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She didn't succeed. McAllister's bill died in the House Appropriations Committee, meaning someone in authority was sensitive to its bad aroma. But it did have the support of a dozen co-sponsors, including Alma Adams, Pricey Harrison and Earl Jones, all from Greensboro.

But, all was not lost. Operation Sickle Cell still received $275,000 this year as a contractor for the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported.

I'm not pointing at McAllister to imply she's some kind of crook. I'm sure she's a nice lady who represents her constituents faithfully and tries to do some good work through her nonprofit agency.

At the same time, she illustrates a serious problem in North Carolina's political culture: too many elected officials have a blind spot to ethics. They don't see anything wrong with playing the system for their own advantage.

Most North Carolinians don't seem to notice, either, despite a trickle of criminal cases in recent years: former state Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps and former Congressman Frank Ballance have gone to federal prison; former state Rep. Michael Decker is on his way; former state House Speaker Jim Black is due to be sentenced; and state Rep. Thomas Wright faces a criminal investigation. The details of these cases vary, but thematically they're very similar.

Bigger scandals may yet be exposed, Joe Sinsheimer, once a Democratic political consultant who has become a crusader for clean government, believes. If he's right, that's not comforting news for Raleigh's political establishment, which has been able to ride out these little tempests without collective accountability.

Gov. Mike Easley certainly has had little to say, except on two occasions. In 2003, he urged Phipps to resign as her troubles swirled. Last month, he called for Wright to step down. For nearly four years in between, when it was increasingly obvious that Black had turned the state House of Representatives into a House of Ill Repute, Easley was happy to hold his nose as long as Black produced legislation he liked, such as a lottery bill.

That's not acceptable. The governor should promote the integrity of state government, not look away while political allies use it for their own purposes. We should demand more from the next governor.

In the meantime, legislative leaders owe the public honest dealings. They took a good step last year when they created an Independent Ethics Commission, but they allowed it to hold hearings in private. That was the wrong move, two former legislators, Republican Gene Arnold and Democrat Wib Gulley, wrote for North Carolina Editorial Forum May 25: "Open ethics hearings will go a long way towards restoring and building public confidence," they said.

So will additional resources for the State Board of Elections. It needs more investigators to look through candidates' campaign finance reports. Too many politicians routinely file late, incomplete and inaccurate reports, denying voters the chance to find out in a timely manner who's giving them how much money. There ought to be a strong chance they'll be caught and punished for it. They're also not supposed to use campaign accounts like personal checkbooks.

I guess it's a funny notion to think legislators will appropriate more money to help an agency catch them in wrongdoing. But it's not funny -- it's embarrassing -- to watch one North Carolina politician after another march off to federal prison for corruption. Or to see a legislator try to secure state funding for an agency she runs.

So, isn't it time to get serious about cleaning up this mess?

Contact Doug Clark at dgclark@news-record.com or 373-7039.