Editor’s Note: Sunshine Request makes no claim as to the veracity of any statements or information contained in any of the requests, or public records, we receive.
Editor’s Note 12/19/25: The submission above has been marked as “Completed”. As written, it is unclear what specific records you’re requesting.
– On October 16, we completed a request to Polk County, NC that asked for “… names and salaries of all Polk County, NC employees who were employed at any point in time from February 01, 2025 through the present day [on the date the query is performed].” The results we received should include employees who were currently employed as of 10/16/25.
– On October 23, someone submitted another request to our site, indicating that they felt that “all employees” were not provided to us by the County on October 16 — they were expecting to see Commissioners + Elected Officials included in that report, and also indicated they felt the County interpreted the original request we wrote to mean “only new hires made” during that period of time.
– On December 06, someone submitted another request to our site, asking for a “… list of salaries for all employees with polk county nc local government”. In this case, we revised the sender’s request, more specifically to ask for “... names and salaries of all current Polk County, NC employees as of the present day. I consider the term “employee” to mean – anyone employed by and paid as an employee of the County. This should include all full-time / part-time employees, staff, commissioners, elected officials, etc. if applicable.”
That request was completed just today (12/19 @ 10:33am), and Tommy provided the responsive document on 12/16. Please note that 2 spreadsheets were provided. After additional clarification to Tommy, he ultimately provided a revised document ([Version 2] Public Records Request – Sunshine Request – Polk County Employee Salary – 16Dec25xlsx) on 12/16. Please review all responsive records at the following URL:
– On December 18, someone submitted another request to our site, indicating they feel Polk County has not provided a full list of employees as requested. They also asked for “… all salaries as of January 1st be included on this same list to show the approved COLA and other (if any) pay increases for the same employees.”
January 01 is thirteen days from now. If, after January 01 you would still like to submit a new request to our site, clearly indicating specific records you’d like to receive, we’ll be happy to ask for an updated list from the County. However, please note — if you’d like to submit monthly, or even semi-regular requests to the County for salary data, we would recommend reaching out to them directly and ask them to make that info public proactively. Perhaps with a data dashboard like other counties use. This would be in the public’s interest, as well as save their Staff time to fulfill recurring requests for salary data.
Please note the following from our FAQs page:
Who should I contact if I think there are results of requests that have been improperly disclosed or should be redacted?
The results of all Completed requests are published on our site, and have been provided to Sunshine Request directly by the disclosing government agency (government entity).
Sunshine Request’s policy in situations involving an alleged improper disclosure is to refer you to the disclosing agency (government entity). If any party feels that an alleged improper disclosure has taken place, please contact the disclosing agency (government entity) directly.
If the disclosing agency, after a review of your case, determines that confidential information was improperly disclosed, and notifies us of such disclosure, we will then be able to review your case.
Similarly — Sunshine Request has reviewed any info given to us from Polk County, NC to determine if it satisfies the initial request. We make no claim as to the veracity of records / responses we receive from Entities. If you have reason to believe that the County has improperly disclosed (or is not disclosing) all available public records in accordance with NC Public Records Law, we encourage you to reach out to them directly.
Sunshine Request will not fulfill the following types of requests:
☀️ Requests that are incomplete, non-specific, or vague.
While we do proofread requests we receive for general spelling and clarity, we may choose not to fulfill the request if it is incomplete, or it is unclear what specific information the requester hopes to receive. In this case, the sender may rewrite and resubmit the request.
It’s the requester’s responsibility to write the request in a manner that clearly specifies a record that is being requested, and to what government entity it should be sent.
☀️ Requests that include profanity, personal statements, opinions, possibly defamatory statements, or other unnecessary info that is not relevant to making a records request.
Please do not include personal opinions and statements in the request’s Subject or Message. Please omit any extraneous statements that are not specific to the exact information you’d like to receive. This is not relevant information pertinent to the processing of a records request, and the request will not be published.
☀️ Please be specific:
It is important that what you are requesting is specific and reasonable, and is an actionable records request. Please specify the exact type of records you’d like to receive, rather than any “possible” or “potential” info that could be searched. Remember that the larger your request, the more time it usually takes to fulfill. Specificity will often help reduce the amount of time needed to process the request.
It is important that a request has a clearly written and complete Subject and Message, and also specifies the Government Entity (or entities), City and/or County, and State to which the request should be sent. If applicable, please also include any responsive timelines for the info that should be requested.
While we do proofread requests we receive for general spelling and clarity, we may choose not to fulfill the request if it is incomplete, or it is unclear what specific info the requester hopes to receive, or if it violates our policies.
Before submitting a request, please take a moment to review our tips for How to write and make a successful request. If you have additional questions about our site or how to make requests, please check out our FAQs or Policies page.
☀️ Code of Conduct: Please do not use Sunshine Request or any of the results of public records requests to harass government entities / employees, businesses, private citizens / individuals, or otherwise.
☀️ Please note that we cannot pay any fees / associated costs related to any of the requests on our site. If it is not possible for a Government Agency to process our request without incurring fees, then it is the responsibility of that Agency to let us know what the potential costs may be — at which point we will ask that they cease processing the request. We will mark the request as “Completed” on our site, and the sender can contact the Government Agency directly, should they wish to further pursue a request.
Thank you for using Sunshine Request!