The news about the investigations into the activities of former Governor Mike Easley is coming so fast, it's hard to keep up. The News and Observer reported Tuesday that federal authorities have called N.C. State Chancellor James Oblinger and Provost Larry Nielsen before a grand jury to answer questions about the hiring and promotion of Mary Easley, the former governor's wife.
McQueen Campbell, the chair of N.C. State's Board of Trustees, resigned his post last week at the urging of UNC President Erskine Bowles. Federal investigators have asked for Easley's state travel records and interviewed at least one member of the Highway Patrol. The records from 2005 are missing, vanished into thin air.
The feds are also looking into Easley's role in a land deal on the coast and the State Board of Elections is investigating to see if Easley violated campaign finance laws by failing to report plane rides from corporate interests.
Bowles and Oblinger have called on Mary Easley to resign from her $170,000 position, but so far she has declined. Bowles is being widely praised by Democrats and Republicans for his decisive actions in calling for Campbell and Easley to step down, but that's where things become a little confusing.
Just eight months ago, the UNC Board of Governors approved the proposal for an 88 percent increase in Easley's salary, bringing it to $170,000, and directed her to raise one-third of it from private funds.
Bowles strongly urged the board to approve the raise, saying "the proposed salary fits the job and is totally justified," adding that there was not a "shred of evidence" that N.C. State officials were under any political pressure to give Easley the job.
Last week Campbell told Bowles that he had told Chancellor Oblinger that Easley wanted a new job, prompting Bowles to ask Campbell to step down. Bowles had found his shred.
But how could anyone not recognize the conflict of interest last year, or at the very least the appearance of it—the governor's wife, given an 88 percent raise by a public university whose budget the governor ultimately manages, a university whose board of trustees the governor appoints.
Bowles may not have been able to find any evidence of political pressure until last week, but there was overwhelming circumstantial evidence of it when the raise was announced.
Asking Easley to raise part of her salary didn't help, it made things worse. WRAL-TV reported this week that among the contributors to the Mary Easley salary fund were Progress Energy, AT&T, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, all corporate interests that lobby state officials and surely welcome the opportunity to curry favor with the wife of the governor.
It is hard to see how Mary Easley can stay in her job at N.C. State, but that may be the least of her worries as the investigations of her and her husband widen.
But even at this stage in the whole sorry episode there are obvious lessons to be learned. The governor's spouse should not be a state employee. That seems pretty obvious.
Bowles said last year when defending Easley's $170,000 salary that nothing nefarious had occurred. But nefariousness is not the standard and Bowles certainly ought to understand that, having served as Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton and running for the U.S. Senate twice before becoming UNC president.
The standard is potential for conflict of interest or the perception of a conflict and Mary Easley's arrangement at N.C. State far exceeded that from the beginning.
