North Carolina officials held a closed door session last week about drilling off the state’s coast. This editorial from the Winstson-Salem Journal raises serious questions about process, accessibility and the perception of back room deals.
“When it comes to North Carolina’s coast and processes that affect all of us, the McCrory administration needs to stop meeting behind closed doors.
State officials, along with officials from South Carolina and Virginia, met privately last week with federal regulators and groups funded by oil and gas companies to discuss plans for drilling off the Atlantic coast, The Associated Press reported. Reporters and members of environmental groups were excluded until the conclusion of the meeting at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.
We can’t recall any other administration convening a meeting of public officials to talk about a public process for developing a public resource, held in a public location, that is closed to the public,” Dustin Chicurel-Bayard, a spokesman for the North Carolina Sierra Club, told the AP. “It’s hard to understand why the McCrory administration is being so secretive and shutting the public out of the conversation about the future of our coast.”
We agree.”
[box type=”bio”] Read the editorial about opening up the offshore drilling permitting process to public scrutiny in the Winston-Salem Journal.[/box]