Friday Follies

by Chris Fitzsimon

It has been a fairly busy news week in Raleigh for the middle of November, much of it dominated by more revelations about the reign of former House Speaker Jim Black and his Co-Speaker for the 2003-2004 legislative session, Rep. Richard Morgan.
The News and Observer reported Sunday that Black’s son was awarded state contracts for pest control services at three prisons, despite submitting bids for the work that were much higher than quotes from other companies.
The story is complicated but includes allegations by a subcontractor of the company building the prisons that he was pressured to hire Black’s son to make sure the construction company would get the prison business.
The sordid tale also involves special provisions snuck into the state budget that allowed the construction company to bypass low bidders when awarding subcontracts. Virtually every story about corruption in the General Assembly at some point comes back to special provisions, changes in state law snuck into the 300 page budget document at the request of a powerful legislator, almost always without any public debate or even notice.
Banning special provisions from the budget has long been on the agenda of good government groups and House Speaker Joe Hackney said before the 2007 session that he didn’t like them either. But Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight openly defends the practice, saying it makes it possible to pass important programs like Smart Start.
It also makes it much easier for corrupt politicians to have their way without anybody noticing. Pretty amazing that we are still arguing about whether or not it is better for the public’s business to be conducted in public or in secret, behind closed doors.
How many more scandals will it take to end the undemocratic practice of using special budget provisions to change state law?

Speaking of Basnight, the story about Black’s son getting state contracts also included a quote that must have caused more than one state government insider to laugh out loud.
The story mentions that the Senate wanted three new prisons included in the 2003 budget bill. Some House leaders wanted to build only two prisons but were told that the Senate leadership would hold up the entire budget if it didn’t call for three.
The News & Observer reports that Basnight says “he has never threatened to hold up a budget if he doesn’t get something he wants.” Right. Actually some advocates can probably confirm Basnight’s claim that he doesn’t threaten to hold up the budget. He does hold it up.

North Carolina received mixed reviews in a new report that grades the states on how well they provide public online information about business subsidies, state contracts and lobbying activities.
The national group Good Jobs First released the report, called The State of State Disclosure, which gives North Carolina an overall grade of C for online access to the information, but a D+ for the way the state makes details of economic development subsidies available.
It points out again how slow some state agencies are in making public information available to citizens via the internet. The State Board of Elections has been struggling for years to make campaign finance data available online, but remains handicapped by the lack of a requirement for campaigns to file reports electronically and by a lack of staff to process the information.

Here are some numbers to consider as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches. A new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture says that more than 35 million people in the United States went hungry in 2006, with children and single mothers the most vulnerable.
That figure includes 12.9 percent of households in North Carolina that are designated as food insecure. That means that at some point during the year, those households had problems providing enough food for everybody in their family.
The market fundamentalists who keep telling us that poverty is a choice and is vastly overstated should note that this information is not from a progressive, anti-poverty advocacy group. It is from the Bush Administration.
People are poor and hungry in North Carolina this holiday season, thousands of them.

NC Policy Watch