North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources and NC Public Records Law

“A public records request?”

The puzzled voice of the state employee hung in the air.

“Yes,” the student said, nervously. This was already her second call about the request and she panicked momentarily, suddenly unsure that she had called the right person.

But the panic passed as the woman on the other end of the phone, at the office of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, thought for a moment before giving the student the email address of the department’s accountant and wishing her good luck and a good day.

For a project for an N.C. State English course, ENG416 – Advanced News and Article Writing, the student had to request the budget of a university or state government office, as part of a lesson on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws.

In North Carolina, the public records laws can be found in the General Statutes Chapter 132-1 through 132-10.

The first time the student called, the woman who answered directed her to the website for the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management.

On the site, there is a search function which, when prompted with “Department of Cultural Resources,” returns a total of 7 results, all from 2008, including “proposed” budgets and items for other departments – nothing that resembles the correct item requested. The site also maintains a page for the current, “certified” budget, broken down into “volumes” similar to the various departments of the state, however none clearly indicate the Department of Cultural Resources.

Failing to find the document she requested, the student called the office again to ask where else she could look. This time, after the short but confusing exchange, she was given an email address for NCDCR accountant Melody Chiang.

The student’s first documented interaction with the office was an email to Chiang on April 13th.

Rather than responding to the student, Chiang contacted Lori Oldham, the department’s controller, to ask what she was required to provide.

Oldham responded promptly and asked the student for more details on what was needed, saying she would try to help as best she could. However, when the student said that she was looking to find out how much money the department receives from the state, the total operating budget of the department and how much is spent on each cultural resource center, Oldham directed the student to the same general State Budget website.

The student explained on April 20th that she had already tried to locate the information on the site and could not find the document she needed but, as of today, she has not received a reply.

Frank LoMonte, director of the Student Press Law Center, said that his understanding of the North Carolina law was that the document must be directly provided and that placing the burden of locating the document back on the requester is not a “legally compliant response.”

In part, LoMonte said, this is because a large repository of similar files may have an outdated version of the document in question, and it could be difficult to discern the correct information without inside knowledge of the department or office.

After eight days without a reply, Oldham was notified on Tuesday morning, via email, that the office was failing to comply with the law and that this would be expressed online in various student blogs, but she has yet to respond.

(Full disclosure, “the student” is me, but my professor for 416 told our class to format the articles this way.)