Fitzsimon File

A relatively new trend in the lobbying world continues to grow, individual local governments using public money to hire lobbyists to influence the General Assembly.

The Washington Daily News reports that Beaufort County Commissioners voted Thursday to pay lobbyist Joe McClees $60,000 to convince the state lawmakers in this summer's legislative session.to overturn new stormwater regulations adopted by the state to protect water quality 

The commissioners think that other coastal counties will pick up half of the cost. McClees is a long time Raleigh lobbyist who represents several organizations, including gun groups, hunting and boating interests, and the North Carolina Portable Toilet Association.

Beaufort County is the latest local government to hire its own lobbyist, a troubling practice that has never fully received the public debate it deserves. The issue was in the news a couple of years ago when former top-rated lobbyist Don Beason admitted giving a $500,000 loan to former House Speaker Jim Black.

 Among Beason's long list of clients was the City of Hickory and Catawba County.

Legislators are supposed to represent the interests of the local governments in their district and Beaufort County is represented by the most powerful man in the General Assembly, Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight.

Cities and counties also have membership organizations to represent them, the League of Municipalities and the County Commissioners Association. But that doesn't seem to be enough, so now citizens in Beaufort County are paying to hire a lobbyist.

There are small towns across North Carolina whose officials often complain that their county commissioners are not responsive to their needs, focusing instead on the urban areas in their county. Makes you wonder how long before Joe McClees and the next Don Beason will be hired to represent small towns before county commissions.

Lobbying for one branch of government on behalf of another is a growth industry in North Carolina.  All we need now is for state government to give incentives to local governments who create the lobbying jobs and the circle would be complete.

The folks on Right Wing Avenue are Medicaid bashing again, which is no surprise, given the success of the program that spends almost 70 percent of its budget providing care for the elderly, the blind and the disabled and has far lower administrative cost than the private insurance market. Plus Medicaid doesn't exclude people with chronic health problems, it helps them.

The folks at the Pope Civitas Institute can't stand government programs that work and want to "reform" Medicaid by having the state cover fewer of the optional services allowed by the federal government. Some services considered optional are ambulance service, prosthetic devices for people who lose an arm or leg, and prescription drugs.

The Civitasers suggest ending coverage for eyeglasses, dentures, and transportation. There is apparently no reason for poor or disabled people to be able to see, chew, or have a way to get to the doctor for a checkup.

The reformers also talk about the rising cost of Medicaid over the last six years, but neglect to mention that it has increased less than the cost of private health care over the same period.  

The recommendations are useful though. They provide us with a glimpse of the Civitasers vision of the world, a society where disabled folks who can't afford to buy prescription glasses on their own simply won't get them. That will teach them to take more personal responsibility for being born with a disability.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Dempsey Benton has generally received high marks from the mental health community for his attempts to fix the state's broken mental health system.

Plenty of people don't agree with everything Benton is proposing, but it does seem that he is committed to finding ways to make sure that people who need services get them, and that the state hospitals enter the 21^st century in how they treat patients in their care.

Benton has established outside working groups to help advise him as he wades through the mental health mess created by the 2001 reform efforts that Governor Mike Easley vigorously ignored.  But Benton has yet to appoint any consumers of mental health services to the panels and that's a mistake he ought to correct.

The people who need services deserve to be part of the discussion of how to fix the system that is supposed to provide them. There is plenty of precedent for mental health consumers being important part of community panels and advisory boards. And no matter how well-intentioned the current advisory panel members may be, no one can adequately describe what it's like using services or the frustrations trying to access them except the people who are personally and directly affected.

Benton also knows that reaching out to the broader mental health community is a vital part of restoring public confidence that evaporated in the debacle of mental health reform in the last several years. Adding consumers to the panels would be one way to start that restoration of faith in the Health and Human Services Department.

Plus it is the right thing to do.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.