Citizen

Former Gov. Mike Easley just entered a guilty plea to a single count of filing a false campaign finance report in connection with his 2006 re-election campaign. He was fined $1,000 plus court costs — no jail time at all.

The plea brings to an end the long investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office and a separate investigation initiated by the State Board of Elections which resulted in a referral to a local district attorney. The SBOE fined Easley's campaign committee $100,000. Nobody else laid a glove on him.

Corruption? Easley was far too disconnected from the actual workings of government to get caught doing favors for his campaign contributors. They were supposed to do favors for him. If they wanted something in return, that's what Ruffin Poole was for.

So, on the charge that Easley violated some campaign reporting laws, he did — serially — and was allowed to get away with pleading guilty to one bad deed. Interestingly, the law he admitted to violating was a misdemeanor at the time (2006) but now it's a felony, so at least Easley may now lose his law license.

The real story of Easley's governorship, however, is that for eight years he was a no-show governor, a man who for whatever reason — and there are lots of theories about this, but why bother with them now — put as little time and effort into his position as possible. He used people (young Poole; McQueen Campbell) and they indulged him because he was the governor and they were trading on the acquaintance. Sometimes their indulgences violated an ethics or campaign finance law, but that's almost a technicality compared to the real violation, which was Easley's abuse of the public's trust.

The four things that stand out in my mind about Mike Easley are:

1) the so-called Smithfield Agreement, which Easley presented to the world in 1999 as a timetable for the hog industry to clean up its waste cesspools ("lagoons") within five years, but which in fact allowed the cesspools to remain in operation to this day;

2) the tobacco settlement, which Easley presented to the world as a bitter pill for the tobacco industry but which in fact let the tobacco companies keep on keeping on selling their deadly products;

3) mental health reform, which was anything but; the closing of Dorothea Dix Hospital and its replacement with a new mental health facility on the grounds of Central Prison tells us all we need to know about the treatment of the mentally ill during Mike Easley's governorship.

4) the 27 men executed at Central Prison while Easley was governor, all of them after what was supposed to be the most careful review of their cases by Easley himself; given how fictional the rest of his governorship was, how real were those reviews do you think?

What a crock he was.

For most of his tenure as governor (2001-09) and for the previous eight years as attorney general, Easley was the beneficiary of good economic times thanks to, first, the high-tech bubble, and second, the housing bubble. Point being, state revenues were flush and Easley could bounce along as a Bubble A.G. and then a Bubble Governor, popping up for the occasional public event only to disappear again to Southport on a plane piloted by the Campbell McQueens of the world.

He didn't have to do much. He didn't do much. And what he did do was often worse than if he'd done nothing at all.

His only real job — and the one he so dreadfully neglected — was to be an effective front man for the Democratic party, explaining to regular people why government programs could be a good thing. His legacy: Most people think state government stinks to high heaven, and they've just put the Republicans in charge of it for the first time in 112 years.

It does piss me off that that Easley got away with his act for 16 years. He was always a charlatan and was pretty much winking at us whenever he did deign to show up somewhere. But around him his aides and complicit Democrats created the myth of Mike Easley the serious, studious governor who couldn't reveal his day-to-day whereabouts for security reasons (!). The press pretty much swallowed it — and the public was in the dark.

Your Wake Republicans were in excellent spirits last night as they gathered in North Raleigh to salute their conquering candidates, especially Paul (Skip) Stam, the House minority leader in the current General Assembly who is battling to be the House Speaker come January. (More on his chances below.)

Stam threw out the red meat, promising swift action on the DOMA (Defense of Marriage Amendment), voter IDs, Right-to-Life license plates, more charter schools as well as tax credits for private-school tuitions, and a budget that slashes spending — no tax-rate increases, Stam promised.

In other words, everything the Republicans have been dreaming about, plus a partisan redistricting plan for House and Senate districts, notwithstanding Stam's long-held position that redistricting should be done by an independent, bipartisan commission. Lest his new stance be considered unfair, Stam has labeled it "fair" redistricting. See how that works? "Fair redistricting is so important," he said. "For the first time in 112 years, Republicans are going to get the right to draw the districts fairly and legally."

Stam seemed to chuckle a bit as he offered his Republican listeners some advice about the proper framing of this matter. "There's only two words we use to describe redistricting," he said. "Fairly, and legally."

This was a meeting of the Northern Wake Republican Club, and I must say it was impressive to hear outgoing club president Donna Williams announce that GOP volunteers made 332,000 telephone calls from the Republican campaign office on Spring Forest Road in just the final three weeks before Election Day. All tolled, Williams guessed, they'd made more than 1 million calls while also festooning the roadways with so many Republican signs that people could be forgiven for thinking that "Gurley" and "Bryan" must be slapping up tract housing all over the county. (Those little political signs on the roadways are no more legal than the little for-sale signs are, btw.)

Their efforts were needed because even with the national Republican tide, the slate of four GOP candidates for Wake Commissioners seats didn't win by all that much, and indeed U.S. Sen. Richard Burr barely carried Wake over Democrat Elaine Marshall.

That said, the Republicans are now in complete charge in the county (by 4-3 on the commissioners board, 5-4 on the school board) and in the state (68-52 in the House, a veto-proof 31-19 in the Senate). As Sheriff Donnie Harrison said, "The dog has caught the bus, now what's he going to with it?" Hard work ahead was Harrison's point.

Cue Stam, who is trying to become House Speaker, though I hear from a knowledgeable source that he won't get it because — wait for this one — he's not conservative enough. Yes, I mean Skip Stam the lifetime volunteer Right-to-Life lawyer and (I'm stealing this line from a Democratic pundit) unofficial leader of the GOP's Christian Temperance Caucus. But apparently Thom Tillis, the Charlotte Republican, is considered by many of his fellow Republicans to be a little bit smoother, a little more cut-throat, and less likely to yield to pangs of conscience about his partisanship than is our Stam — about whom we've not seen that many pangs, to be frank.

However, Stam did go out of his way last night to tell his audience of 150 Republicans that he was a principle co-sponsor of 22 bills in the current session on which there was also a Democratic principle co-sponsor. His job as minority leader, Stam said, is to be partisan on partisan bills but not to the point that he wouldn't work with the Democrats on "good government" bills. My source tells me the real knock on Stam from within his caucus is that he's a trial lawyer and is open to reform of the statutes in N.C. that stop plaintiffs from collecting in a lawsuit if they were even 1 percenr responsible (i.e., guilty of contributory negligence) for whatever happened to them.

I'm obviously not privy to much when it comes to the Stam-Tillis battle nor did Stam say a lot about it, not that he had to: If anybody in this room full of Wake Republicans wasn't supporting their hometown guy for Speaker, they kept it to themselves. Instead, Stam took questions about the upcoming legislative session, and credit his audience for raising every subject I'd have raised.

Stam's answers:

* The GOP will put the so-called Defense of Marriage Amendment (DOMA) on the ballot in 2012 and use it to drub the Democrats the same as the Bush campaign used it in 2004 to take Ohio and win a second term as president;

* They'll pass a requirement that registered voters must present an official ID at the polls before they're allowed to cast ballots. This should pacify Republican activists who lose sleep at night over the prospect that marauding Democrats will drive from precinct to precinct pretending to be people they somehow know won't be voting. (Or is this simply a cynical move to discourage voting by marginalized populations?)

* Yes, Stam has four times submitted legislation to create an independent bipartisan redistricting commission, preventing the kinds of ruthless partisan gerrymanders that politicians produce when they get to draw up the districts. But that was when the GOP was in the minority and the Democrats controlled redistricting. Now that the tables are turned, Stam said, he still favors a bipartisan commission — but it's too late to create one and get districts drawn in time for the 2012 elections. Why? Apparently because Stam wanted the state constitution amended to require an independent commission — a process that would indeed drag on too long. But why not create the commission by statute, with the Republican-controlled legislature pledging to accept its work? But you know what, Stam won't be elected leader of the Republicans by being that fair to the Democrats. (Not to mention to the voters.) No, Stam cracked, "I'd say that the Democrats have been hoist by their own petard."

* And that $3 billion budget gap? The Republicans will pass a budget with no tax-rate increases, only spending cuts. "It will not be popular," Stam warned, not stopping to explain that it will require cutting school aid, university budgets, social services programs and other things real people care about and depend upon. "That budget will be hugely unpopular, but we're doing to do it."

* Right-to-Life licence plates? "That's an easy sell," Stam said, because lots of people will buy them. "Why would you not do it?

* Healh-care reform? The GOP will move quickly on a bill to allow N.C. residents not to buy health insurance if they don't want it. The effect of that is effectively zero since the new federal health-care law requires it, but it will add North Carolina to the list of states challenging the constitutionality of a federal mandate to buy a private-sector product.

* Stam wasn't asked about charter schools, but a tip sheet he handed out included the Republican bill to repeal the law capping the number of charter schools at 100. It also listed H.B. 1988, which would create an income tax credit for part of the expense of sending kids to a private school or of home-schooling them. Supposedly this would "save" the taxpayers $50 million a year — "save" in the sense that if they all showed up at a public school, it would cost $50 million.

Stam did promise a rewrite of the ethics rules and legislative processes that would treat both parties fairly. "We are not going to treat the Democrats like they treated us," he said. "There are some Republicans who'd like us to, but we're not going to do it."

Still, he couldn't resist noting that the Democrats' current 68-52 hold on the House will flip in January to 68-52 Republican. Given that, he joked, if Republicans parcel out committee seats in the same proportions the Democrats used, no one will be able to say they weren't equally fair.

Sweet, thought the audience, smiling as one. "That's called the Golden Rule," Stam said.

So the Republicans are coming to town to slash the state budget, and as we said yesterday, Gov. Perdue's a step ahead of them with a directive to every department: Tell me where you'd cut 5 percent, 10 percent or 15 percent of your budget.

Well, as Rob Schofield says, you can't make this stuff up: Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, an elected official in his own right(-wing) after all, says he can't cut a dime. And he's a Republican!

Wouldn't be prudent, I believe he told an aide in his best George H.W. Bush imitation.

OK, then how about getting us a good price on that giant grocery cart you bought with state money?

Just kidding. Love the cart. Love it the way you tax-and-spend, Commissioner.

With the U.S. House in Republican hands come January, not only is another round of federal stimulus funding for the states a virtual impossibility, it may be that the GOP will try to pull back unspent funds from the 2009 stimulus package. (In the U.S. Senate debates, Richard Burr and Elaine Marshall both said that about one-third of the initial stimulus remains to be spent — which if my math is right would be, after accounting for the fact that one-third of the stimulus funding was in the form of tax cuts, about $150 billion.)

So the N.C. General Assembly will be on its own next year as it figures out how to close an estimated $3.3 billion gap between anticipated revenues and continuation-level spending for the 2011-12 fiscal year beginning July 1. The budget hole is approximately 15 percent of total state spending, which this year amounts to some $18.9 billion.

Ordinarily, some combination of spending cuts and tax increases would be under consideration in Raleigh, but we are not in ordinary times: In January, Republicans will take control of the General Assembly for the first time in more than 100 years, and they'll do so with healthy margins in both houses — 31-19 in the Senate, 68-52 in the House.

The Republicans ran on a promise to balance the budget without tax increases. If they follow through, that means radical cuts in Medicaid, social services, the UNC system's budget, and especially to local school aid (K-12) which accounts for some $7 billion of annual state spending — by far the biggest line item.

Before the Republicans get in the budget game, however, the first move belongs to Gov. Perdue. She's already indicated that she won't seek the extension of the temporary 1-cent sales tax increase that was enacted for the current fiscal year only and raised an estimated $1 billion. She's asked every cabinet official to submit budget numbers to her reflecting a 5 percent cut in spending, a 10 percent cut and a 15 percent cut.

In short, all indications are that Perdue will submit a budget that is slashed to the bone — no new taxes —
and see whether the Republicans have the stomach to pass it.

Is that what she should do?

It's what a Republican governor would do, presumably, but if we wanted a Republican governor we'd have elected one.

Perdue may not be able to enforce a budget veto — 60 percent of the members in both houses are enough to override her, meaning the 31 Republicans in the Senate can do it if they stick together and the 68 Republicans in the House would need just four Democrats to join them and they could override her too.

Still, Perdue should draw the line between cuts she'll accept and cuts that she can't accept because they're irresponsible given the needs of children, the disadvantaged, those with physical and mental disabilities and the long-term economic vitality of the state.

Gary Pearce puts it well:

She could try to out-cut the Republicans. If she does, she’ll face a rebellion in her Democratic base —and maybe a primary challenge.

Or she can find a way to draw a clear line with Republicans: progress versus retreat, go forward or go back.

It’s no easy choice, given her precarious public standing.

Pearce advises her: Go with your base.

One strategy Perdue might consider is to submit a budget with no new revenues, spelling out where the cuts would have to fall, but also making it clear that such a budget would be enacted only over her veto.

Perdue could then present an alternative budget with higher spending that she would accept — one presumably containing a good deal more state aid to schools. She could attach to this budget a menu of acceptable tax increases to pay for it. The list might include extending the sales tax to services; raising cigarette taxes; raising gasoline taxes; or, fairest of all, raising the income tax on upper-income folks.

Presenting the budget this way would frame the choice for legislative Republicans:

a) Cut state aid to schools and force the counties to either slash their school budgets or raise property taxes; or

b) Fund the schools by slashing social services; or

c) Fund the schools by finding new revenues.

This, not incidentally, would also frame the choice for the voters in 2012 if the Republicans force slash-and-burn budget onto the books.

Democrat Perdue should have no trouble taking a pro-schools position. She may be forced to swallow an anti-schools budget, but she doesn't have to sign up for one in advance.