As one of ten bills approved yesterday, the North Carolina House Select Committee on Ethics and Government Reform recommended legislation that will create a pilot program offering full public financing in four legislative districts. The pilot project is modeled on the state’s successful Voter-Owned, Clean Elections judicial public financing program.
The bipartisan Select Committee, which includes 23 House members, was set up between sessions and finished its work yesterday. The 2006 North Carolina session begins today.
The fervor for reform in North Carolina follows revelations of scandals swirling around House Speaker Jim Black (D) and contributions from the video poker industry, uncovered largely by the work of Democracy North Carolina.
Details of the public financing pilot program will be worked out as the legislation moves through the House and, if approved, through the Senate. Other bills approved by the Select Committee include recommending restrictions and donations and gifts by lobbyists, as well as revamping legislative and ethics laws, reports the Associated Press.
As the debate moves forward, it’s important to keep the focus on public financing, says Democracy North Carolina Executive Director Bob Hall. "We can limit gift-giving by lobbyists, open up the legislative process to more public debate, create an ethics commission with real teeth, even limit the terms for House speaker and Senate president pro tem—all good proposals—but until we change the dominant role of political fund-raising, we won't change the political culture," wrote Hall in an opinion piece last week in the Charlotte Observer.