First Jim Black, speaker of the N.C. House, gets in hot water for a few too many ethically questionable practices carried out behind closed doors: Giving a paid lobbyist control over some of his office activities. Receiving checks with blank payee lines from fellow optometrists and then signing them over to political allies who meet with his favor. Quietly creating a state job as a reward for former Rep. Michael Decker, who helped him stay in the speaker’s seat by switching parties. And so on.
And now, when Black needs financial help to mount his legal defense, what happens? A group of his powerful friends establish a defense fund — and, of all things, defiantly keep the list of donors secret.
‘Windy Side of the Law’
Black insists that he has broken no laws — which, though it may be technically true, is a heck of a good argument for making some currently legal things illegal.
In the meantime, somebody needs to explain to the speaker and his supporters that merely refraining from violating the letter of state statutes, liberally interpreted, is not enough. When a person is elevated to such a high position of leadership, the state’s residents have a right to expect that he will do more than just stay on “the windy side of the law,” as the late Sen. Sam J. Ervin Jr. said during the Watergate hearings.
Black should never have committed such ethical lapses as allowing blank campaign checks to float around his office. He should never have let his exalted office, which belongs to the people of North Carolina and not to him, to be brought under such a dark shadow.
But now that he is suffering such harmful consequences from his activities — and is himself pushing for lobbying and campaign-finance reforms (another irony) — one would have thought that he and his allies would have learned a lesson or two by now about carrying out the public’s business in public. But not so.
A Debt of Gratitude
Under the law, the state is required to provide the speaker with help for legal work arising out of his performance of his speaker’s duties. But Black is on his own when it comes to legal expenses that he encounters as a candidate or political fundraiser.
That’s where Charlotte businessman Addison Bell comes in. He established the legal defense fund but has refused to identify the donors offering to help pay Black’s lawyer bills. And, because of a loophole in the law, Black is allowed to keep such donations secret — even though they hold out the possibility of even greater mischief than more conventional campaign contributions.
A friend in need is a friend indeed. A powerful contributor who helps a powerful legislator out of a legal scrape arguably generates a powerful debt of personal as well as political gratitude. The potential for influence-peddling is so great in such situations that Gary Bartlett, executive director of the State Board of Elections, wrote a letter last April to Black and Marc Basnight, president pro tem of the Senate, urging them to change the law and require that legal defense fund contributions be made subject to the same disclosure requirements as campaign gifts. He got nowhere.
Now Black finds himself in damage-control mode. One way to avoid creating more damage than he controls would be to identify those who are footing his legal bills.
