When WakeMed, a public hospital in Raleigh, refused to let The News & Observer see expenses accounts of members of its board of directors, The N&O sued, claiming the expense accounts were public records under North Carolina law.
The newspaper won in state Superior Court but the hospital kept appealing and appealing, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. And that, we thought, was that. We had finally won. Or had we?
WakeMed had lost in court but hospital officials decided to make it as difficult as possible for us, or anyone else, to copy or examine its public records.
WakeMed increased its copying fee from 25 cents a page, which was way too high, to $2 a page — $5.07 a page in 2018 dollars. We said we’d bring our own photocopier, and paper, to the hospital and make the copies ourselves but WadeMed said No. Plugging in our photocopier, officials said, might disrupt the hospital’s electrical system and endanger patients.
Huh? Come again?
They boxed up the public records the court had said the newspaper was entitled under state law to examine, put them in an unheated room in the basement, and said, in effect, look all you want.
I was assigned that task.
The records, it turned out, were a mess. It looked to me like someone had taken some of the expense accounts apart, removed some documents, and shuffled the rest.
That didn’t sit well with the powers that be at The N&O and they decided to have more than just a look. They decided to do whatever had to be done to enforce the court order — build a case and ask the court to hold the hospital in contempt.
I was assigned to go to WakeMed every morning, read all day and make notes, and then come to The N&O in the evening and type up my notes. I was looking for stories –and I found one good one showing that Wake Med was paying way too much for some of its supplies– but I was also looking for evidence that the hospital had violated the court order.
Day after day I reported to my new office in that icebox of a basement at WakeMed. Two men were assigned to sit nearby and watch me, to make sure I didn’t steal anything, I guess. All three of us wore heavy coats.
My watchers were working guys, like me, and after a while we got to talking, taking coffee breaks together. And then one day, they switched sides. I was searching for purchasing records and one of them said to me, “You’re looking in the wrong box.”
I asked him, “Which box should I be looking in?”
“That one over there,” he said.
Postscript: When I finished going through the records I gave our attorney an affidavit detailing what WakeMed had done to prevent examination of its travel records and The N&O filed a motion asking Wake Superior to hold hospital officials in contempt of court. The affidavit said the hospital had withheld receipts for plane travel and expense payments to credit car companies, hotels, and so forth and so on. Result: WakeMed said it would start playing nice with public records, and it did.
Coming Monday: Amazing, Absolutely Amazing