Columbus County Can Do the Right Thing

Back in October 2022, our team began chasing a story about federal and state investigations into alleged abuses of power at the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office under Jody Greene.

Over the next 12 months, reporters Carli Brosseau and Sarah Nagem requested a number of public records, including correspondence between the sheriff’s office and county leaders, as well as letters and legal complaints from citizens. 

Most of those requests were ignored, while others were denied or delayed—even though state law requires access to such documents. North Carolina’s public records law makes clear that records do not become nonpublic simply because a criminal investigation has begun; government agencies must still respond to requests “as promptly as possible.” 

Often, this is where the story stops. Reporters file requests, agencies deny or delay access, and given all the time and financial pressures on newsrooms, we can’t push back. But we made use of free legal support through the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and McGuireWoods, who disputed the county’s denials and then stayed on top of them to produce the few records officials had promised to release. 

Ignoring public records law wasn’t a new issue in the county; a judge had found the sheriff’s office in violation of the law in a separate public records lawsuit three years earlier.

When the county continued to evade transparency for nearly two years, we filed a lawsuit—the only recourse for journalists when officials aren’t complying with the law. The county’s handling of public records, our lawyers wrote, “evinces a pattern of ongoing and willful defiance of our state’s transparency laws.” 

We don’t want to take officials to court. It’s not a good use of our time and resources, nor is it a prudent use of public funds on the part of officials seeking to avoid accountability. We will, however, do so when it’s in the interest of revealing information citizens deserve to know. As the applicable state statute affirms, “public information compiled by the agencies of North Carolina government or its subdivisions are the property of the people.”

“We did everything possible to engage with the sheriff and commissioners, through their counsel, to get them to comply with the public records law and avert litigation,” said Joie Johnston, one of our McGuireWoods lawyers. “But in the end, taking our case to court was the only way we could get the sheriff and the county to comply with the law or even engage in meaningful discussions.”

The records we did obtain revealed that federal investigators had sent a subpoena to the sheriff’s office in late 2023 demanding information about its finances. Investigators included a list of 51 businesses and individuals they wanted to scrutinize further, which we revealed in a December 2024 story; that information would likely still be secret if we hadn’t pursued legal action regarding the records. 

But there are more public records we want to see. Last May and again in August, a Columbus County Superior Court judge ruled in our favor, requiring the county and the sheriff’s office to release more than 1,000 additional records. We are still waiting on 57 of them.

These laws don’t exist just for reporters. Any citizen can file requests for certain public records as a means of providing oversight and ensuring transparency from their leaders. Most people, however, can’t afford to hire lawyers and take officials to court when they don’t follow the law. Most newsrooms can’t, either, which is perhaps why so many public agencies feel emboldened to ignore the law these days. We certainly could not have sued without our pro bono support.

While their services were free to us, they aren’t free to provide. Our lawyers spent more than 350 hours working on our case and advocating on our behalf. Because the court decided in our favor, our state public records law requires the defendants to repay the costs that our counsel incurred: an estimated $149,114, which reflects a discount from typical lawyer rates. 

Our lawyers submitted that request last August, and while the judge found that their rates were appropriate and all of the work done was necessary, he used his discretion to reduce the fee to about half of that–$74,557–at the end of December (perhaps being mindful of the fact that it is Columbus County taxpayers who will ultimately bear the cost). 

“The Plaintiff sought to resolve this matter before trial and made overtures reasonably calculated to bring about that end,” Superior Court Judge Quintin McGee wrote in his order. The request, he also wrote, is “reasonable and appropriate and commensurate with customary fees for this kind of representation.”

The ruling put the ball back in Columbus County’s court, but they again decided to avoid responsibility by appealing the award of lawyer fees. We strongly hope they will see that continuing to drag out this case and amass more legal fees is not in their interest, nor in the public’s. The county has almost certainly spent a similar amount on legal fees fighting this case, taxpayer dollars expended because their leaders don’t believe they should have to follow the law.