Consider This...

March 30, 2007

 

Anything that state government wants to do in secret should be cause for concern.

When it’s ethics hearings we’re talking about, then demanding secrecy would seem to be the height of hypocritical absurdity.

But that’s what North Carolina has now as a result of the reform law passed last year. Now, for the first time in a generation, state legislators can hold secret hearings on ethics complaints, with no public access unless a sanction is approved.  

In this time of scandal and loss of faith in government, it makes no sense for legislators to give themselves extra protection that the state’s judges (and certainly its private citizens) do not receive. The additional, unnecessary veil gives the impression that there is something to hide.

Open procedures must always be a goal for government entities, especially when those very procedures are the backbone of the system of accountability.