commisison members to discuss closing committee meetings off to invited guests only. The discussion died down, Seegars said.

More after the jump.

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House Speaker Joe Hackney says he is willing to take another run at a bill that would award legal fees to those who win in public records lawsuits.

Open government types and news organizations sometimes complain that the expense of successfully suing a governmental body or agency over public records disputes discourages such lawsuits. They say that automatically awarding legal fees would give government officials pause before restricting the public's access to records. 

A bill that would automatically award fees in such cases sailed through the Senate but died in the House last session. Bill Holmes, a spokesman for Hackney, said the Speaker is interested in passing a bill that would allow automatic recovery of costs as long as it wouldn't strip all discretion away from judges.

"He just wants to make sure the fees are reasonable," Holmes said. "There's no other area of law in North Carolina that allows for automatic recovery of fees."

A committee convened to look at televising debate at the state House of Representatives recommends broadcasting on the Internet, assuming the legislature can afford it.

The committee has all but finished a report on the issue and has set out a series of recommendations guiding how to start and run the House show. The plan would be to wire certain committee rooms and the House chamber and install broadcast quality video cameras. The video would be broadcast on the Internet with lower quality, but television stations would have access to video for news casts.

The catch is all that buying and setting up all that equipment could cost $1.3 million. It's a small fraction of the state's $21.5 billion budget, but lawmakers are bracing for a deficit next year that could be as high as $3 billion. 

House Speaker Joe Hackney is keen on getting the House on television.

"As soon as there is money for it and as soon as it can get done, the Speaker wants it done," said Bill Holmes, a spokesman for Hackney.

The committee recommended that the House begin with Web-only broadcast, but work toward finding a place on television for them. Policies governing the broadcasts, such as editorial policies, would be set out by the speaker, and the minority and majority leaders, the committee recommended.

Delivering video of state House of Representatives sessions to computers would cost $1.3 million in the first year and another $500,000 after that.

The bulk of the money for creating the House show would go to equipment, wiring and set up costs, according to legislative staff research. The recurring costs would pay for maintenance, closed captioning and staff time.

The goal, said state Rep. Cullie Tarleton, is an open, accessible government.

"All of us want total, complete openness and transparency," said Tarleton, a Blowing Rock Democrat.

Tarleton is chairman of a House committee studying what it would take to broadcast or webcast video of the House's work. Committee members on Wednesday said they supported starting with video on the Web, but buying equipment that would make it easier to eventually show sessions on television. The higher-end video cameras would also allow the news media to use video clips.

Of course, the projected state budget deficit of $2 billion or more might make the House's video plans a tough sell. The other problem, at least for now, is that the Senate has no parallel effort in place.

So broadcasting House sessions would only make state government 50 percent transparent. More like opaque, really.

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Public records become private in three ways.

1) The legislature makes them private on purpose, such as when it decided to keep public hospital salaries private. 2) Vague or confusing language is misinterpreted. 3) Legislators intend to exempt one thing, but end up exempting others.

The state's water bills are an example. In 2001, the legislature changed a bill to allow public electric co-operatives to keep their billing accounts private.

The change was meant to allow them to compete with private electric companies, which do not have to reveal their records. But the legislation was so broad it exempted water bills.

Now, during the worst drought in North Carolina history, that exemption is making it harder for reporters and others to learn how how water much big business and even individual homes are wasting. (N&O)

Online sunshine isn't just for state government.

It's tempting for a local official to think that keeping public records in a three-ring binder in a downtown office building is good enough. After all, why would anyone in another city want to see the mayor's campaign finance records?

Except when the mayor's running for governor.

Dome — and many other reporters, bloggers and citizens — is curious about where Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory has raised his money in the last year. (Especially since he won't have to file a campaign finance report for his gubernatorial run for a while yet.)

But those records are at the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections in Charlotte.

As Jim Morrill has noted, the county's elections director is considering putting the records online to make it a "24-7 public records office."

Unfortunately, that would only be for records going forward.

Max Borders says government has no incentive to be transparent.

In a post on Red Clay Citizen, the libertarian blogger writes that government, unlike the private sector, does not benefit from making life simpler for users.

"Unlike Google—which profits from its usability—the government has only a minimal incentive to comply. If there is no statutory directive to be transparent or user-friendly, then they have even fewer incentives," he writes.

(Dome would argue that government actually has a disincentive, since transparency exposes problems.)

Here are a few of his ideas to promote transparency:

* Start a wiki-based open-source platform for state government.

* Contract with a tech company to unify state government Web sites.

* Form a nonprofit to promote transparency. 

* Use college students as volunteers to collaborate on software.

* Hold a contest for the best ways to make government more open.

* Donate to Civitas' Citizen Legislature project. 

Dome doesn't actually have $2,000 to promote a contest, but we do have some swag. So here's the deal: The best idea for a cheap, easy and effective improvement to a state government Web site gets you a free N&O hat. Post your ideas below. 

The legislature's Web site is useful, but it's not user-friendly.

Consider legislation. You can find current bills by going to the home page, clicking House, then House Member List, then choosing the politician. Under the tab for Introduced Legislation, you can see all of the bills he or she sponsored or co-sponsored.

That's not quite as simple as the U.S. House, which has a Browse Bills by Sponsor pull-down menu on its home page, but it's not that bad.

But if you're looking for legislation from a previous session, you practically need someone to show you.

Go to the home page, click Legislation/Bills, select Bill Inquiry, choose the session you're looking for, click Sponsor on the left-hand side, click Add to Search Criteria, then click Search and you can see all of the bills for that session.

This violates a key principle of online sunshine: Think of the user.

If I'm interested in a state representative, why is it so hard for me to find legislation from previous sessions? Most legislators serve multiple terms, so presumably my interest will be based on their track record over a number of years.

Even worse, it violates another principle: Allow direct linking. The results of your search do not have a distinctive address to allow you to link to them.