Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Public
records
An investigative gem from the depths of a file drawer
Incriminating documents in-hand are worth dozens of
whispered tips; it’s vital to keep access to old documents open
By Pat Stith
The copy of the thank you note, from the manager of the North Carolina
State Fair to a Florida carnival owner, had been boxed up in a state government
records warehouse for 20 years. It was exactly what I had hoped to find.
Another reporter and I were working on a story about a $100,000 a year
bonus paid by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, which runs
the state fair, to James E. Strates Shows. For years, the state had
given Strates Shows an extra cut of revenue from its biggest rides — a
deal not offered by most big fairs. The contract with Strates had been
renewed year after year with few changes and no competition.
We knew that in recent years Strates Shows had entertained the agriculture
officials who oversaw the contract at an annual carnival convention in
Las Vegas. We had been told that cozy relationship went way back.
State officials save the darnedest things, so I went to the records
warehouse looking for proof of an old, friendly, relationship between agriculture
officials and Strates Shows. The copy of the 20-year-old note I found thanked
the carnival owner for his hospitality in Las Vegas — for meeting the North
Carolina officials at the airport, for the dinners, the show, the "free
booze" and the chauffeur.
Bless every man and woman who has ever whispered a tip in my ear —and
put food on my table. But, in my experience, tips are appetizers. Records
are the meat and potatoes of most investigative stories and many other
stories.
Public records are critical to our work because they add richness of
detail that, often, we can’t get anywhere else. They make our stories more
authoritative and, therefore, more believable. Sometimes they enable us
to do stories that, otherwise, just couldn’t be done — knowing something
is true is one thing, proving it is true is something else. Records can
give us the proof we need to publish.
Good record work also produces good interviews.
Last year my partner at the News & Observer, Bill Krueger, and I
worked a story about the North Carolina agency that runs our state’s vehicle
inspection program. The Division of Motor Vehicles was supposed to make
sure that inspection stations were doing their jobs, but decisions were
being changed at the top and the program was a mess.
"I’ve never given anybody the direction to go back and give anybody
a license without having a hearing," the agency’s top cop told us. "I’ve
never changed one. No."
As soon as he said that, I handed him a letter he had signed returning
a license to a safety inspection station in Ellerbe, N.C. He read the letter
and then said: "I would not have made that statement if I’d thought there
was such a letter as that. It shocks me."
It shocked us, too.
But look what happened on that same story when Bill and I didn’t do
our homework — didn’t do the record work — and then look what happened
when we did.
We asked the director about a service station in Wilson, N.C., his hometown,
that had been caught by one of his undercover agents and then let off the
hook. We asked if he had ever done business there, and he said, "No." We
asked if he had ever had his car inspected there and he said, "I can’t
say whether it was or not."
We let it go at that, even though a source had told us that he had his
car inspected at that station. After that interview I drove to Wilson,
found the record of his inspection, copied the information, and gave it
to my partner.
Bill reinterviewed the guy. But this time, Bill asked: Did you get your
1981 Mercedes inspected at Lee’s 66 on May 10 of last year?
The director replied:
"A Mercedes? Oh, yeah, I bought an ’81 Mercedes convertible. I forgot
that car, because I just forgot I even owned it, to tell you the damn truth.
That’s an error, my fault. Like I said, I never drove that car. When you
were asking me, I was thinking about the Lexus and the cars that are everyday
cars to me."
Much of a reporter’s work is done on deadline or, at least, we say it
is. And we use deadlines to excuse ourselves from doing good record work.
A time or two beat reporters — who are the heart of every newspaper
— have told me: "I’d use public records more if I had a month to work on
a story." But, you see, they say in so many words, "I’ve got a real job."
They do have real jobs, but exactly how much of our work is deadline
work — same day, same afternoon or evening — deadline reporting on stories
we could not have anticipated, stories on which we could not have done
any advance work?
There are a few stories like that, but not many.
The announcement of a merger, a major construction project?
Maybe.
Crimes, fires, accidents? We don’t know when those events will happen,
but we know they will happen to somebody, sometime, and we can prepare
for that certainty.
The meetings we cover — the city council, the public housing authority,
legislative committees — allow us, if we will, to do a lot of reporting
in advance. So do speeches by prominent politicians. Sometimes we can even
get advance copies of audits. Much of the staff-written copy in our paper
lends itself to rather extensive record checks.
Good record work starts with learning "their" rules.
If we know how things are supposed to work, we’ll know it when they’re
not.
Why don’t we read the state laws, and regulations, that govern the agencies
we cover? Why don’t editors insist on it?
State highway patrols are quasi-military organizations, aren’t they?
And if they are, wouldn’t they have an operations manual, a right way and
a wrong way to do everything? Shouldn’t we get a copy and read it? How
can we know that they’ve violated their own policy if we’ve never read
their policy?
Record work is collaborative and imaginative. It is not clerical.
We ought to be talking with each other, with editors and with researchers,
sharing ideas. Encouraging one another.
Finally, good record work requires us to learn to use a computer. Why
photocopy some agency’s monthly phone bill and then spend days trying to
figure it out when we can get a database of all their phone records and
analyze them in a few hours? Reporters ought to be polite when we ask for
records. That’s just a matter of good manners. But when we are refused,
we ought to take off the gloves.
At The News & Observer, it is a violation of policy for a reporter
to permit a government agency to deny us information in violation of state
or federal public record law without notifying our supervisor. This is
a terrific rule, a rule that’s good for reporters and good for the newspaper
too.
We are most often refused because officials do not know what the law
requires. But what’s worse, I think, is that reporters and editors often
don’t know either. If we don’t know our own public records law — if we’ve
never even read it — how can we insist that public officials obey it?
There are a lot of excuses for denying us access to public records,
including a simply (but usually unlawful), "Come back tomorrow." Or how
about, "We’ve never released that record and I’ve worked here for 30 years."
As if that mattered.
An attorney at the state Division of Motor Vehicles supplied my all
time favorite reason why I couldn’t have a public record. I went there
to look at an accident report, which DMV conceded was a public record.
But to find it, I had to use their accident index. And their attorney insisted
that the index was not a public record.
I talked to that fellow for a good while, and asked him several times
what statute he intended to use to try to deny access to the N&O.
The lawyer hemmed and he hawed. And then he told me: "There isn’t a
law that says you can’t have it, but there ought to be."
Stuff like that makes me want to say, "Hoss, are you listening to yourself?"
Stith is a reporter for The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.
