RALEIGH, N.C. – Two officials with the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles have retired or plan to soon after they were cleared by an investigation into whether they took free tickets to a state inauguration event from a vendor.

Questions arose after Gov. Beverly Perdue’s inauguration as to whether the employees in the DMV’s License and Theft Bureau took tickets for events from Verizon Business. The company is paid $9 million annually to handle data for the state’s electronic auto inspection program, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Tuesday.

Brian Bozard planned to retire as of May 1 and Deborah Brewer already has left the DMV.

DMV Commissioner Mike Robertson said neither were leaving under pressure.

Bozard, 48, served as director of the DMV’s License and Theft Bureau and Brewer was deputy director of the bureau. Bozard said previously that he didn’t get tickets from Verizon. The report said Brewer took three tickets to events, and wrote a $475 check for them.

Brewer, 59, told the newspaper she qualified for full state retirement benefits and was leaving to help care for her mother.

Investigators said in their report that they looked at six DMV officials, including Brewer, and determined the other five didn’t get tickets from any group that does business with the state.

“Through this investigation, there has been no evidence to indicate any License and Theft employee received any gratuitous favors from any vendor,” the report said.

Verizon helped sponsor the inaugural events in Raleigh and was given a table at the inaugural ball. Brewer and Bozard said they sat at Verizon’s table and Robertson said that caused concern.

“You can have a friendly relationship, certainly,” Robertson said. “But when you are in a public place in a political, public gathering, there’s obviously some concern when you have a major contractor socializing with the ones they do business with.”

DURHAM, N.C. – A coalition campaigning for paid sick days for all North Carolina workers will hold a town hall meeting on the issue in Durham.

The NC Paid Sick Days coalition will hold the meeting Thursday night at the Durham Public Library. Other meetings are planned later this month and in April in Durham, Fayetteville, Rocky Mount and Asheville. In late April, meetings will be held in Greenville, Wilmington, and Charlotte.

More than 30 groups are part of the coalition, which wants the state to guarantee workers throughout the state up to a maximum of seven paid sick days annually.

It supports a bill in the state House of Representatives called the Health Families and Healthy Workplaces Act that would ensure workers have paid sick time.

This editorial appeared in the The Waynesboro News Virginian.

Among other things expected to occupy Congress and Barack Obama next year will be legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act, a name that strikes some, including Del. Chris Saxman, R-Staunton, as oxymoronic.

Particularly objectionable in the mind of Saxman and business is an element that would eliminate secret ballots for union elections, leaving workers subject to coercion by union bosses eyeing power and dues. The right-to-work status of Virginia, Saxman explains, would be shattered and so he acts.

His solution is a constitutional amendment that would safeguard the commonwealth’s right-to-work law, which bars unions and employees from making payment of union dues a condition of employment. Union representatives say the federal law would shield workers from employer interference. Saxman says the law would accomplish the opposite and would deal an ill-timed blow to the state’s efforts to attract business.

Not only is Saxman correct, his position on secret ballots is reflected by Mark Warner, the former governor and one of the state’s most powerful Democrats who next month will take John Warner’s place in the Senate. Warner relied in no small part on union support in scoring an easy victory over Jim Gilmore in November, but told The News Virginian in an editorial board interview in the fall that he found troubling the portion of the law proposing to eliminate secret ballots.

Jim Flickinger, president of the International Brotherhood of DuPont Workers, which represents Invista employees, worries about lag time between approval of union elections and the time the election is held. He says he has seen elsewhere how employers use this time to propagandize against unions. But he adds that he does not quibble with Virginia’s right-to-work law.

Unions and the federal bill would chew away at the free-speech rights of employers while placing workers under the unvarnished scrutiny of organizers. Further, it would allow a government panel to establish a two-year collective bargaining agreement if the two sides fail to broker their own deal within 130 days. That places workers as well as employers at a disadvantage when considering the impact of unionization.

For these reasons, Congress should reject the Employee Free Choice Act. Because the concept is bound to linger whether it survives this year or not, the General Assembly should press ahead with Saxman’s legislation. That even a union leader such as Flickinger finds the state’s right-to-work law acceptable is a testament to its fairness.

The ability of workers to organize is part of life in the American workplace. So, too, should be the right of workers to just say no.