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.