News-Record.com

From the lede of a story on local mental health agencies scheduled to run today (Sunday):

GREENSBORO -- One worker played the "tripping game" with his mentally ill clients. Another staffer used belts and hangers to smack a troubled teenager. And still another allowed a 16-year-old girl with bipolar disorder to wander through a local park unsupervised.

The girl got into a car with two men and was later raped.

All three incidents occurred at Guilford County group homes for the mentally ill that were founded in the past five years and described in reports by investigators with the state's Division of Health Service Regulations.

They are some of the unforeseen consequences of the state's efforts to remake its mental health safety net, which have relied heavily on newly formed private companies to care for some of the state's most vulnerable citizens.

Click here for the full story.

And you can click here for links to earlier reporting on the mental health system.

I'll be out of the office and out of the state until next week. Until then, your comments are welcome below.

I just flew in from Florida (really) and boy are my arms tired (from schlepping a couple kids off the airplane).

While I'm still catching up on the news of the day, this will be the big thing folks are talking about around Raleigh for the next few days:

RALEIGH -- A Wake County grand jury has indicted Democratic state Rep. Thomas Wright on five counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice.

Wake County prosecutor Colon Willoughby says Wright is expected to make an initial court appearance in the next few days. Willoughby says he does not expect to charge anyone else in the case.

Wright, of New Hanover County, left his house in Wilmington and drove away in a sport utility vehicle without speaking to reporters, WECT-TV reported.

From today's Inside Scoop column:

Regular readers will remember that for the past couple of months, Scoop asked Rep. Alma Adams about when she might have an update on the N.C. Legislative Black Caucus Foundation. That's the nonprofit tied to a politically powerful group of General Assembly members, the Legislative Black Caucus.

When we checked back Monday, Adams told Scoop the auditor the group has hired has been slow on the draw, so now she expects to have something to say "by the end of the year." She said the tardy audit has "put me in a difficult spot."

The Greensboro Democrat took over leadership of the caucus and its foundation this year and, by her own account, has been "Miss Fix It."

A central question: Should a group tied to legislators raise money for its purposes when legislators are prohibited from taking campaign contributions?

Besides a private audit, the group is waiting on rulings from state ethics watchdogs still to be drafted, Adams said.

She did address one point that had been controversial this year.

"The foundation board will be passing a policy that it will not allow any board member or legislator or their family members ... to receive a scholarship," Adams said.

Previously and more so.

Update: Click here for the AP story.

-=-=-=-=-=-

House Speaker Joe Hackney had some words to say about Rep. Thomas Wright's situation this afternoon. He used the word "expeditiously" a lot. As in the House will move "expeditiously" to hold ethics hearings and possible expulsion proceedings during an "expeditiously" called special session.

Click here to listen to what was on the Speaker's mind.

Yes, Cary Allred called Howard Coble and "a** hole." Click here for the story over at our Inside Scoop blog.

Others (like Miss Laura over at the Tavern) can better explained the complex and winding road of misdeeds alleged against Rep. Thomas Wright.

But Speaker Joe Hackney did give an update today on the legislative process that could see the General Assembly expel a member for the first time since the late 1800s.

Already, a Joint Ethics Committee, comprised of House and Senate members is working on the Wright case. In a letter akin to a probably cause finding, they've said that the things Wright is alleged to have done under the Wake County indictment (obtaining loans under false pretenses, etc...) are indeed unethical and "warrant such action as the House of Representatives may determine."

But there's a hitch ... you knew there was a hitch, right?

You see, Wright did (or didn't) do what he did (or didn't) before the rewrite of the state ethics laws at a time when the Joint Ethics Committee only had jurisdiction over cases involving abuse of power. So all the stuff involving the fabrication or tax ID numbers and obtaining questionable loans that the State Board of Elections got into is outside its jurisdiction.

So Hackney will appoint a "select committee" to hear about all the other stuff. Both committees, he said, could make recommendations to the House and should start meeting in early February. (Update:: I should say, start meeting in public. They joint ethics committee has already been meeting. The two groups will hold public hearings that start in February. I told you this stuff got thorny.) The two-month wait has to do with due-precess rights and evidence gathering that has to be done. (Unlike we scruffy media types and bloggers, when the House of Representatives castigates someone it has to be done all legal like.)

Then things at the newser this afternoon started to go down the rabbit hole a little bit, since the "select" committee will probably just be made up of the six House members who serve on the "joint" committee and they would likely meet at the same time. At one point it seemed chairman Rick Glazier was going to have to get into a spaceship and slingshot himself around the sun and into a parallel universe to pull all this off.

But the simple version seems to be this:

• * The "joint" committee will handle the allegation that Wright used his office to bully a public official into giving him a letter that made it look like some state funding might be in the offing for a project when, in fact, no such funding was a remote possibility.

• * The "select" committee will handle everything else.

Glad that's straightened out.

Hackney, by the way, didn't look happy to be talking about this for the second day straight. (Heck, he kind of looked like he was about two shots of whiskey away from saddling up with Doc Holliday and the Earp boys, riding down to Wilmington City to handle matters.)

On a related note, Gov. Mike Easley has been doing his annual end-of-year interviews with us scruffy media types this week. He said today that he'd be happy to call a special session of the legislature to boot Wright from office if that's what's called for.

Given the Victorian tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas times, it is somehow appropriate that the spirit said to occupy the Victorian executive mansion here in Raleigh makes mischief during the holidays.

"Every year, that Christmas tree in the gentlemen's parlor falls," Gov. Mike Easley told reporters Wednesday. "I don't care what happens, it falls. And I think Gov. Fowle does not want that thing in here, and he's made it pretty clear."

Fowle is Gov. Daniel G. Fowle , the first chief executive to occupy the mansion who died there at age 60 in April 1891, four months after taking up residence.

Click here to listen to Easley talk about the ghost and his doings.

More background on Fowle and the mansion here and here.

More from Easley's year-end interviews coming later this week.

When Gov. Mike Easley did his annual year-end interviews with us scruff print media types, he got asked a few questions about immigration.

First off, he was asked a general question about what he thought might happen with immigration policy over the next year. Click here to listen to that answer.

Secondly, he was asked about the UNC System's Tomorrow Commission and its recent engagement in the immigration debate. You can click here to listen to that answer.

And lastly, he was asked if, since he wasn't running next year and therefore was out of the election fray, he might try to lead the state somewhere different on immigration policy.

"A good rule of thumb is to pretend like you're running, because you have to have the support of the people to do anything. The legislature is not going to vote for something just because I'm for it when they know the people won't like it. So I don't think there's much you can do...Washington has to act."

Click here to listen to his full answer.

For those of you not in a listening mood, I've transcribed a good deal of his answer to the first question. You can find that, after the jump:

Please extend a cordial "howdy" to James Romoser of the Winston-Salem Journal as he joins the blogsphere with Trail Mix.

This week, James finds himself in beautiful Iowa, where candidates are trying to hitch a ride in on Santa's sleigh.

The state's mental health system has been in the news lately and that news hasn't contained a whole lot of happy thoughts whether you're talking about Guilford County or the state as a whole.

During his year-end interviews, Easley was asked for his agenda items going into next year and brought up corrections to the mental health system spontaneously. He began by pointing back to 2001 when the state mental health reform efforts started at the same time there was a severe budget crisis:

"We were all so bogged down with the budget we weren't paying enough attention to it. It all happened just overnight in late October," Easley said. He said much of the authority for mental health decision making had been transferred to "Local Management Entities," such as the Guilford Center in Guilford County.

"They do not answer to the state. All we are is the banker. You know, we can audit and we can offer suggestions, but they're not accountable to (the Department of Human Services). DHS has been getting a black eye over the system not working and they don't have any way control it.

"They (Local Management Entities) don't answer to the board that appointed them and they don't answer to the county commissioners. Most of them are former providers who are now management entities so they tend to be sympathetic to the providers and that's how we ended up with a lot of the stories you all wrote and saw of what we thought were abuses in the system.

"Now, having said that, some of these LMEs are doing a great job, and some of them are doing a very poor job...The intention was to put more local control on mental health and these people care very much about what they're doing. They really do want to help the mentally ill. It's just are you really doing it the right way and if you're wasting dollars then it hurts.

"So we have to go back and get some kind of control on that and we have to do it in a way that includes the hospitals, because the (public) hospitals have been part of this, and we have to do it in such a way that does not deter or break the moral of those who are offering good service now."

The follow-up question was something like, "Are you talking about bringing more power over mental health care back to the state level?" His answer:

"Back to somebody. Because they don't answer to the legislature either. So I think we're going to have to bring some authority back to the state. How much, I don't know.

"If you had asked me this same question in March or April of last year, I would have laid out a whole plan for you. But since (DHHS Sec. Dempsey Benton ) has gotten into office, we've had some conversations and I've concluded that the plan I had at that point is probably not the best and I'm letting him work through this and I think we'll get some resolution and have to work with the legislators on it."

Click here to listen to Easley's full take on what needs to happen in the mental health arena.

See also Jordan's take over at Capital Letters.

Every so often I'm given to some navel-gazing, and here in the run up to Christmas and New Years seems like a good time to indulge. And frankly, I've begun to hear a little voice partly comprised of readers, partly of bosses, partly of my own imagining, that's been saying something like:

"Dude, where's the bloggy goodness?"

More after the jump.

As I mention during my previous meandering mess of a post, when I first came to Raleigh I was a bit of an oddball among the capital press corps because I blogged. While I'm still an oddball, it has nothing to do anymore with online presence.

There have been new additions even since Winston-Salem's Paul O'Conner wrote his excellent column back in October. For those who may not know the bloggy haunts of us mainstream media wretches who cover the capital, here's the list as far as I know it:

• * WUNC's Laura Leslie is the barkeep over at Isaac Hunter's Tavern. She typically does one comprehensive post a day and it's always well worth the read.

• * James Romoser is the gorp-master over at Trail Mix, Winston-Salem's new campaign blog. As late, he's been in Iowa.

• * WNC stands for Western North Carolina over at Capital Letters by Asheville's Jordan Schrader.

• * Charlotte's Jim Morrill isn't a full-time Raleigh denizen, but he's here often enough. His Campaign Tracker blog is worth a look.

• * When Charlotte's Jack Betts talks over at This Old State, you should listen.

• * News 14's Tim Boyum works his own camera, thankyouverymuch. He also writes a good blog at Political Connections, where he sometimes posts video of his work.

• Last but certainly not least, there's Under the Dome, or the Legion of Dome as I like to call them. Ryan Teague Beckwith leads the blogging here, with contributions from a cast of thousands from the News & Observer's political staff. This is where you go if you just can't read enough about the topic/scandal/dead horse of the day.

That list leaves off folks like the Insider, who while very blog like and part of the press corps requires you to get past a pay wall for most all its stuff. And it doesn't count Gary Robertson, the capitol reporter for the Associate Press without whom all us other MSM types would be lost. (Without him, none of our papers could afford to have us blog.)

And left off are the various blogs produced by think tanks, individuals and other folks - which actually might make for a post of its own on another day.

So have I missed any Raleigh-based MSM types? Who are you reading these days?

Gov. Mike Easley was meeting with some of his chief water conservation folks today. Click here for his news release on the topic.

Our friends at the Associated Press have also put out some video:

Click here for that video. Or click here for the story.

There are a couple interesting things here.

First, click here for the N.C. Drought website that he mentions.

Also, in the video, Easley mentions "conservation pricing," which is essentially charging folks more per gallon the more water they use.

In typical business practice, you get/give a price break the more of something. A widget might cost $1 by itself but if you buy 10 of them we'll sell them to you for 90-cents a piece. To get people to conserve, you flip that model and charge folks more if they use more than a certain amount of water.

That's something Greensboro has been doing for a while. In fact, I've heard Easley give a shout out to Greensboro's water management practices on a few occasions. He also likes the fact that the city has tied itself in with several reservoirs, rather than just depending on its own lakes.

Speaking of Greensboro, you'll notice in the news release that the big drought meeting Easley has called for mid-January will be in the Gate City. I imagine all those scheduled to attend are hoping to be commuting in some lousy weather.

From the Decision 2008 blog:

For those of you on any sort of political campaigns direct mail or e-mail list, this note sent by Sen. Kay Hagan's campaign ought to look familiar:

Everyone wants to make a difference and I am convinced that if we want to make a difference here in North Carolina, we need change in Washington. Please join hundreds of other North Carolinians by contributing to my campaign for the U.S. Senate. [snip]

P.S. Your contribution of any amount - $25, $50, $100 or more before the December 31st reporting deadline will help me demonstrate to the rest of North Carolina that I can win this race! Click here to contribute now! Thanks again for your support.

Dec. 31 is a key deadline for candidates seeking to build credibility for next year's run. The Democrats lining up to take on U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole certainly fall into that camp.

Click here for more.

In case you haven't seen, this is from House Speaker Joe Hackney's office:

Speaker Joe Hackney had his prostate removed this morning at UNC Hospitals. Doctors found prostate cancer this fall during a biopsy prompted by elevated PSA levels. Hackney, 62, is expected to be released from the hospital this weekend and will recuperate at home with his family during the holidays. His doctors do not expect that he will need additional treatment.

"He's doing fine. His prognosis is excellent, and he is expected to make a full recovery," said Dr. Eric Wallen, the urologic surgeon who performed the procedure.

Prostate cancer strikes 1 in 6 men in the United States. Hackney encourages all men to have regular prostate screenings, as he has, to detect malignancies early, when they are most easily treated.

Okay, if you're logging onto a political blog the day before Christmas, you're either: a) killing time before your boss lets you leave the office, b) need some serious, serious help, c) punched the wrong bookmark.

Now, what it says about me that I'm plugging in an entry the day before Christmas, we'll just leave that alone right now.

At any rate, for your reading pleasure:

• * Need a last minute gift? Here are my only somewhat tongue in cheek suggestions.

• * Congrats to the ECU Football Pirates for winning something called the Hawaii Bowl.

• * Gov. Mike Easley has issued his annual proclamation allowing flying reindeer in North Carolina. Not for nothing, but if anyone has any anti-aircraft munitions hanging about I'd love to try out some of these recipes.

• * Decision 2008 rounds up recent news coverage on presidential hopeful John Edwards.

• * Yes, Congressman Howard Coble is old, but he can still ring your bell.
  
  Credit: Jerry Wolford/News & Record

Just talked to former City Council member Don Vaughan. He told me that he has filed paperwork to run for Sen. Kay Hagan's seat in 2008. Hagan is running for the U.S. Senate.

Vaughan ran for Hagan's seat back in the 1990s, but lost to John Blust, who lost in the next election to Hagan. (Blust is now a state representative.)

Vaughan lost his bid for re-election to the council in 2005. He is a lawyer and has a small legislative lobbying practice, which he'll have to give up should he win.

Click here for Vaughan's work web page.

Although other Democrats, including County Commissioner Paul Gibson, have expressed interest in running but Vaughan is the first one to file officially as far as I know.

Update:More online here and a previous story on potential replacements for Hagan here.

Rep. Alma Adams, a Greensboro Democrat and chair of the N.C. Legislative Black Caucus, sent out an update regarding steps the N.C. Legislative Black Caucus Foundation was taking to address ethical questions.

Background is here, but the short version is this: the caucus is a group of influential legislators. The caucus foundation raises money and spends money on behalf of causes near and dear to those legislators' hearts. Further, the foundation can raise money at times and in amounts in which legislators are themselves prohibited from raising campaign funds. Other questions have involved scholarship money going from the foundation to the relatives of legislators.

Among the steps Adams said the foundation has taken:

• *Added new members to the foundation board. The board now has 21 members, 13 of which are private citizens.

• *Has conducted audits of 2005 and 2006 records and will conduct an annual audit going forward.

• *Hired a professional CPA firm to provide accounting services.

• *Adopted policies that preclude family of board members from receiving scholarships.

• *Obtained an advisory opinion from the N.C. Ethics Commission that says legislators can serve on foundation boards. However, that opinion says legislators cannot make up the majority of a foundation's board.

Click here to read the whole release.

Although the one I'm looking for doesn't appear to be posted, the State Ethics Commission has posted several ethics opinions on its website. They are broken down into Ethics, Lobbying, and Legislative Ethics Committee Opinions.

On first blush, it's interesting to see what folks have been asking about, including "Use of Legislative Postage and Stationery to Send Communications upon the Occurrence of a Significant Event, Letter to Newly-Registered Voters, and Holiday Greetings" and "International Study Trip & the "Educational Meeting" Gift Ban Exception."

The posted opinions have been scrubbed of identifying information, but I bet you folks out in the blogsphere can take some pretty good swings at who was asking what. Let me know in the comments link below.

Update (12/31/07): We had some server trouble over the weekend (forgot to spray for gremlins) so some comments didn't get posted. One that was left here came from Chris who wrote:

I'd venture a guess that the liaison opinion was for former Rep. Wilma Sherrill who became the "liaison" for UNC-Asheville soon after retiring "for health reasons."

So if you work for government you're a liaison, but if you work for the private or non-profit sector, you're a lobbyist. What a crock.

I suspect is guess is dead on. Any others out there?

For those with an interest in the Rep. Alma Adam's announcement regarding the N.C. Legislative Black Caucus Foundation:

• *Today's newspaper story is here.
• *Adams' news release is here.
• *More background is here.

Sen. Katie Dorsett, a Greensboro Democrat, says she'll run to keep her state Senate seat in 2008.

There had been rumors that she planned to step away, which would have moved some pieces on the local political chess board.

Rep. Alma Adams also said last week that she planned to run again to keep her state House seat.

Two stories from this weekend's paper:

Rep. Alma Adams had more to say about the N.C. Legislative Black Caucus and its foundation. In a response to her comments news release, Democratic gadfly and soon to be (temporary) resident of Canada Joe Sinsheimer wrote this:

"Rep. Adams has taken some important steps in reforming the Legislative Black Caucus Foundation but her statement still falls short of real transparency particularly in regard to the full disclosure of the foundation's donors. Our elected officials should not be raising money from special interest groups and lobbyists in secret for any purpose, no matter how noble. In the wake of the Jim Black and Thomas Wright indictments, Rep. Adams should be more sensitive to the public's right to know."

From Sunday's paper, and I know this will come as a shock, but U.S. Senate candidates need to raise lots of money for their election.

We had some server problems over the weekend that prevented any News & Record blog from posting new entries or recording new comments that were offered on existing ones. If one of your comments got zapped, I apologize. The issue seems to have been repaired.

One more blog maintenance note. I have added back and updated contact information that was deleted in one of our many blog redesigns during 2007. Basically, if you don't want to leave a comment, there are other ways to reach out and you can find them at the top of the green column to the right.

Of those, the newest gee-wiz gizmo is a Twitter Feed, which I would describe and an interesting syndication and social networking tool and then be roundly criticized for describing it inadequately by Twitter enthusiasts.

At any rate if you're interested or if you're already a Twitterite (Twitterfile, a Twit?) check out the News & Record Politics Feed on Twitter, which unifies the RSS feed for this blog as well as Decision 2008 and Inside Scoop.

The feed is automated and will check for updates on all three blogs about every half hour. That's not anything you couldn't do yourself with the existing RSS feeds and a good news reader, but some folks really like the Twitter format - I think because they have the option of getting it on their IM client or on their phone.

Happy New Year.

So, it turns out getting crammed into that little tiny seat isn't your biggest worry if you're flying these days. From the Washington Post:

NASA begrudgingly released some results Monday from an $11.3 million federal air safety study it previously withheld from the public over concerns it would upset travelers and hurt airline profits.

It published the findings in a format that made it cumbersome for any thorough analysis by outsiders. Released on New Year's Eve, the unprecedented research conducted over nearly four years relates to safety problems identified by some 29,000 pilots interviewed by telephone.

Earlier characterizations from people who have seen the results said they would show that events like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than previously recognized. Such information could not be gleaned from the 16,208 pages posted by NASA on its Web site, however, because of information that was edited out. The data was based on interviews with about 8,000 pilots per year from 2001 until the end of 2004.

I post this hear not because you need another reason to be scared, but because Rep. Brad Miller (a Democrat who represents Greensboro and Raleigh) had a hand in getting NASA to "begrudgingly released some results." Miller had this to say in a statement this afternoon:

NASA today dumped three-year-old, unanalyzed data from more than 25,000 interviews of commercial and general aviation pilots on aviation safety. According to NASA, they never intended to analyze the data, just test the "methodology" used for the interviews. The taxpayers who paid $11.5 million for the surveys and the pilots who spent 12,000 hours answering the survey questions hoped for more. They hoped the survey would lead to improved aviation safety.

NASA said others can now analyze the data, but NASA scrubbed much of the information that would be important for any analysis. Eighty percent of the pilots asked to participate in the half-hour survey agreed. Those pilots obviously wanted others to know their observations and experiences. It is hard to imagine that those pilots would want useful information scrubbed from the data out of a fear that stray bits of information might somehow be connected to identify a specific pilot's answers to the survey.

Many of NASA's statements today are contradicted by the testimony of several witnesses at the Science and Technology Committee hearing on October 31. Dr. Robert Dodd, who managed the survey, said the scientists and experts who conducted the survey hoped to turn the data "into useful information for decision makers." Dr. Dodd said that the "data is of good quality and ready for meaningful analysis."

Despite NASA's dismissal of surveys as a methodology for collecting accurate data, Dr. Jon Krosnik, a statistics professor at Stanford who helped design the survey, said that surveys are routinely used "to track rates of events over time and to inform decision-making and organizational practices." Every 10 years the US conducts an essential survey - the Census.

The original intent of the NAOMS was to develop possible "safety precursors" from the survey. Without further study of this data we will never know what these precursors are. I am will to assume however, that near-misses are a precursor to collisions. I urge NASA to get the remaining data out quickly and in a useful form.

NAOMS was an air safety survey of 24,000 of the nation's airline pilots, conducted over a number of years. NASA initially refused a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the data from the Associated Press citing it "could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of the air carriers..." Committee Members called NASA's refusal "troubling" and "unconvincing," and urged the agency to make the data available to the public.

Pressure from the Committee to speed release of the data resulted in the press conference today by NASA and an initial release of data from the study.