Fitzsimon File

The news that House Speaker Jim Black will appoint a special House committee this week to study possible changes in state lobbying and ethics laws has been greeted with understandable cynicism.

After all, Black is at the center of the current ethics scandal in the state, both for his appointment of Kevin Geddings to the lottery commission and the role of his former staff member and political director Meredith Norris in the lottery debate and other issues.

Norris was not registered as a lobbyist for Scientific Games, but was working with legislators on the company’s behalf. A federal grand jury is looking into Norris’ dealings with the lottery company and her other clients to see if any laws were broken.

Geddings resigned from the commission after disclosures that he had been paid by Scientific Games after he was appointed, a fact he declined to include on his ethics statement he signed as part of his appointment. Questions about Black’s ability to survive the scandal dominate the Raleigh political world.

The House committee Black plans to appoint will consider moving up the effective date of the lobbying reform legislation passed last session that’s scheduled to become law January of 2007.

Black set himself up for the allegations that his announcement of the committee is self-serving. As the Charlotte-Observer points out, he was no cheerleader of the lobbying bill when it passed, calling it "no big deal." It’s a big deal now.

But whatever Black’s motivations for creating the panel, it is a step forward that he plans to appoint it. The committee provides a vehicle to focus attention on important improvements in the state’s ethics laws and lobbying regulations.

More about comprehensive ethics legislation in a future Fitzsimon File, but lawmakers could start by looking at the wide-ranging recommendations Tennessee legislators will consider in a special session in January. Those include an independent ethics commission, a virtual ban on gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers, and changes in campaign finance laws.

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen plans to call the special session in his state, which raises an important question left out of most of the attacks on Black’s decision to appoint the House committee. Where is North Carolina’s Governor?

Every story about the need for tougher laws as a result of the current scandal mentions moving up the effective date of last session’s lobbying reform legislation. That would require a special session. Waiting until May would mean the law couldn’t be changed in time to have any effect on this year’s General Assembly

Is Governor Easley prepared to call a special session to restore public faith in the legislative process? Has the Governor thought about appointing his own committee to study ways to toughen the laws governing ethics and lobbying? Or does he even think there is a problem?

Say what you want about Black, but he is the only top elected official who appears to be thinking about how the state should respond to this whole mess. That is as sad a commentary on the lack of principled leadership in the state as the scandal itself.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 11:09 am and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.