Fitzsimon File

Folks need to take a breath in Raleigh. Revelations that legislative leaders controlled $20 million in special discretionary accounts has folks calling for House Speaker Jim Black, Speaker Pro Tem Richard Morgan, and Senate President Marc Basnight to give up their leadership posts.

State Auditor Les Merritt is now involved in what the breathless ones are calling N.C. Pork Gate. They also blame Governor Easley now. Are impeachment proceedings next? What did Easley know and when did he know it? Is the Drudge Report on the case?

No argument that legislative leaders doling out money to local museums, arts councils and libraries at the request of individual legislators is wrong.

No matter how worthy the local projects may be, they should have to compete with all the pressing needs of the state, the waiting lists for human services and lifesaving medicine, the dire need for school construction, the massive shortage of affordable housing. Twenty million dollars is a lot of money, even in a $16 billion a year state budget.

The simplest way to make them compete is to list them in the proposed budget that lawmakers consider, and both Black and Basnight have pledged to do that. That is the least they should do.

The State Auditor doesn’t call his look at the discretionary money an audit, but says he’ll look at the spending to see how it happened. We know how it happened. Legislative leaders set aside money and funded local projects that members of the House and Senate requested.

Black and Basnight have been their own worst enemy as the story has unfolded, Basnight first claiming that all the Senate projects were listed in the budget, then having to admit that they all weren’t. Black’s initial explanation was even more troubling, saying that the state had extra money last year, which comes as news to people on the waiting list for human services, people ignored in last year’s budget.

One of the anti-government think tanks also reported that legislative leaders have discretionary money in the Department of Transportation too. A veteran Republican Senator said that he has requested and received some of the money for his district.

That makes it harder for this to be the completely partisan, anti-government scandal that some folks are hoping for. So does the fact that the last time there was a flap about discretionary accounts, Republican Harold Brubaker was Speaker of the House.

There may be more we still don’t know, but so far there are no allegations that legislators have personally profited from any of the projects or violated state law. No one has stolen any money. No one has been recorded on a hidden camera taking a wad of cash from an undercover FBI agent.

Legislative leaders spent taxpayer money for what appear to be legitimate purposes, but without the approval of entire General Assembly and out of public view. That is troubling, but is essentially how the budget is put together every year, no matter who runs the House or Senate. Too much power is concentrated in leadership offices. Too many decisions made behind closed doors.

This episode ought to make something happen that is long overdue, an honest debate in public about setting budget priorities, so citizens can have input along the way.

Let’s stop talking about resignations and adding “gate” to everything. It’s time to calm down, reform the process and put together a budget to address the challenging problems facing the state.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.