Winston-Salem Journal

North Carolinians must demand airtight public-ethics laws, or our politicians will wiggle through loopholes and continue to enjoy special treatment.

During his two terms in office, former Gov. Mike Easley enjoyed membership in an exclusive Chatham County golf club. As a courtesy for the governor, the club, whose limited membership includes some of the state’s most powerful business and political leaders, waived almost $50,000 in dues for him.

Easley didn’t report the waivers on his required state-ethics forms, McClatchy Newspapers reported. His attorney says that neither state law, nor an executive order that preceded that law, required Easley to do so.

A federal grand jury will determine whether Easley will be prosecuted for accepting the many special favors provided by businesses and important friends. But one thing is clear now: The former governor was greatly compromised, and what he did should now be illegal even if it wasn’t in the past.

For generations North Carolina politics was generally free of major scandal, a tradition turned on its head this decade. A major reason for that clean record, however, was that much behavior banned in other states was still legal here. For example, lobbyists regularly wined and dined legislators, took legislative leaders on expensive vacations and bought them valuable gifts. In other states, legislators who accepted such gratuities would go to prison. Here, they went to steakhouses.

During this decade, scandals uncovered by the press and prosecuted by federal authorities led to public pressure for reform. Legislators fought reform and sought to create a greater impression of change than really existed. One such false impression regards state ethics forms.

For Easley’s first six years in office, an executive order from former Gov. Jim Hunt was the legal basis for the ethics form. In a series of 2007 reforms, the General Assembly gave statutory basis to that requirement, and in the process, conveniently weakened it.

Throughout the legislative sessions of 2004 to 2007, legislators fought persistently to scale back efforts to deny them the ability to take gifts and gratuities and to engage in other conflicts of interest.

During the 2009 session, even as the Easley scandal has raged in the press and the grand jury has investigated him, legislators again resisted reform. A series of reform bills passed by the House sit idly in a Senate committee waiting for the 2010 session.

When 2010 rolls around, North Carolinians must demand strong, airtight reforms. Government exists to serve the needs of the citizenry, not to feather the beds – or pay the greens fees – of politicians and bureaucrats.

In five separate network and cable news interviews Tuesday night, President Barack Obama found five different ways to say that he had made a mistake in bending the ethics standards he had set out during the campaign and the transition, the NYT Caucus blog reports.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue says she’s going to get even tougher on ethics rules than she’s already pledged to do.

Perdue told News 14 Carolina in an interview Wednesday she will hire an ethics officer in her new administration. That person will be a lawyer who will work to ensure employees follow ethics laws and other rules she intends to set out.

Perdue also wants help deciding how to improve state government after she takes office Jan. 10. There’s a suggestion box on her Web site to give her e-mailed ideas or other feedback. The Web site is www.bevperdue.com.

The Democratic lieutenant governor defeated Republican Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory in last week’s election.

RALEIGH, N.C. - Three years of scandals and the imprisonment of three former or current legislators have soiled North Carolina’s capital. Now the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor are promising to hose it down.

WASHINGTON – A campaign finance watchdog group on Friday filed a complaint with federal regulators against two groups – one pro-Republican and the other pro-Democrat – alleging they violated the law by airing political ads during the presidential contest.

Democracy 21 wants the Federal Election Commission to investigate the American Issues Project, which ran a $2.8 million ad campaign against Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, and the American Leadership Project, a group that backed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries and ran about $4.3 million in ads supporting her or against Obama.

The complaint argues that both groups violated the law by not operating as a political action committee, which would have restricted their fundraising to capped donations. The American Leadership Project was largely financed by unions that supported Clinton. The American Issues Project ad against Obama was paid for by Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, a McCain fundraiser.

“The FEC complaint we filed today is intended to help ensure that the FEC continues to take enforcement action against any illegal activities by outside spending groups that may occur in the 2008 election,” said Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21.

The American Issues Project is a nonprofit 501(c)4 organization. It ran ads in August in Michigan and Ohio linking Obama to William Ayers, a Vietnam-era militant who helped found the violent Weather Underground. Ayers, now a university professor in Chicago, has worked on charity and education projects with Obama and hosted a political meet-and-greet for Obama in the 1990s.

As a 501(c)4 organization, the group must have as its main purpose a mission other than seeking to influence elections. Wertheimer also wrote to the Internal Revenue Service asking the IRS to examine whether the group violated its nonprofit status.

In a statement, American Issues Project President Ed Martin said the group complies with the law because most of its activities are nonpolitical. “This is a totally spurious complaint – we are well aware of the requirements of the law and are in complete compliance with those requirements,” he said.

The American Leadership Project was created as a 527 group, named after the section of the tax code that governs them. Its main contributors were the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the American Federation of Teachers. The group also ran a radio ad against McCain in Colorado against McCain during he Democratic National Convention.
  
The group did not have an immediate response.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Alaska’s Supreme Court has refused to shut down an ethics investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee.

The decision Thursday sets the stage for state lawmakers to release a report on their investigation Friday. The report could prove to be an embarrassment for Palin and a distraction for John McCain’s presidential campaign in the final weeks of the race.

Lawmakers are investigating whether Palin abused her power to settle a family dispute. Her former public safety commissioner says he was dismissed after resisting pressure to fire a state trooper who had gone through nasty divorce from Palin’s sister.

Republican lawmakers had sued to block the report, saying it had become politicized.

Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory may have the “reformer” label down pat.

RALEIGH, N.C. – The chairman of the North Carolina State Ethics Commission is lambasting the state auditor’s office over an investigation into a fired ethics panel employee.
 
Chairman Robert Farmer skewered State Auditor Les Merritt Friday for releasing a preliminary report on the firing investigation without waiting for a lawsuit on the topic to be resolved in court. Farmer labeled that preliminary report a “sham” and said Merritt is acting with “total contempt for the rule of law.”

His comments are the latest in the spat between the two agencies over whether Merritt’s office should be conducting the investigation into a commission employee’s firing. The ethics panel has filed a lawsuit to remove the auditor from the investigation because it says the auditor has a conflict of interest.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Republican nominee for governor Pat McCrory says voters deserve to know more about why an aide to rival Beverly Perdue examined her state ethics form in private last year.

McCrory told reporters Wednesday that Perdue should explain more about why the attorney in her lieutenant governor’s office reviewed the record.
 
A State Ethics Commission staff member has said she let the lawyer use a private office because another room was unavailable. The aide has said he reviewed the form so omitted information about her financial interests could be added later.

McCrory also said some commission members could have a conflict if forced to review a case involving a transportation board member and Perdue fundraiser. Campaign reports show three commission members gave to Perdue’s campaign before their terms began.