Carolina Politics Online

Raleigh – Former state House Speaker Jim Black, now serving federal prison time for a corruption conviction, paid half of his $1 million fine on Thursday on a similar count to which he pleaded in state court last year, his lawyer said.

The $500,000 payment helps him for now avoid receiving state prison time after he leaves federal custody. Black was supposed to pay the entire fine by July, or he could face nearly two years in prison on a plea he made last year to a bribery charge.

Asheville Citizen-Times

Awe, too bad.  I would have liked to see him serve the additional prison time, but hey, a half a million bucks definitely stings.

Former House Speaker Jim Black’s controversial program to help children get screened for vision problems appears to be going out with a whimper.

The state budget proposals of the House and Gov. Mike Easley would eliminate the remaining $500,000 in funding for the program. Easley’s budget proposal said the program drew little use in the two years since its creation.

The vision care program began as a mandate on parents to have their children seen by an optometrist before they entered kindergarten. The requirement caused an uproar after Black wrote it into the 2005 budget.

Black, a Mecklenburg County Democrat, was an optometrist, and his colleagues were a key source for political contributions. One of the scandals that eventually led to his downfall involved optometrists writing campaign contribution checks with the payee line blank so that Black and others could determine who should get them.

The N&O

Why did it take so long for this guy to end up in jail? This is the type of garbage you get when you have one-party rule, folks. Keep that in mind in November.

On Wednesday, the legislature’s ethics committee agreed to a bill that would prohibit the state auditor from investigating possible violations of the ethics law. Instead, the State Ethics Commission would have sole authority to enforce ethics laws.

Legislative supporters of the bill, mostly Democrats, say their goal is to have a single, unbiased agency to keep an eye on public officials.

But State Auditor Les Merritt, a Republican, argues that it never hurts to have more watchdogs of government officials.

…

Officials in Merritt’s office argue also that giving the ethics commission sole authority to investigate such matters would mean essentially that only the legislature can keep an eye on legislators. That’s because the commission is required to turn over any findings it has about lawmakers to a legislative committee, which then determines whether any public action should be taken.

The News & Observer

Boy, is Les Merritt right. The State Ethics Commission is an appointed body; the State Auditor is elected. Both of them should have a role in corruption probes because neither of them can be trusted completely.

The fact that the Democrats, who are in charge of the governor’s mansion and state legislature, want to limit Merritt’s authority ought to be very frightening to all North Carolinians. Any ethics panel would have to answer to the party in charge, and for the foreseeable future that appears to be the party of Jim Black, Thomas Wright, Nick Mackey, et al. Les Merritt, meanwhile, is answerable to the voters every four years.

They’ll face off in the May 6 primaries for the N.C. House District 100 seat, but this match between Rep. Tricia Cotham and Lloyd Scher, a former Mecklenburg County commissioner, began over a year ago.

In March 2007, state Democratic Party officials elected Cotham to fill the unexpired term of former Democratic House Speaker Jim Black, who resigned amid corruption charges.

Charlotte Observer

This will actually be Cotham’s first popular election to the House seat.  Regardless of being elected by a committee rather than the voters, she still holds the advantage of incumbency.  However, Scher was a Mecklenburg County Commissioner for eight years so he still has a familiar name to the electorate.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

EAGLE SPRINGS — Former state Rep. Richard Morgan of Moore County announced Friday he has filed for state superintendent of public schools.

The former House co-speaker’s announcement came just days after his wife, Moore County Commissioner Cindy Morgan, announced she was filing for state senate.

“My plan for the department is very simple,” Richard Morgan said in a press release. “I will work every day, all day for our children. To do anything less would be wrong.”

Fayetteville Observer

I don’t see success in Morgan’s future.  He has a connection to disgraced former House Speaker Jim Black as he supported him during Black’s battling of his corruption charges which eventually lead to him currently serving in prison.  Morgan lost his House seat over it in 2006 to a Republican primary challenger.  His opponent, Joe Johnson, will certainly make this an issue and I don’t see how Morgan will overcome that.

Former House Speaker Jim Black has voluntary given up his license to practice optometry, officials said Friday, but the disgraced politician can ask it be restored once he completes a prison sentence on corruption charges.The disgraced 72-year-old politician is serving a five-year federal sentence for taking more than $25,000 in cash from several chiropractors while pushing their agenda in the state Legislature. Black also accepted punishment on state charges of bribery and obstruction of justice.

The News-Record

Disgraced former House Speaker Jim Black will get more time to pay his $1 million fine.With a Monday deadline looming, an attorney for Black reached an agreement today with state prosecutors giving him until July 2008 to pay. Black has had difficulty selling real estate that would raise the money because potential buyers know he’s under a deadline, according to a motion by Black’s attorney Allen Powell.

The fine stems from Black’s conviction on state corruption charges this year.

The News & Observer

That’s awful generous of the courts.  I don’t have any sympathy for the guy if he’s having trouble raising the money.

A company owned by the son of former House Speaker Jim Black won contracts to provide pest control at the state’s newest three prisons, although competing bidders offered to do the work at less than half of Black’s price.

Black Pest Control was paid $124,000 for prison construction projects in Bertie and Greene counties, although a business in Stafford, Va., bid $42,000 on the same work. At the state’s latest prison project in Columbus County, Black Pest Control won the job in 2005 with a price of $73,600, even though a Brunswick County company was willing to do it for $20,600.

Centex Construction, the company that oversaw construction of the three prisons, which cost a combined $245 million, said it wanted Jon Black’s company, Black Pest Control, because it did good work on smaller Centex projects. But a former project manager at two of the prison construction sites said he was pressured to hire Black.

News & Observer

Of course it was intentional. It’s called a political favor. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. The corruption of Jim Black knows no bounds, even when he’s in prison.

Former House Speaker Jim Black has a buyer for a parcel of choice real estate in Matthews in a deal that will close next month, the deadline for him to pay a $1 million fine from his corruption convictions.

Black listed the land for $950,000. The sale, though, has not closed, so no public documents have been filed that would disclose the buyer’s identity or the price.

Black, 72, is currently serving a 63-month sentence in a federal prison camp in Lewisburg, Pa, for a federal corruption conviction.

In a separate state corruption conviction, the judge ordered Black to pay $1 million by December 10 or serve another 23 months.

He is expected to pay the fine.

Charlotte Observer

The N.C. agency that regulates optometrists wants to hold a disciplinary hearing in Raleigh for former House Speaker Jim Black, who is serving a prison term in Pennsylvania for corruption.

John Robinson, executive director of the N.C. Board of Optometry, said Monday that notices have gone out for a 9 a.m. hearing Dec. 12. The board plans to consider Black’s felony convictions, and it could take away the license he’s had for more than 40 years.

Charlotte Observer

North Carolina and federal taxpayers won’t get the teapot museum they helped pay for.

Organizers of the Sparta Teapot Museum, which received $900,000 in taxpayer-funded grants and a bushel of unwanted publicity, are planning to build a very different museum than first envisioned. It’s expected to be a fraction of the original size and won’t focus exclusively on a donated teapot collection.

The wealthy principal donor plans to take many, though not all, of his teapots elsewhere and has all but abandoned the idea of building a 10,000-square-foot foundation headquarters in the small N.C. mountain town of Sparta.

Charlotte Observer

I have seen a lot of ridiculous waste of tax dollars in the government, but this one goes right at the top. Why in the hell was Washington handing over almost a million dollars to build a teapot museum? The people who pushed through that earmark ought to feel pretty darn stupid right now. Who were they by the way? None other than members of our “fiscally conservative” Republican delegation.

Citizens Against Government Waste, a national organization, gave the museum’s $500,000 federal grant top billing when it publicized its 2006 “Pig Book” of pork barrel waste, which followed a stream of snickering national news stories.

The museum’s backers had hired a Washington lobbying firm with close ties to North Carolina to seek federal funds. Three N.C. lawmakers who helped in that push, Sens. Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., of Banner Elk, have gotten campaign donations in recent years from the firm.

Organizers hoped the museum would deliver an economic boost to a community battered by plant closings.

Oh yeah. I am sure people from all over the world were going to be clamoring to Sparta to see the world renowned teapot museum.

Michael Decker, a former state lawmaker who helped bring down former House Speaker Jim Black with accusations of bribery, has begun his prison term.

Decker, 62, surrendered as scheduled Tuesday at a federal prison in Bennettsville, S.C., said Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman Mike Truman. Decker’s information was entered into the prison’s computer system at 12:13 p.m., meaning he arrived at some point earlier, Truman said.

Charlotte Observer

Black and Decker ………. lol

Don Beason, the lobbyist who loaned $500,000 to then-House Speaker Jim Black in 2000, is leaving the lobbying business.

“It’s not fair to my clients to put them through something like this,” Beason said Wednesday in a brief interview with Observer columnist Jack Betts.

Beason’s clients have included corporate giants such as BB&T and Progress Energy, as well as the Carolina Ballet, Catawba County and Dale Earnhardt Inc.

Charlotte Observer

Smart move. Lobbyists are about as well likes as lawyers these days.

Mecklenburg County wants thousands of dollars in back taxes from Jim Black on land that officials say has been undervalued for more than a decade.

Black and a partner bought the property near downtown Matthews in 1994 for $200,000. It’s now valued at $3,000 more. He has it for sale for $950,000.

Charlotte Observer

The skeletons just keep on exiting Jim Black’s closet.

Former state House Speaker Jim Black was ordered Tuesday to pay a $1 million fine on a state political corruption charge, with the judge giving the disgraced politician less than five months to pay.

Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens also sentenced Black to serve up to 10 months in prison, with the term to run concurrently with a federal five-year sentence Black received earlier this year. Black began serving that sentence Monday.

Fayetteville Observer

I hope Black enjoys showering with Bubba. It couldn’t happen to a better guy.

A federal judge ordered former House Speaker Jim Black to begin serving his five-year prison sentence Monday as scheduled, rejecting the defamed politician’s request that it be delayed.

Black, 72, had asked U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle to let him begin serving his sentence no sooner than Sept. 10. The Mecklenburg County Democrat pleaded guilty earlier this month to a felony charge for illegally accepting $25,000 in cash from chiropractors.

Winston-Salem Journal

Former House Speaker Jim Black wants to give free eye exams and eyeglasses to the poor instead of going to federal prison.

In court papers filed Monday, Black submitted an 11-page business plan for the optometry clinic and said it could be running within days. He has been an optometrist for more than 40 years, often seeing patients when not in Raleigh on legislative business.

Black suggests he could give the free exams five days a week, giving 2,000 exams a year at a benefit to the taxpayers of $543,882. He would also be on house arrest.

Charlotte Observer

Gee, how noble of him. I don’t think so. The man is guilty of essentially taking bribes to shape legislation affecting the entire state. He is corrupt and deserves to be behind bars as an example.