The problems at the Department of Transportation continue to be a focus of this year’s campaign for governor, with candidates weighing in with DOT reform plans and pledging to take the politics out of decisions about which roads are built.

Much of the discussion surrounds a proposal by State Treasurer Richard Moore to ban campaign contributors and fundraisers from serving on the Board of Transportation. Both Democratic and Republican governors have traditionally appointed key campaign money people to the influential Board, which has resulted in an ongoing series of scandals over the last few decades.

Most of them involved Board members using their power for their own financial benefit or to help friends and family members.  

Each scandal prompted public outrage and calls for reforms, which were answered with policy changes or legislation that may have included the word reform in its title, but did little to change the influence of big money at DOT.  

The latest major public corruption scandal came in 1998 and part of the story was the revelation that the 21 members of the Board appointed by then Governor Jim Hunt in 1997 gave a total of $231,000 to Hunt’s 1996 campaign and raised plenty more.

Part of the reform legislation in 1998 required that DOT Board members disclose their political fundraising, but as the News & Observer reported this weekend, that provision is largely being ignored.

Both Governor Mike Easley’s office and Grayson Kelly with the Attorney General’s office parsed the 1998 law and determined that it only applied if Board members literally handled campaign donations, collecting the checks and delivering them to the campaigns.

As the News & Observer reported, that interpretation means that soliciting political contributions and even holding fundraisers are not covered by the law and do not have to be disclosed. Maybe it depends on what “is” means.

Kelly told the N&O that he checked with legislative staff and the lawmakers who sponsored the 1998 DOT reform legislation, including Beverly Perdue, and they all supported the very narrow interpretation of the fundraising disclosure requirement.

Perdue declined to comment on the story, though her campaign spokesperson said she viewed the legislation as the “starting point for reform,” though it didn’t start very much if Perdue and others agreed to let the fundraising disclosure provisions be rendered meaningless.

And meaningless it is. The N&O documented several instances of Board members raising money for Easley and not reporting it, including DOT Secretary Lyndo Tippett.

Tippett wrote none on his fundraising disclosure form, but did note that he had given bundles of checks to the Easley campaign that he not solicited from individual contributors and called his evasion a textbook example of complying with law, which ranks as one of the more absurd comments of the year. .

It’s matched only by Tippett’s claim that it’s not his responsibility if board members don’t report their fundraising because they don’t report to him, so it’s not “his issue.” There’s some strong leadership, though it’s hardly a surprise given Tippett’s own apparent willingness to use the Easley Administration’s evasion of the law textbook.

All the major candidates for Governor are jumping on the DOT reform bandwagon and Republican Bob Orr Monday called for Easley to fire Tippett. But Orr also seems to think that Democrats are the only ones who have sold DOT seats to wealthy donors, forgetting that Republican Governor Jim Martin appointed his biggest fundraisers to the Board as well.

Let’s hope the DOT story not only continues, but expands well beyond transportation. Why political fundraisers or large donors be allowed to serve on any policymaking board or commission. Is it ok if seats on any board are for sale? 

This story is about much more than transportation and reform plans for one department in state government. It is about the way we finance campaigns in North Carolina. People give money or raise it because they want something in return, and that something is often a seat on a powerful board or commission for themselves or someone they designate.

That’s true in Democratic Administrations and Republican Administrations and the way to stop it isn’t to reform one department. It is to change where candidates get their money to run, to stop forcing them to rely on the same handful of wealthy interests whose money always comes with stings attached.  Hard to think of a better argument for public financing than the latest evidence that power at DOT is still for sale.