Plumb dumb
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
By Chris Fitzsimon
Governor, legislature should share UNC appointments
It sounds bad, and it is: A former school superintendent who pleaded guilty to filching money from his district winds up with a sought-after appointment to the board that governs North Carolina’s public universities.
Yet the sorry tale of Purnell Swett shows why politicians in the state legislature ought not to have a stranglehold on making appointments to a powerful statewide higher education board.
Last month, Mr. Swett was one of 15 people the N.C. General Assembly nominated to the University of North Carolina Board of Governors. That might be OK, except when Mr. Swett was school superintendent in Robeson County he was accused of paying himself an extra $13,000. He ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges, getting a suspended sentence and repaying the money. That doesn’t exactly qualify him to oversee a $6.5 billion public resource. (more…)
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