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Winston-Salem Journal

There’s a lot of good the state of North Carolina could do with $200,000 - things much better than paying House Speaker Jim Black’s legal bills. Unfortunately, it appears that the state is obligated for at least that portion of the fees that Black is running up in association with a federal investigation.

Black has two sets of bills. The first involve the State Board of Elections’ inquiry into how the state’s optometrists and video-poker operators raised campaign contributions for the speaker.

State taxpayers should not pay one red cent for any of these legal fees. While published reports indicate that Black is paying these himself, it must be made very clear to the speaker and to his lawyers that these fees are his responsibility. Furthermore, the public should get a full accounting to make clear that the fees were billed correctly.

With regard to the federal investigation, however, the state is in a bind. Taxpayers are obligated for legal fees associated with official duties. That arrangement is essential. Otherwise, state officials would be personally bankrupted by the myriad legal proceedings their offices encounter. The state is also clearly responsible for the legal fees of state employees who worked for Black.

Some of Black’s critics have argued that all of the legal fees are his personal responsibility. They argue that he brought this burden upon himself.

That’s a political statement, one aimed at scoring points in the partisan exchange of fire, not in building good public policy.

North Carolinians really don’t know what the federal investigation is about. We know that witnesses have been asked about the lottery, video poker and connections between lobbying contracts and the passage of legislation. But, we don’t know whether the speaker is a culprit, a witness or a victim. We don’t know if the speaker’s office was the scene of a crime, a site where non-criminal activities occurred, or just a repository of important documents. (more…)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 5:21 am and is filed under Daily News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.