News-Record.com

Good Tuesday morning and welcome to another year in Tar Heel politics. After completing a year where we talked a lot about the lottery, voting machines, ethics and taxes it looks like we're going to spend a new one talking about much of the same. Plus, we have legislative elections this year! (Okay, strange things excite me.)

Just so I don't leave any business from the end of the year uncovered, here's what you might have missed while swilling egg nogg, spinning derides or doing whatever it is you do to commemorate the passing of the year:

• The General Assembly is powering up a new committee to look at energy and fuel costs. Its first get together is Thursday morning at 10 a.m.

  I wrote a story that mentioned this in Saturday's paper.

  The bullet here is this: Republican legislators have been railing for a freeze in the gas tax since September or so. Democratic leaders have largely brushed them off. But the state gas tax went up 2.8-cents Sunday, the biggest one-time jump in the tax's history, giving the GOP more fuel for their fire. And in recent months, rank-in-file Dems have hopped on the lower-the-gas-tax band wagon, especially folks with lower income constituents who are taking it in the hip-pocket over commuting costs.

  There's now a significant movement afoot to call a special session to cap or at least temporarily freeze the gas tax. Thursday's meeting can either be a seen as a first step in that direction or a show-piece meant to demonstrate the legislature is taking action while putting off indefinitely any sort of special session.

  By the way, home-heating prices sometimes get thrown into the mix, but they're actually expected to decline this week.

• I was going to spend some time musing on a series of eat-you-vegetable sort of news releases from the governor's office, but Kera Bolton of the Ashville paper beat me to it.

• The Lottery Commission has scheduled its first meeting of the new year for Thursday, Jan. 6, at 10:30 a.m. (In the ABC Commission Room of the Admin building downtown for those of you who are local.)

  Meanwhile, for extra credit, lottery watchers could review this story that ran in the Washington Post by Charlotte's Mark Johnson and the Newark paper's story that says folks who live in lower-income zip codes tend to buy more lottery tickets. (That last story is sort of old and I may have posted it before.)

• The North Carolina Association of County Commissioners has gotten all down in the dumps over the voting machine deadlines, saying there's not enough time to get new equipment in place. One county, Catawba, has even gone so far as to sue the state.

  Some see a connection between Catawba's suit, the fact that Catawba Commissioner Kitty Barnes is president of the NCACC and the fact that NCACC is fighting the state's new voting rules and regulations. I can't verify that as fact, but boy did they make the line easy to draw.

  Just by the way, there has been subdued chatter of potentially delaying the scheduled May primary since November in elections circles and the murmur has been getting louder as of late. The thinking is there just isn't enough time between now and the end of March (when things really need to be in place) to get all that needs to be done, done. Since the 2004 and 2002 primaries were also delayed (for unrelated reasons) this really wouldn't be a new thing...annoying and problematic for political parties, but not new.

  And lest you think it's just a liberal thing to T-off on voting machine companies and what not, the state's conservative elements are also in on this act.

• Lillian’s List of North Carolina has hired its first executive director according to an e-mail from uber-lobbyist Paula Wolf, although there's no mention on the group's website. For those of you who don't know, Lillian's List describes itself as "an independent political action committee dedicated to electing pro-choice, Democratic women to the North Carolina General Assembly."

  Their new, and I think first full time director is Carol J. Teal, a veteran of Democratic political causes including the Kerry-Edwards campaign.

So, you want to represent your friends and neighbors in the North Carolina General Assembly? Good for you. Where else can you take time away from your family and full-time job to work for (relatively) low wages and have your every move scrutinized by us folks in the press?

Are you gunning for a seat in Guilford County or some place on our borders? (Districts bordering Guilford include parts of Davidson, Forsyth, Rockingham, Randolph and Alamance.) Want to be sure the paper and this blog includes you in our columns when we talk about the buzz around such-and-such a race or who might challenge who in which district?

Well, drop me a line. (mbinker@news-record.com or 919/832-5549.)

That's what Olga Morgan Wright did the other day. She's planning to run in NC House District 58, which is currently held by Rep. Alma Adams.

Just like that, she gets her name published on this here blog (read by no fewer than seven people and two hyper-active cats every day) and exposure to the, um, masses out there on the Internets.

Wright, by the way, is a Republican and challenged Adams the last time around. She took home 32.34 percent of the vote in 2004, which wasn't too shabby in a district where Republicans had only made up 22-odd percent of the registered voters.

(Libertarian Walter Sperko also ran in this race the last time, taking home a little less than 2 percent of the vote.)

House District 58 stretches out from Greensboro the Alamance and Randolph county lines. It's reasonable to expect that since 2004 there's been some demographic shift in the area - with more Republican-leaning voters moving into precincts outside Greensboro - to make the district more competitive.

Still, it would have to be a massive (and undetected) population shift to make things completely even. And Adams is a strong incumbent with strong ties to the House leadership (which could be both a good and bad thing this year) and a corps of support anchored firmly in a handful of east Greensboro precincts that tend to vote in pretty good numbers.

All in all - voters should expect to see a competitive campaign here, with Adams having an edge due to incumbency, name recognition and voter registration percentages. On the flip side, Wright will likely get some bump in name recognition from her prior campaign and has shown she can "beat the spread" during the fall campaign.

Us scruffy press types spent some time this afternoon with Bill Graham, a Salisbury lawyer who has been bankrolling radio ads and a web site railing against the recent gas tax increase. (Click here for some background.)

Among other things, Graham has been circulating an online petition and now claims to have more than 22,000 "signatures" asking the honorables to come back to town and repeal the 2.8-cent per gallon gas tax jump that took effect Jan. 1.

(Click here to visit his web site.)

From an outfit called Public Policy Poling Inc. comes a survey that tells us, well, something. My favorite bits:

• North Carolinians, being an optimistic lot, seem to think they have a slightly greater chance of winning the lottery than getting hit by a meteor or finding buried treasure. However, we seem to think that we're more likely to get bit by a shark.
• 51 percent don't care which Hollywood couple break up.

Click here to read the whole thing. (It is a PDF.)

I don't know how much stock you should put in the results. Apparently their research methodology relies on people to not only have a phone and answer, and not only be willing to take a survey, but be willing to take a survey by way of push-button responses.

Me, I'm really waiting on the next Elon Poll.

I have a blog backlog to get to – one entry which will even use the phrase "strip club" – caused in part by working an editing shift Friday night. Also contributing was one of those stories that I started out thinking, "Hey, this will be a cute little quick-hit and take no time at all." I should know by now, whenever that thought crosses my mind, I'm sunk.

At any rate: go read about the pretty sunflowers and what the state is doing to preserve them.

I'm going to dose up on coffee and will be right back to share the latest doings here in Cap City.

While my slacker behind has been writing about pretty flowers, my colleague Taft Wireback has been committing some real journalism. From a report he published last Friday:

School districts in parts of North Carolina are struggling with buses from High Point-based Thomas Built Buses that have such weak heating systems they leave students and drivers shivering whenever the weather turns cold.

Click here for that story.

Apparently, the state has taken notice. From today’s paper:

State officials expect to decide soon whether Thomas Built Buses should pay to improve ineffective heaters in hundreds of buses the High Point company made for school districts across the state.

Officials in the state Division of Purchase and Contract plan to meet with their counterparts in the Department of Public Instruction to discuss a solution, said Ralph Edelberg of the state contract office.

Click here for that story.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I want to be Taft when I grow up.

I last wrote about the idea of holding a special session to debate lowering the recent 2.8-cent jump in the gas tax here and here.

Others weigh in here, here, here and here.

My latest reading of the landscape here is that North Carolinians should (Eds note: 8p.m., I thought that I had fixed this ages ago but apparently it didn't take. So I'm fixing it again.) not expect to see the honorables trucking back to town any time soon. If for no other reason, there aren’t enough Democrats in the Senate willing to put their name to a call for a special session.

Plus, the latest 25-cent jump at the gas pump seems to have drowned out the tax increase. I guess it’s trendy to be mad at the oil companies over fuel prices again rather than the government.

That's not to say there isn't some entertainment to be had out of this affair.

As promised in an earlier post, it’s time to talk about strip clubs, so let’s not dance around the issue:

You may remember Joe Sinsheimer, who is on a mission to drive House Speaker Jim Black out of office. It hasn’t worked so far, but Sinsheimer seems undaunted in his quest to find stuff in Black’s campaign finance reports that folks might find unsavory.

Click here to see his latest effort, sent around Jan. 10, (or click here for a word file if you're reading this long after this posts publication date, since his releases aren’t indexed). It reads in part:

House Speaker Jim Black may have his troubles as of late, but his money is apparently still good in Greensboro.

A two-sentence missive from Rep. Early Jones (D-Greensboro) says that Black along with State Treasurer Richard Moore will be in town to help Jones raise money for the upcoming 2006 campaign. (Before I get asked: the shindig is from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Tuscana Cuisine on East Market Street tonight.)

No word of any "Black-out" protests, which have dogged the Speaker at some recent fund-raising events.

Gee, I wonder if Rep. Alma Adams (D-Greensboro) will be there? And if she is, do you think Moore will apologize for cutting in on her dance with the minimum wage?

Moore is a likely candidate for governor in 2008 and made a big splash earlier this month when he said he supported raising the minimum wage by $1. For background on that click here.

Were I Adams, I might be asking Moore, "So, um, where exactly were you last year when I was pushing this issue? Or the year before that? Or the year before."

Whether you agree with a wage increase or not, give Adams props for tilting at this particular windmill since the mid-1990s. This year, after a rather torturous ride through parliamentary hell, a minimum wage increase passed the House. Its prospects in the more business-interest-friendly Senate are currently assessed at less-than-promising, but the beginning of the short session in May is still a long way off.

Well, after toiling in the trenches on this issue, Adams gets to watch her issue get swept right up in the 2008 governor's race. (Heck, Moore even started up a cute little website to tout the issue: http://www.onedollarmore.blogspot.com/.)

The funniest and possibly most dead-on comment about Moore calling for a minimum wage hike comes from Carter Wrenn, over at talkingaboutpolitics.com

Here's a prediction: However much Mr. Moore comes out for raising the minimum wage the other so-called ‘blue-chip’ Democrat candidate for Governor, Lt. Governor Beverly Perdue, will be for more. That’ll make her more populist and more moral. (Click here to read the whole post.)

Of course, it’d really be funny if Moore and Perdue went all-out to stake their claim to the issue and a wage hike of some ilk ended up passing the General Assembly this year. All that speechifying and chicken dinners would go for naught. You think the Senate would agree to pass the bill just for the comedic value?

And hey folks, don't go getting all sweaty over the 2008 gubernatorial election yet. We've still got a whole legislative election cycle to mess with this year. Which, neatly enough, brings up back to Black and Moore visiting Greensboro.

I've written a couple stories about local Dems standing by their man Black despite his troubles. (Find those (here and here.) From the local delegation, Jones has been just about the most outspoken of the Speaker's supporters. If Black stays in power, one would imagine that Jones' loyalty could be rewarded.

On the other hand, if things go south for the Speaker, what might that mean for Jones? (Yeah, that’s an open-ended question there. Y'all discuss.)

For those of you who missed it, I had a story in Sunday's paper about the the state auditor's office and the governor's folks having a discussion over how to track lottery proceeds.

Basically, Auditor Les Merritt, a Republican, was asking Easley's folks to agree on a method for determining how much - if at all - lottery proceeds benefited education.

Easley, a Democrat, wrote back to Merritt and said, in essence, don't worry yourself about this. It'll be real obvious whether lottery money is boosting our education spending or not.

Merritt wrote back to say that he thought it was just dandy that Easley planned to put all the money in education but that he was still worried that in a year or two it may be real difficult to tell one way or the other.

Let's acknowledge up front that because Merritt is a Republican and Easley is a Democrat there some ready-made political tension here. (Privately, at least one of Easley's folks suggested to me that this must just be some sort of political grandstanding by the auditor. The auditors folks say no, that Merritt is genuine in his interest here.) And not being an accountant, I don't know if the level of detail Merritt's folks are after is really necessary or the answer is really as simple as Easley claims.

Merritt is asking for details of specific education programs that will get lottery funding. His stated worry is that programs that receive both lottery and tax dollars could confuse the issue down the line.

Easley's camp argues that you simply need to look at the over-all level of state spending going into education programs. That, plus that fact that the lottery proceeds will be going to new or relatively new programs should make the lottery dollars' easy to track, the governor argues.

Here's the rub: As I reported back last month, one of the biggest gripes about lottery is that years down the road is that lottery money really doesn't end up boosting education in the long run.

So here's Merritt realizing that this will be a question he'll be asked next year or the year after or maybe the year after that and essentially saying, "hey guys, let's come up with an agreed upon way to calculate the answer."

Even if the way he wants to go about it is backwards and too much on a micro-level - as Easley's folks contend - maybe that's not a horrible suggestion. Maybe the answer can be as simple as Easley's folks say, but if everyone agrees up front how to do the calculation than no one can complain down the line that one side or the other is doing some "new math" to get the answer they want.

Of course, my inner-skeptic says it’s more useful politically for Democrats and Republicans alike, lottery supporters and opponents of all different political stripes, to have the issue a bit clouded. All sides then can down the line say "See. See! See!! We were right," using whatever evidence they want to make whatever case they want.

Raleigh is back up at work after the 3-day weekend. Here are a few items to catch you up on things around town and beyond:

• I was going to include a brief explanation of my Sunday story on accounting for lottery money but ran on at the keyboard too long. Click here for a separate post on the topic.

• Mark Johnson of the Charlotte paper writes that Democrats are standing by Black,(mini reg. required) even in the face of the speaker's troubles. If that sounds like a familiar theme, it should.

• In one of their "Under the Dome" columns this weekend, the Raleigh N+O reported this nugget:

  A member of the N.C. Board of Ethics suggested last week that its efforts to develop recommendations for a proposed ethics law should be done in closed session.

  Mittie Smith, a High Point lawyer who has served on the board since 1993, said she didn't know whether the board could come up with the best recommendations "if we are being watched by the press."

  "I think we would probably be better to do it without the press looking over our shoulder," Smith said.

  Yeah, you'd hate to have those discussions about making sure government is transparent and that people are fair-minded and not improperly influenced by arm-twisting or bribes out in the open. (To their credit, the rest of the ethics board seemed to ignore the suggestion.)

• If Earl Jones is listening, Earl you might want to have a talk with one or two of your colleagues.

  Why?

  Well, the N+O's Dome also reported this tid-bit in the last few days:

  Amid all the ethics reform talk in the state House, Rep. Deborah Ross, a Raleigh Democrat, wants to do something about lawmakers who use campaign contributions for personal use. She has asked that a special House ethics committee take up the issue and, ultimately, recommend a ban on the practice.

  "It needs to be changed because when people give money to someone's political campaign, they give it to advance the public policy that the person might affect," said Ross, who is a co-chairwoman of the House election committee. "They don't give it for that person's personal expenses."

  Rep. Grier Martin, also a Raleigh Democrat, said the current law also could allow someone to legally bribe lawmakers by giving them campaign money that they can pocket.

  This idea apparently came up in the context of discussing former Rep. Mike Decker, a Republican who got some healthy campaign contributions at just about the same time he sent the House all higgly-piggly and forced the now-infamous power-sharing agreement between the GOP and the Dems.

  But that kind of restriction would pretty well crimp Jones' style as well. He recently told our editorial board that legislators' pay is so low, they should be able to reimburse themselves for some expenses. (For more editorial ire, click here.)

• She's not a state legislative contender, but an e-mail from Ada Fisher's Congressional campaign address seems to indicate that the Charlotte Republican will be challenging Mel Watt in the 12th Congressional District again. The e-mail was publicizing her talk during an MLK Day celebration and called Fisher "a likely candidate for the 2006 12th District US Congressional race."

  Fisher took about a third of the vote in 2004, which isn't bad considering she was outspent 5-1 and registered Democrats only make up 26 percent of the district that defines gerrymandering in the tar heel state.

• In honor of my trip to visit the parents over the weekend and my home state of Maryland, check out this story on the Maryland legislator over-riding the governor's and forcing Wal*Mart to pony up money for health insurance. I don't know if that could or would happen here, but if it ever got going the fight would be epic.
  

From our friends at the Associated Press:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Gov. Mike Easley lost his first cabinet secretary since taking office in 2001 when Administration Department Secretary Gwynn Swinson announced Tuesday she was leaving for an executive post at Duke University Medical Center.

Swinson, the state's chief administrative officer, will become vice president of government and community affairs and external relations at Duke, the medical center said in a statement.

The administration department oversees state building and construction work, state purchasing and the capitol police.

From the governor's office:

RALEIGH - Gov. Mike Easley today announced that he is releasing an additional $4 million in funds to help low-income North Carolinians with the high heating costs expected this winter. With the public and private funds Easley secured in November, a total of $14 million is available to assist needy residents with home weatherization and utility bills. The combined resources are anticipated to serve over 80,000 North Carolina families.

Click here for the full release.

In the release, Easley refers to "The recent call from so many members of the General Assembly for additional crisis utility assistance."

This is referring to a letter sent by the legislature's recently-formed energy and fuel cost committee sent last week. Yes, the committee is the same one that's supposed to be looking at the dreaded tax at the gas pump.

My non-cynical-self says: Hey, that's nice. More folks who need it will get help paying their home heating bills. Living in a cold house stinks and this is a way for the state to help real people.
My cynical-self says: You know what? This is exactly the kind of action and response (nice touch by Easley) that will give the Dems cover should the GOP come after them with the gas tax issue in this year's elections.

As with all things up this way, there's probably a little from column A and a little from column B at work.

Remember Britt Cobb? He was the temporary fill-in for disgraced Agriculture Commission Meg Scott Phipps, who is now enjoying the hospitality of a federal penitentiary. Cobb, a Democrat, ran unsuccessfully against Steve Troxler, a Guilford County Republican, to keep the job.

I mentioned yesterday that Gwynn Swinson had resigned as Secretary of Administration.

Since loosing the Ag post, Cobb has been hanging about the Department of Administration as Swinson's Deputy Secretary of Government Operations. Well, with Swinson leaving, he's going to get to run the show.

Gov. Mike Easley announced today that Cobb will take over at Administration Secretary.

Sure there are now cows or much livestock of any sort involved, but the job sounds, um, just darned exciting. From the release:

Created in 1957, DOA acts as the business manager for North Carolina state government. The Department oversees government operations such as building construction, purchasing and contracting for goods and services, managing state vehicles, acquiring and disposing of real property, and operating auxiliary services such as courier mail delivery and the sale of state and federal surplus property. In addition, the Department oversees the maintenance of state-owned buildings and grounds, and police security for state government facilities in Wake County. The Department also houses several advocacy groups including the Governor's Advocacy Council for Persons with Disabilities, the North Carolina Council for Women/Domestic Violence Commission, the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs, the North Carolina Human Relations Commission and the North Carolina Youth Advocacy and Involvement Office.

From Gov. Easley's office:

RALEIGH – Gov. Mike Easley today named Sarah Parker as Chief Justice of the N.C. Supreme Court. Parker is currently serving her second term as an Associate Justice on the Court. Parker will replace I. Beverly Lake Jr. who is retiring at the end of the month.

“As a former prosecutor, attorney general and as governor, I can say that Sarah Parker is one of the most well respected justices on the bench,” said Easley. “She is highly regarded in the law enforcement, legal and business community. She is well known for her fairness and independence which is necessary for an effective judiciary. I am confident in her ability to lead the Supreme Court at this time.”

“Sarah is the logical choice and I think highly of her,” said Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake. “She is an excellent jurist with a keen analytical mind. She will do an exceptional job.”

Parker, a native of Charlotte, earned her undergraduate and her law degrees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She served as an attorney in private practice for 15 years before being appointed to the N.C. Court of Appeals in 1984. She served on the Court of Appeals until 1993 when she joined the N.C. Supreme Court.

N+R editorial board member Doug Clark has some analysis of the political ramifications of this over at his "Off the Record" blog.

Yesterday (Thursday), charter school advocates held a bunch of news conferences throughout the state to lobby for a share of lottery proceeds. There wasn't one in Greensboro, but I managed a fairly local story out of this anyway.

Read that here.

The one thing that rang in my head as I listened to the charter school folks was they kept saying it must have been an oversight for them to be left out of the lottery bill.

I don't think so.

I talked to about five or six legislators yesterday, none of who could remember charter schools coming up very much.

And Sen. Tony Rand, one of the bill's architects, said pretty emphatically that charters weren't envisioned as direct beneficiaries of the lottery.

The political context here is that charters are a favorite topic for Republicans and it was Democrats who passed the lottery bill. (For those of you not from NC, Dems control both chambers of the General Assembly and a Dem is in the governor's office.) It isn't surprising, therefore, that charters weren't part of the lottery equation.

The silver lining for charters is this: if lottery dollars do drive up per-pupil spending in local school districts, charters will benefit anyway. That's because charter school funding is based on the amount per pupil their surrounding district spends.

The glass half-empty crowd will point out that there's bound to be some unusual shuffling of money surrounding the lottery. If that shuffling ends up decreasing the per-pupil calculation even while school funding goes up -- it sounds wacky but I don't doubt it's possible -- then charters would suffer.

For more on charter schools:

• Click here for the state DPI charter school page. (It's the right address but is behaving oddly this morning if you have problems.)
  
• The League of Charter Schools can be found here. They seem to be the parent group of the campaign for more lottery dollars.
  
• Mentioned in my story was the Guilford Preparatory Academy. It's one of four charters in Guilford County, three of which are in Greensboro. The other is in High Point.

As N+R editorial board member Allen Johnson reported earlier this week and the Charlotte paper reports today, Winston-Salem Alderman Vernon Robinson is thinking about getting into the race for the state's 12th U.S. Congressional district.

He's not the only one. Ada Fisher (fifth bullet in that post) is sounding like a candidate too.

The 12th District runs up 85 from Charlotte and forks out to Winston-Salem and Greensboro.

Update: The AP updates its story, now saying:

An appeal from the former political director of House Speaker Jim Black to urge him to consider the ideas of a lottery executive in getting the lottery bill passed and a plea for the former staffer to return Black's state-owned computer were among more than 2,100 pages of new documents released by his office Thursday.

Earlier...

Our friends at the Associated Press report:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — House Speaker Jim Black released 1,800 pages of new documents Thursday that his office gave to a federal grand jury examining the video poker and lottery industries, his former political director and others.

...

The documents provided in response to the subpoena include more than 1,200 pages previously given to the media.

In case you're keeping score at home, that means there are 600 pages of new material out there for my colleagues to scrub over. With that much more fodder in the offing, stay tuned for a new round of stories concerning Jim Black's troubles.

Gov. Easley has appointed the following local (Guilford County and surrounding area) folks who are landing appoints to various boards and commissions:

• Willie A. Johnson of Greensboro to the N.C. Auctioneers Commission.

  Johnson is an auctioneer and owner of Willie Johnson Auctioneer & Associates and a realtor and owner of Willie Johnson Realty. He is president of the N.C. Auctioneers Association and a member of the National Auctioneers Association, National Realtors Association, N.C. Realtors Association and Greensboro Regional Realtors Association. Johnson served in the U.S. Army and is a Vietnam veteran. He attended Guilford Technical Community College and N.C. A&T State University.

  The commission protects the public from incompetent or unqualified persons engaging in auctioneering activities and preventing deceitful practices, willful misinterpretations or fraudulent and dishonest dealings. The commission has five members, each serving a three-year term.

Speaker Black released a bunch of papers yesterday that had been looked for by the Grand Jury investigating various interest related to the speaker. Here are some of the stories written about that from:

• the Associated Press.

• the Charlotte O.

• the Raleigh N+O.

They all pretty much say the same thing, with variations on a theme. In particular, they focus on an e-mail from a former Black aid to the Speaker passing on a suggestion of how to get the lottery passed. The Speaker said he never passed the idea to the governor as suggested.

At least one person who is a regular reader of this blog and sometimes correspondent over e-mail called today to ask "what's up?" Apparently my habits on both fronts are obsessive enough that it show's when things are in even a brief hiatus. What's up is two-fold:

• My bosses have asked me to expend some brain power on what it turns out will be a fairly complicated story. So I've been reading - a lot - and not all of it is making sense on my first pass. So I'm re-reading - a lot. The main thing I've learned so far is I may need reading glasses.

• E-mail here is on the fritz. It's a server issue back at the home office. So all those invitations to help out former finance ministers, buy "good as real" imitation fashion watches and partake of various pharmaceuticals will have to go undeleted for the moment. Unfortunately, that also means any e-mails you've sent will go unanswered.

Normal – well, as normal as things get around here – operations will resume later in the week.

In the mean time, this-here-phone-thingy on the side of my desk still works: 919/832-5549 is the number if you really want to give me a piece of your mind and just can't wait.

If you're into power politics or the scent of influence peddling gets you all giddy, forget the Super Bowl XL. You're waiting for the Feb. 8 Board of Elections meeting.

From our friends at the AP:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The State Board of Elections will formally probe the fundraising activities of House Speaker Jim Black, whose office is already at the center of a separate, federal grand jury inquiry.

The probe scheduled to begin Feb. 8 should take three days and will look at donations from the video poker industry and optometrists, said Gary Bartlett, elections board director.

Tomorrow's paper will carry the full story, but as you can imagine there's been lots of buzz about all this today.

First, a written statement from Speaker Black:

"I have not been contacted by the State Board of Elections about these hearings, and I have not been told what they are investigating," said Speaker Black. "We will fully cooperate with the SBOE in their investigation."

Next, the state's Republican's get all giddy by way of a statement from Chairman Ferrell Blount:

“This is yet another investigation of Jim Black,” said Blount. “The constant allegations of corruption and influence peddling have tainted Jim Black. He has become an embarrassment to state government and the citizens of North Carolina.” ... “Clearly the House Democrats are dependent on Jim Black’s fundraising shenanigans or they would have already cleaned up the House,” added Blount. “The people of North Carolina want a clean, honest legislature whose members’ ethics are beyond reproach. It is becoming increasingly apparent that we will not have that as long as Jim Black is Speaker and the Democrats are beholden to his money machine.”

Earlier in the statement, Blount tries to take credit for the SBOE investigation. Nice try, but from Democracy NC co-director Bob Hall:

"We are pleased that the State Board of Elections has scheduled these hearings that stem from our June 2004 complaint about video-poker donations to Jim Black's campaign, but that will explore other matters as well. We believe these hearings will help the public understand the costly and corrupting role of pay-to-play politics in North Carolina. This is not just about Speaker Jim Black and his practices. It's also about special interests who collect and distribute large amounts of private money, by any means necessary, in order to advance their agenda. We're about to witness, on a new level for North Carolina, the scope of corruption and illegal activity tied to the private system of financing public elections.

The video-poker complaint is at: http://www.democracy-nc.org/moneyresearch/2004/vpoker%20cover.html

In December 2003, we provided information about a number of donors to newspapers that essentially confirmed that they were 'straw donors' -- the money came from some other interests that used their names as a cover for funneling illegal money into the House Speaker's campaign. Many are related to Robert (Bobby) E. Huckabee III of Southland Amusement, who is also a figure in the federal investigation, as are others involved in our complaint and the video-poker industry."

Of course, some might say that with all this attention focused on Black, we might be ignoring other, um, problematic folks. By Carter Wrenn of Talking About Politics:

It’s no surprise to me how the newspapers continue to pummel Jim Black. What is a surprise is the real kingpin of North Carolina Money and Politics – Senate Leader Mark Basnight – continues to escape scrutiny.

Basnight invented – or, if not invented, perfected – the use of “Discretionary” funds, doling out pork barrel money to build political support. But, unlike Black, hardly a word has been said about Basnight’s use of taxpayer dollars.

More from:

• Blue NC.
  
• John Locke's Meck Deck.

I've got a great new party game. Tell me who said this Thursday:

“The General Assembly budget process often results in decision being made at the last minute and middle of the night without open debate.”

Now I know you might be thinking John Blust, the Greensboro Republican who has long-railed against the way the General Assembly puts together its budgets.

But think again.

It was Attorney General Roy Cooper, sounding one part like a candidate for governor (hey, the 2008 elections are just around the corner!) and one part like a member of the legislature's minority party (Blust's Republicans).

Cooper was pitching to the General Assembly - by way of a news conference - a series of reforms he said were aimed at "fighting public corruption." Most were typical prosecutor stuff: make it a crime to lie to state investigators, allow state prosecutors to empanel investigative grand juries like their federal counterparts, etc...

Fair enough.

But then he confused his audience - not hard when you’re dealing with us scrubby media types - and said he also proposed AS A CORRUPTION FIGHTING TOOL reforms to the state budget process.

When asked if he was inferring the stat budget process was, well, corrupt, Cooper issued the above quote. And indeed, it sounded a lot like Blust. (It didn't answer the question mind you...)

This is the second time Cooper a potential candidate for governor (correction on 1/28) has seemingly ripped off an idea that a member of the Greensboro delegation has championed.

I'm beginning to think these boys must be sneaking into town for Cheesecake and political advice.

I'll have a story on all this (at least the Cooper sounding like Blust thing) in tomorrow's (Friday's) paper.

First some preliminary business: if you sent me an e-mail over the weekend send it again. Apparently we did not make the correct sacrifice to the e-mail gods again last week and, well, bad things happened.

But life goes on. Here' a round up of what did make it into the ol' e-mail box and what other enterprising members of the fourth estate were up to this weekend:

• From the Friday appointments file, "Gov. Mike Easley has reappointed Carolyn S. Turner of Greensboro to the N.C. Advanced Energy Corporation (AEC). Turner is the associate dean for research at the N.C. Agricultural and Technical State University School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences... The duties of the corporation are to guide the AEC in developing projects to promote energy efficiency and investigate alternative means of using and producing power."
• Rep. Alma Adams, a Greensboro Democrat, apparently conducted the Greensboro symphony on Friday. I also hear tell she was supposed to sing. Anyone who was there, I'd welcome a review.
• The N+O's Rob Christensen wrote a pretty profile of Art Pope (along with a companion piece) in that paper's Sunday editions. Pope is one of those folks who are very important in the state's political circles - particularly Republicans ones - that most folks probably have never hear much about.
• Based on my conversations with folks who don't focus on politics professionally, a good deal of the population would be hard pressed to name the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. So why is Jim Black's name becoming a household word in North Carolina? Jim Morrill of the Charlotte O took a pretty good swipe telling us why the state House Speaker has become the focus of such attention.

You go read up while I get back to work.

So the NC Lottery Commission has selected GTECH to run the state games. (The AP's early take on this here. More in tomorrow's paper.)

Left out was Scientific Games, the company that helped spark Jim Black's troubles.

Among other goodies, released to us scrubby media types today was a cardboard-box chock full of bid documents from both GTECH and Scientific Games. (I should mention here that OGT, which will work as a sub-contractor to GTECH.)

My favorite bit so far is a statement form Scientific Games saying they didn't know anything squirrelly was going on.
Highlights include:

• Several emphatic uses of the phrase "now-former" to describe Alan Middleton, the company's former Vice President for Government Affairs. As in "There, too, our now-former employee told us that he was not aware of Mr. Geddings failure to provide written disclosure of his engagement by us."
• Regrets? They've had a few. "We regret the controversy caused by the efforts of three individuals formerly associated with the company."
• But hey, they're just looking out for us: "During 2005, like many other businesses and individuals interested in the outcome, we worked with legislators to encourage the passage of North Carolina’s lottery enabling legislation. We specifically suggested that the legislature strengthen sections concerning vendors compliance activities and to encourage the Commission to consider the ability of its vendors to increase funding for education as an important element while reviewing bids."

The Associated Press is reporting that Sen. Hamilton Horton has died.

Horton, 74, was an eight-term legislator representing Forsyth County. A Republican, he was well respected by members of both parties.

He was one of the few masters of language and rhetoric not just in the General Assembly, but in North Carolina politics. He was emphatic and impassioned without being mean-spirited, forceful without being blunt, offering wit without pretension.

From the AP report:

Horton died about 2 p.m. at his home, Senate officials said. Horton announced in December he wouldn't run for another term because he had been diagnosed with cancer.

"Ham was a great senator and a great North Carolinian, but first and foremost he was a great American," Senate leader Marc Basnight, D-Dare, said in a statement. "He was the most special among us and he will be missed _ God gave us the greatest when he gave us Ham."

Funeral arrangements were incomplete Tuesday evening.