News-Record.com

From today's story: RALEIGH - The federal courts had already taken former House Speaker Jim Black's freedom and power.

"It's the purpose of my sentence to take the money," Judge Donald Stephens, of Wake County Superior Court, told Black, a Mecklenburg County Democrat, during a sentencing hearing Tuesday.

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In April of 2005, I started working the General Assembly beat full time and first met a genial, rumpled, mumbling guy in a blue suit and glasses who turned out to be one of the most powerful politicians in the state: Democratic Speaker Jim Black.

Little did anyone know at the time, he was about to take a fall from grace to rival any politician in the state's history. So it will probably fall to others to come up with something profound, laced with the long-honed wisdom that I lack.

For now, I find myself sympathizing with Wake County Judge Donald Stephens, who related to the court today that he had on Monday tried a case involving a gang shoot-out among kids who, by all accounts, came from good homes and should never have ended up in court. They did anyway.

"I am equally troubled today listening to all this," the judge said. "I've been required to look into the window of politics and from this window the view is rather unsavory - enlightening, but unsavory."

Click here to listen to the judge hand down Black's sentence. (It's about 10 minutes.)

(Photo Credit: AP Photo/The News & Observer, Chris Seward)

It really benefits no one to have citizens thinking their leaders are a bunch of self-serving, narcissistic, mendacious critters with a rapacious appetite for the perks and power of office. And, truthfully, I still believe the majority of the honorables at the legislature and elsewhere are in it for the right reason.

But you listen to enough sentencing hearings, revelations about cash passed in a bathroom, and deals cut to win office and even an idealist can begin to wonder. It's obvious now that it will take the legislature years, if not decades, to shake off Black's shadow. (See Jack Betts take on this.)

And so we come to today's hearing. It is possibly the last time that Jim Black will be heard in public. That is of course, if you could hearing anything:

• When he was in the legislature, Black was known for the sometimes barely intelligible mumble with which he ran the House and gave interviews. That continued in court today, where even the judge and court reporter who were sitting five feet to either side of him could barely make out what the former Speaker was saying.

  "I can barely hear you and I'm sitting right beside you," the judge said to his witness at one point. Those of us sitting in the peanut gallery were even worse off.

  Black explained that he had two hearing aids and it sounded to him like he was speaking up just fine.

• "Never in 20-some years of practice have I heard of the prosecution calling a defendant at his own sentencing," said Ken Bell, Black's lawyer. I've covered a bunch of hearings in my time, and it was unusual. Today's hearing felt less like a sentencing than a discovery hearing.

• "You and I know there are all kinds of shenanigans that go on with moving money around in politics," Black told Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby, giving what at the time seemed a masters class in one aspect of political reality. One got the feeling that Willoughby might have responded, "Well, yes, that's why we're here today."

• This has already gotten a good going-over elsewhere, so suffice it to say that prosecutors did not believe Black's story about the $500,000 loan from lobbyist Don Beason being for a business transaction.

  I've met Beason a few times. He's a quiet, genial gent who sometimes assents to having lunch with us scruffy press types. His rep is knowing where many of the legislatures skeletons are buried and being one of the better lobbyists about.

  For his part, today, Beason issued a statement that said, "I recognize that making the loan was a serious error in judgment and I deeply regret it. I apologize to my clients, to my fellow lobbyists, to members of the General Assembly and most of all to the citizens of North Carolina."

• My story for tomorrow's paper will focus a fair bit on the tale Black told about the 1997 Speaker's race and Republican Rep. Harold Brubaker's efforts to win the post. I'll update this entry in the morning.

• You can click here to listen to Willoughby talk to reporters following Black's sentencing.

• A federal judge has already sentenced Black to five-plus years in prison. Stephens took aim at Black's wallet, fining him $1 million plus court costs and the expenses associated with the State Board of Elections investigation. If Black pays up by December, Stephens said Black will avoid additional state jail time. There will be a hearing in December on this matter.

Rep. Alma Adams, a Greensboro Democrat and the chairwoman of the N.C. Legislative Black Caucus, authored a letter to the editor in the Fayetteville Observer:

I have followed the controversy surrounding Rep. Mary McAllister these past several months, and for her sake I am delighted that there is finally some closure to this matter. It is my hope that the negative press (particularly in her home community) which attempted to unfairly discredit her wil cease. Enough is enough.

I am proud to have worked alongside this extraordinary lady and legislator for the past 14 years. She has given dedicated service to Cumberland County and our state, and has stood up for the citizens when no one else did.

Click here to read the letter.

Stories from the Observer here and here.

Okay, I'm having fun with that headline, but it's to make a point.

Salisbury lawyer Bill Graham is one of the leading candidates for Republican nomination for governor next year. His campaign sent out a release touting a recent poll:

Bill Graham is the clear frontrunner in the primary for Governor in a recent North Carolina statewide survey among 500 likely Republican primary voters, who have voted in at least 2 of the last 3 statewide Republican primary elections. He has a double-digit lead over his opponents who only score in the single digits.

Right. But let's look at the numbers:

Graham: 21%

Sen. Fred Smith: 9%

Former Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr: 6%

Undecided: 65%

Not to be cranky, but if I were pulling a third of the backing given to "undecided," I don't know that I'd be touting the survey.

That said, in this particular poll he's doing better than Smith and Orr, but they have plenty of room to make up that ground.

Click here for the release from the campaign.

I wrote earlier (here and here) about a bill that would raise your annual car registration fee $8 a year (to $36 for most cars). The money raised, about $50, would go to fund toll road projects around the state, the first one of which would be right here in Cap City.

The Senate passed the bill on Monday and sent it over the House, where it sits in the Finance Committee.

If my mail and e-mail is any indication, you folks back in the 'boro don't like the idea of shelling out more in fees for roads you'll have to pay to drive on. It's an idea, if I understand some of your comments rightly, that made you question the parentage of some legislators.

The honorables in the House seem to agree with you.

"The registration fee is not really popular with the House members," said Rep. Paul Luebke, a Durham Democrat and one of the Finance Committee chairman. He said that negotiators were working on a solution that didn't involve increasing the fee.

Rep. Bill Owens, the Rules Chairman, said that "two or three options" were being looked at and that a final compromise might be worked out at the level of the Speaker and Pro Tempore.

I'm not sure if these two items involving North Carolina's two U.S. Senators are related, but for your consideration:

• Editorial Page Editor Allen Johnson says he caught Sen. Elizabeth Dole during a brief spot for Bojangles, congratulating the Charlotte-based chicken and biscuit chain on their anniversary.

  Update: Dole spokeswoman Amy Auth tells me that the Senator recorded a video for the chain's annual franchise meeting.

  "Sen. Dole really loves Bojangles," Auth said.

  Well, apparently the chain like Dole's video and made it into a commercial, before getting permission to air it. The video has since been pulled while Dole's office looks at the request.

• Sen. Richard Burr's office sent out the news that he would co-sponsor the Chimp Haven is Home Act. As explained in the release the bill would "prevent the National Institutes of Health from removing retired chimpanzees from the sanctuary for research purposes. Chimpanzees are currently evaluated based on their health status and carefully selected for retirement from facilities where the chimp population surpasses current research needs."

So, do chimps like biscuits?

The bill that would have made the Lexington Barbecue Festival the official state food festival has gotten watered down.

How do you water down such a thing?

Make it the official food festival of the Triad.

"This is not any reflection on other barbecue in our state but just saying that this is the official food festival of the Piedmont North Carolina," Sen. Stan Bingham said explaining the bill to his colleagues.

Still it met resistance.

Listen to the Senate debate here.

Update: "We saw we weren't ever going to get it passed," Bingham just told me. Making it the official festival of the Triad was the only way to get it passed the Senate, he said.

No word on if the House will accept the changes or * sigh * send it to a conference committee.

From the Associated Press:

ENERGY EFFICIENCY: A bill requiring the state's utilities to provide 12.5 percent of their retail electricity from renewable fuel and efficiency measures by 2017 appears headed for final passage as the Senate agreed to House changes by a vote of 47-1. One more Senate vote was expected Thursday before going to Gov. Mike Easley for his signature. The bill contains much-debated sections to help finance construction of traditional power plants and to dictate that a certain amount of renewable fuel come from hog and poultry waste.

Click here for prior posts on S3.

The House and Senate continue to careen toward a conclusion for the session. The Senate has left for this evening. The House, as of 10:52 p.m., is still in a standby mode waiting for a committee meeting to come back so they can get a bill done before midnight.

Late in the evening, the honorables were still dealing with a couple of a big bills.

The Voter Owned Elections Pilot bill, which some folks thought was a dead duck, passed the Senate on second reading and awaits third reading tomorrow. It then goes back to the House for concurrence. This is the measure that would make public financing available for a handful of council of state races, such as Agriculture Commissioner and the Insurance Commissioner.

Also, Senate passed the conference report on the landfill bill, also on second reading, before adjourning for the evening. That is the bill aimed at preventing mega-dumps. The House is running a second bill that will amend the landfill bill (confused yet?), basically aimed at making changes to clean up mistakes in the first bill.

Thursday morning update: More on the landfill measure from the Charlotte paper at this link.

I've been told that one item in that measure would repay companies who won't be able to build their dumps due to the moratoriums and limits for the fees paid to the state over the past year or so. I don't full understand that provision, but there you go.

Update: Senate Bill 6 is the fix bill. It's a gutted bill, which originally was meant to create an early organizational sessino for the General Assembly. Now it will modify the landfill bill.

Debate on this fix-it-up bill began at 11:43 p.m.

Rep. Pryor Gibson just told his fellow members that the House isn't going to give the main landfill bill a final vote until the Senate passes the fix-it-up bill.

Update The fix-it-up bill has passed and been sent to the Senate. The House has also passed the main landfill bill on second reading, and are scheduled to give it a full debate again Thursday. They won't pass it on third reading until the Senate passes the fix-it-up bill.

Update: If you're inclined, click here to listen to the 15 minutes of debate on the two landfill bills Thursday evening.

Those are two of the bigger items moving toward conclusion, with House and Senate leaders saying they'll be done tomorrow. Hints are that the honorables will be here pretty late into the evening, but you never know.

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Posting here will be light for a couple days. I'm heading out of town on a trip scheduled months ago, but will check in on things as time and travel allows.

According to the Associated Press, the legislative critters in the House and Senate ended their sessions before 11 p.m., which is frankly about four hours sooner than I figured they get done.

I've been traveling for much of the day and am in Philadelphia tonight and over the weekend for a conference. It pains me that there's a lot lurking out there to weigh in on, but that'll give us some fodder to chat about next week.

The legislature will be gone until next May, barring a special session. Basically, there are two ways a special session might come up:

• Gov. Mike Easley vetoes a bill. At that point, he's required to at least give the General Assembly the option of coming back.

• If there's some topic that hasn't been dealt with but is so important or time sensitive that it demands immediate attention.

I don't know if Easley has any vetoes on his mind. His office hasn't been making any noise one way or the other that I know about. There doesn't seem to be any substantive issue the legislature is sending that would prompt a veto, but there's always the possibility Easley finds a law to be unconstitutional or technically flawed.

However, door-number-2 could be interesting.

Earlier this week, legislators were talking about the possibility - possibility, by no means a sure thing - of doing a special session on transportation. Rep. Nelson Cole of Rockingham County was the first to mention this to me but there have been a few others.

I've also heard a few people say there's no way in Hades the legislature wants to come back or Easley wants to call them back. I can empathize.

But then, there was this bridge collapse over the Mississippi, which might give that thought more credence. Nothing gives a legislature the fever for infrastructure repair like the thought of constituents plunging 65 feet following an interstate failure - a vision reinforced by this story.

And transportation was one area that all parties agree didn't get a whole lot of attention in the budget. The demand for new roads and road repair is growing as state resources relative to the cost of carrying out those projects are shrinking.

Call the odds of a special session on the topic at 1 in 4, enhanced to that level only because of the news of the week. If the honorables do manage to stay away until May, expect road issues to be a high priority in the 2008 budget revision.

Have delightful weekend. I'll see you back here on Monday, barring the outbreak of hellacious news.

Jerry Cohen, the guru of the legislative bill drafting department, has offered his wrap-up of the legislative session by the numbers. For those waiting to see if their bills become law, this bit may be most pertinent:

With adjournment of the session on Thursday, August 2, 2007, the Governor has 30 days after adjournment to act on bills, with August 3 being day 1. The 30-day period concludes at midnight, Saturday, September 1, 2007. Any bills not acted on by the deadline become law on Sunday, September 2, 2007. Bills sent to the Governor prior to adjournment where the 10-day limit had not run out at adjournment have a new 30-day clock.

He also passes along that the "344 laws enacted plus the 195 bills pending gubernatorial signature could result in up to 539 laws enacted, a potential 16% increase from the 463 enacted in the 2005 long session."

Of course, the real debate is not over the volume of bills but whether the laws passed were worthwhile. Certainly one can argue that the last minute resolution honoring the Marquis de Lafayette (really) was an extravagance. But there were some mighty big issues (mental health reform, transfer tax, renewable energy, landfills) that did manage to get attention as well.

Chris Cillizza over at the Washington Post's "The Fix" says "John Edwards is mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore." More from that post:

Over the last few weeks, a new John Edwards has emerged.

Beginning with the CNN/YouTube debate on July 24, Edwards has appeared far more angry -- outraged even -- at the current Administration, the war in Iraq and even many in his own party. At last weekend's YearlyKos presidential debate, Edwards worked himself into a lather on almost every question -- loudly proclaiming the need for real and big change while dismissing the half-measures and compromises advocated by some of his opponents.

Cillizza sees this as a tactic that could tap into the frustration felt by many in the Democratic party's base. Certainly, the tone echoes the first-shaking anger you see on a lot of sites in the liberal blogshpere.

And it is a marked contrast to the mainly upbeat, hope-for-tomorrow, we-can-do-it-together, Kumbaya optimism that has characterized Edwards the hand full of times I've seen him in person.

I guess my question is whether this is some new scripting - Edwards is a very discipline speaker who will stay on message even if you ask him what color shirt he's wearing - or whether he has tapped some genuine vein of aggravation within himself that's coloring his public appearances.

Public Policy Polling put out its latest survey of likely voters this morning. From the release:

Raleigh, N.C. - Barack Obama slid into third place among Democratic presidential candidates according to the Public Policy Polling’s latest primary tracking poll, leaving John Edwards and Hillary Clinton ahead of the field with 29% each. Last month, the top three candidates were in a statistical tie among likely Democratic primary voters.

Fred Thompson kept his lead among Republicans with the support of 30% of
respondents. He was followed by Rudy Giuliani (20%), Mitt Romney (12%) and a
sinking John McCain (7%).

Perhaps the most notable change was Lieutenant Governor Beverly Perdue reestablishing
a double digit lead (38-28%) over State Treasurer Richard Moore in the Democratic
gubernatorial race. The race had stagnated in previous months with Perdue holding a
four percent lead.

The horse-race stuff is nice, but I what caught my eye this morning was the issue gap between Democrats and Republicans. Dems put the War in Iraq down as the most important issue to them (48%), followed in a distant second by the economy and jobs.

Republicans, too, put the War in Iraq the most pressing issue they saw (34%), but it wasn't so far out front. A relatively close second was immigration. The economy and jobs was way down their list.

This was a pattern that I think we saw in the last election. GOP voters have seized on immigration as an issue and their candidates are happy to talk about it. The problem is, the issue so far hasn't caught on in the Democratic ranks. So Republicans are stuck talking up border security to keep their base happy but it doesn't win over any Democrats, which they need to do in order to win statewide office.

That's got to be quite the conundrum for the Republican gubernatorial contenders, who still all trail undecided by a wide margin. Meanwhile, a third of Democrats say they are still undecided in the race for governor.

The State Board of Elections is looking at more donors to Black, Mark Johnson of the Charlotte paper reports, based partly on another complaint by Joe Sinsheimer.

Meanwhile, Democracy North Carolina's Bob Hall writes in a letter to the editor that the group "applauds the 2007 General Assembly for taking specific steps to change the political culture in Raleigh."

Of course, before we all move into the new era of goodness and light, there apparently are still loose ends to clear up.

Update: I could be wrong, but this could be an ethics complaint that has nothing to do with Jim Black, which I guess is what might have to pass for a refreshing change around here.

Over at the News & Record's religion blog, Nancy McLaughlin asks whether Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney can get past his Mormon religion. In a developing conversation, commenters say it's a matter of him being in the wrong club.

So Greensboro journalist Ed Cone interviewed Elizabeth Edwards for a CIO Insight article on campaign trends:

The Web can be liberating. "It's about bypassing the sieve of the mainstream media," says Elizabeth Edwards, wife and confidant of Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards. "The idea that you have people standing between you and the voter is diminished, and the capacity to speak directly empowers candidates to trust their own voices." With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hogging media coverage, campaigns can push their messages without paying for ads.

"In some ways, it's the way we have to go," Edwards says. "We can't make John black, we can't make him a woman. Those things get you a lot of press, worth a certain amount of fundraising dollars. Now it's nice to get on the news, but not the be all and end all." (Bloggers note: bold mine.)

The larger companion piece is here.

Now that's a dandy way to illustrate how the web might help your campaign overcome certain liabilities, like when two candidates are crowding out the free media time.

But if you're thinking that the quote got some play and maybe blown out of proportion a bit in the wider blogsphere, you'd be right. Here's Ed's take on the quote, plus more from:

• National Review.
• Advertising Age.
• Bob Parks, who I just found today looking about for people who picked up this quote.
• Tech President.

Now, I'll grant you that?s a sexy quote, but there is a larger point to all of this.

Pretty much all good presidential, and more so now statewide, campaigns have a strong online element. Blogs, social networking sites and even static websites (how very 2000!) all play a part. But what part?

Can the online elements help candidates overcome weaker fundamentals elsewhere in the campaign - say in fund raising for traditional media buys or an unfortunate campaign outburst? They haven't quite yet, or Howard Dean would have been the Democratic nominee in 2004 and Larry Kisselwould be a sitting U.S. Congressman.

Especially as I watch state and local campaigns, the online element is becoming something they need to keep up with the Joneses. It is part of the strategy, but even the fanciest of web tools haven't shown themselves capable of overcoming large voter registration margins or big disparities in ad time. Pig pickings, baby kissing and cheesy photo-ops with the local constabulary aren't going away any yet.

Will that change? My own take is that eventually, by sheer dumb luck if nothing else, the guy or gal who runs the best online effort is going to win. But I bet the rest of their campaign will be pretty good too.

Capital Beat is going through some maitenance this afternoon in order to add at least one new feature. So things may look a bit screwy if you visit this afternoon. Things should shake out soon.

From the Charlotte Observer:

"Republican Party members from District 67 have chosen Kenny Furr to serve the remainder of Rep. David Almond's term in the N.C. General Assembly, Dee Lamb, the Union GOP's secretary confirmed Tuesday night."

Furr replaces Almond, who resigned under pretty dubious circumstances.

If you've been logging onto this blog over the past 18 hours, you'll have noticed formatting and templates going amok. The story is this:

Capital Beat was created on the News & Record's first generation blog template. It was sturdy but lacked certain things. In particular, it didn't have tags which you see at the bottom of the stories now.

So I asked web guru and all around good egg Mike Grossman to hook me up with the second generation template, which he has been kind enough to do but the transition process has not been an easy one.

We're getting there but there are still a few outstanding issues. The most pressing is that the blockquote style on the blog doesn't seem to function right anymore. I'm not sure whether that's a permanent issue or not.

As for the tags, they're something I've been lusting after for a while now. No, I'm not going to go back and tag the first thousand or so posts. (If you're looking for something, the handy search function on the upper right works just fine.) But from here on out, I should be able to give y'all a quicker, cleaner way to find background on a topic.

So bear with me a little bit here as we get things squared away.

Yeah, I know, bad pun.

A couple days ago, I caught up with Rep. Mel Watt, a Charlotte Democrat who represents the meandering 12th Congressional District that includes parts of High Point and Greensboro, during an whistle-stop hosted by SHARE of N.C.

Watt is a long-time member of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees banking and mortgage regulation. And since he was at an event involving Housing, I asked him for his take on the sub-prime mortgage market, which has been experiencing a lot of trouble as of late.

"What a lot of the lenders missed was that it can't just be about making money on a loan short term," he said. "Financial education, rehabilitation of credit, building community networks around people, providing basic lawn mowers and basic maintenance advice — all of that is necessary for home ownership," Watt said. "And I think the lenders, a lot of them, lost sight of it in the name of making a quick buck."

But Watt added, "We don't want the market to over-react." He said the worry now is that lenders would stop making loans to low-income folks and make it impossible for people to get into their first homes.

Click here to listen to his full answer.

The battle over the transfer tax did not end with the close of the legislative session. In fact, for some folks, it is just getting started.

The tax, as you might recall, would allow counties to impose up to a 0.4 percent tax on the transfer for real estate - over and above the 0.2 percent they charge now.

My colleague Nate DeGraff detailed the Guilford County commissioners resistance to the idea, but that didn't stop a letter writer today from speaking out:

If voters approve the transfer tax, it would increase the seller's tax over the current deed stamp revenues by 0.4 percentage points, or from 0.2 percent to 0.6 percent. It could be really chaotic if some counties approve the transfer tax and some don't.

The realtors' effort to kill the transfer tax at the state level was well funded and organized. There's no reason to think efforts at the local and regional level won't be just as earnest. And in fact, a "thank you" message on their site reads:

So we need your help again. It's now time for all of us to stand up to the politicians in our local communities who want to tax our homes and send a message that this home tax is a bad idea. Stay tuned to our web site, as we continue to spread the word across the state--- and in your back yard---to stop the Home Tax!

The fight isn't over, the battle is just shifting to the counties. My guess is that you're going to see this thing replayed in miniature (or not so miniature, depending on the size of your county) a few dozen times over during the next year, particularly when counties begin construction of their budgets in early Spring.

Gov. Mike Easley called a news conference to talk about signing a trio of ethics bills, so of course we scruffy media types wanted to talk about everything else under the sun. (More on the ethics bills later.)

Among the things he was asked about was whether he might call a special session of the legislature for transportation and what the state might do to keep up with the needs of its aging roadways and bridges.

Easley talked about getting a bipartisan group of legislators, DOT and others together to come up with an answer to the problem of funding highway construction and repair.

"Hopefully everybody recognizes we're going to have to come up with a solution for transportation, it's going to require more money and there's never a popular way to find more money," Easley said.

Click here to listen to Easley's full answers to transportation questions asked today.

He pointed out that the formula used to pay into the highway trust fund doesn't seem to be working any more. Increasing prices for construction materials, more fuel efficient cars, the gas tax cap and other factors have put the state behind.

As for a special session, Easley said he only wants the honorables to come back to town if there is a plan for them to work with and pass.

Talk of a special session got started following the bridge collapse in Minnesota and this year's budget, which didn't do much by way of beefing up infrastructure. In fact, a last minute effort to throw some money toward the toll road authority croacked because of its funding mechanism.

Gov. Easley signed a trio of new ethics bills into law today. The most notable puts contribution limits and disclosure requirements on legal defense funds.

My question for the governor was whether or not any of these laws would have headed off recent high profile cases, such as the one that sent former House Speaker Jim Black heading off to jail.

"There are certain things you cannot legislate, which (are) character and integrity," Easley said, adding that there were some thing that came up that the laws do now address. Black's use of an unregulated legal defense fund was one such change.

"But, I mean I want to be perfectly honest with you about the cases you refer to, the high-visibility ones this year. There's nothing we have passed in the past couple of years that would have made that activity illegal. That's been illegal since the beginning of the Republic," Easley said.

Click here to listen to more of Easley's take on this topic.

Judge Robert Farmer, who heads the state ethics commission, speaks up after Easley on that bit of audio, saying that he's happy the ethics board will be able to open up its meetings. And, he adds, the commission will be holding is first (nearly) fully open meeting Friday and will be considering sanctions against those who have not filed their ethics disclosure forms.

An administrative law judge ruled today that the Council of State should reconsider its death penalty decision from earlier this year and take arguments from lawyers in the case. The judge also said the N.C. Medical Board over-reached when it prohibited doctors from taking part in executions.

Easley was asked if he thought the Council of State should go back and revisit its decision.

"No," he said, "If you open it up to the Council of State trying to listen to the lawyers and be the judges that'd be a mistake."

The Council of State is made up of 10 statewide officers, including the Commissioner of Agriculture, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Insurance Commissioner and the State Auditor.

"They're not in any position to make those types of legal decisions," Easley said.

Click here to listen to his full take on the two questions he was asked.

Legislative Week in Review will air its end-of-session wrap-up show this weekend. During the end-of-show analysis segment, host Eszter Vajda did her best to corral Scott Mooneyham of the Insider and three guys named Mark: Johnson of the Charlotte Observer, Schreiner of the Wilmington Star News and myself.

We talked about the year that was down on Jones Street, former Speaker Jim Black (of course) and what was left undone.

I don't know if we made a lick of sense but I'm told it was fun to watch. Check your local listings, or wait until Monday and watch it online.

Update: The AP writes the non-parochial version of this story, which notes Sen. Fred Smith is the big offender over in the Senate.

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This is the kind of story that prompts people to call me naive or cranky or words that you can't print here on a family-friendly blog. At any rate, from the lede of a story in Sunday's paper:

RALEIGH - Rep. Harold Brubaker's desk is in the front row of the House chamber. For nearly a quarter of the 1,400 votes the House took this year, no one was sitting there.

Still, the Asheboro Republican wasn't the most truant member of the General Assembly during 2007. That distinction belongs to Rep. Alice Bordsen, a Mebane Democrat who missed nearly 30 percent of all votes cast on the House floor.

Click here to read the whole story.

Click on their names for more info on Brubaker and Bordsen.

Voting is one of those basic things that legislators do. It's not the be all and end all of their service, but it's a pretty basic measure. And when a legislator doesn't show up to vote, the people of their district go without a voice on the issue at hand.

The data from the story came from a couple different places. But you can find most of it for the House at this link and for the Senate at this link. (Find lots of other groovy data by way of links on this page.)

Update:

• Click here for my House speadsheet.
  
• Click here for my Senate spreadsheet.

Now the first thing an observant reader will notice is that the legislature's "Voter %" number reflects a lot better performance than my numbers. Brubaker, for instance, made 97.6 percent of the votes (or missed 2.4 percent) according to their numbers, a far sight better than my story reflects.

So what gives?

The House and Senate clerks don't count an "excused absence" as a missed vote. I do, for three reasons:

• A missed vote is a missed vote is a missed vote. A legislator may have a really good reason for being away. But when push comes to shove their fanny wasn't in their chair.
• To get an absence "excused," a legislator needs to offer next to no justification. I've never heard of an excuse being turned down. This renders the practice virtually meaningless.
• Even if you accept that an absence is "excused," a legislator missing hundreds of votes is a notable and newsworthy.

Geek note: No, I didn't do all this by hand and I didn't have to take the time to clean up the mess that occurs when you try to copy an HTML table into Excel. (Those of you who have tried it know what I mean. Those that haven't, well, take my word for it - it's a mess).

Firefox has a neat extension called Table Tools that will let you copy an HTML table as tab delimited, making the import process into Excel or Access all the easier.

And once the tables are in a spreadsheet, it's a simple matter to add back in the excused absences.

Finally, for those of you who don't feel like recalculating your friendly local legislator's true absentee rate, I've done them for Guilford and the surrounding counties. The following are the percentage of votes missed by area legislators, counting excused and unexcused absences. The house took 1,400 votes, the Senate took 1,238.

HOUSE
Rep. Alma Adams, D-Guilford, 2.43 percent
Rep. Cary Allred, R-Alamance, 1.86 percent
Rep. John Blust, R-Guilford, 0.29 percent
Rep. Alice Bordsen, D-Alamance, 29.57 percent
Rep. Larry Brown, R-Davidson, Forsyth, 5.14 percent
Rep. Harold Brubaker, R-Randolph, 24.00 percent
Rep. Nelson Cole, D-Rockingham, 7.00 percent
Rep. Jerry Dockham, R-Davidson, 7.93 percent.
Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, 1.50 percent
Rep. Hugh Holliman, D-Davidson, 2.79 percent
Rep. Bryan Holloway, R-Rockingham, Stokes, 0.57 percent
Rep. Pat Hurley, R-Randolph, 0.43 percent
Rep. Maggie Jeffus, D-Guilford, 0.64 percent
Rep. Earl Jones, D-Guilford, 8.64 percent
Rep. Laura Wiley, R-Guilford, 2.43 percent

SENATE
Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, 3.07 percent
Sen. Stan Bingham, R-Davidson, Guilford, 4.36 percent
Sen. Katie Dorsett, D-Guilford, 8.72 percent
Sen. Tony Foriest, D-Alamance, 0.08 percent
Sen. Kay Hagan, D-Guilford, 1.78 percent
Sen. Jerry Tillman, R-Montgomery, Randolph, 3.31

Our annual Discover the Triad book recently hit the streets.

My contribution concerns why the state isn't a hot spot for presidential candidates.

I have to make a pilgrimage to the home office on Wednesday and then I'm off for vacation. We'll see you back here toward the end of the month. Nobody go and get indicted while I'm out, okay?

I wrote earlier this year about UNC Chancellor James Moeser's use of state aircraft. Recently, the Independent Weekly here in Raleigh wrote about the same thing:

UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser travels a lot for his job: to New York City and Washington, D.C., to meet with potential donors, to Nebraska to watch the Tar Heels play in the College World Series, to professional meetings throughout the state and sometimes across the country, among many other places.

In the 24 months between June 2005 and June 2007, Moeser took to the air for 48 business trips, an average of two a month, at a cost of more than $77,000 in taxpayer money, according to public records obtained by the Independent. Private dollars from UNC's development fund and other sources, such as groups that invited him as their guest, picked up additional costs.

It goes on.

Carolina Journal is talking with Mike Decker about how he got involved with one of the nastiest political scandals in the state's history.

I've been chatting up some folks about the Democratic shindig in Greensboro this weekend. It seems to be your standard issue political fare, although there was at least on campaign announcement.

Those who attended tell me that Beth Wood, who has worked in the state auditor's office for several years, plans to run for the Democratic nomination. Listed at the Director of Training Services on the auditor's website, Wood is lining up to challenger her old boss, Republican incumbent Les Merritt. He voice mail says she's out of the office this week, but we'll still try to catch up with her directly.

Also on the auditor front, an other Democratic name that got floated my way this morning was Joe Sinsheimer, who ran the JIMBLACKMUSTGO.COM website and more recently has been a thorn in the side of legislators like Rep. Thomas Wright who have failed to account fully for their campaign fundraising.

I asked Sinsheimer about this over e-mail. His reply:

"I have had people approach me about running for state auditor and while it is always flattering to be considered for a statewide office, I have no plans to run."

Gonzales is out as AG.

Previously from these parts: our own little local angle to the story.

A couple folks sent this link regarding Wayne Goodwin not running for labor commissioner my way. From the post:

I will not be a candidate for North Carolina Commissioner of Labor in 2008.

This decision affords me the opportunity to further focus on the needs of my family, the most immediate members of which still are impacted by the rigors and fundraising pressures of my 2004 bid.

This decision also affords me the opportunity to continue my full-time duties serving as Assistant Commissioner of Insurance under the outstanding leadership of Insurance Commissioner Jim Long and to volunteer for him in his 2008 campaign for re-election.

He made the same announcement on his own blog.

I've seen Goodwin wielding the gavel at several statewide Democratic Party events over the past year. And during the legislative session, you can catch him around the legislative building either lobbying on behalf or against bills his department has an interest in or waiting to drive home with his wife, state Rep. Melanie Wade Goodwin.

So who's going to run to have their picture plastered in elevators across the state?

Not too long ago, I was roused from my pre-bed-time slumber in front of the television by a kind of fluffy campaign-style ad. Its basic message was that Dems in Congress were doing good things and the President Bush should listen to them on Iraq.

So I got to rooting around on YouTube today and ran across the thing. Take a listen. I'd be interested in knowing whether other folks had caught this thing and what they thought of it.

I've seen versions now that were sponsored by both the DCCC and the DSCC. In fact, I spied the version with the Senate campaign tag first and thought they might be softening the ground for an eventual candidate to enter the race against Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

It's definitely a little bit more warm and fuzzy that the other ad I've seen that they were running earlier this year in some other places. That one:

So, given we're months away from the primary, in the midst of municipal election season and there's not yet an announced contender for the Senate race, what purpose do these things serve? I have a call in to the DSCC on this but your take is welcome.

Update: A spokeswoman with the DSCC says that it was a national cable buy and ads were not placed in North Carolina specifically.

The ad, she said, was designed to "keep the pressure on the president and Republicans over Iraq," as well as keep voters up with what's going on in Congress.

I was getting ready to write about the buzz that Gov. Mike Easley might veto the bill that would give ince