Once again we turn to an out-of-town paper to find out what is going on with Jim Black and his gang of insiders. This time it is new details on former Charlotte Regional Partnership head Michael Almond’s back-channel dealings with Black. As ever, former Black aide Meredith Norris is central to the story:
Almond helped persuade officials at other partnerships in the state to give Meredith Norris two consultant contracts worth a total of $66,000 a year.
Since then, Black has helped Almond and the seven nonprofit partnerships in ways large and small.
E-mail correspondence released by the partnerships shows that Black helped create a $39,000-a-year state tourism job for Almond’s wife, Helen Ruth Almond, and sought to help his son, Aubrey, gain admission to UNC-Chapel Hill. Aubrey succeeded.Black has consistently stood by the partnerships when they sought state money or opposed legislation that might hurt their status. Their combined budgets have grown by 52 percent in recent years, from $5.6 million in 2002 to $8.5 million this year.
During that period, Almond and his wife gave Black $6,500 in political contributions. Almond allowed Black to use the Charlotte partnership’s conference room for political campaign meetings, and the partnership picked up the tab for an economic development forum Black held in Charlotte this year.
The News and Observer also digs out other little details like checks being sent, calls being made, and Michael Almond exalting to Norris after his wife landed the state job, “I love it when a plan comes together!”
All of this could just dismissed as the petty hustlings of small time hacks who think they are gaming the system to get something for the nothing that is a life of cronyism, except for the money involved. Millions. In taxpayer money. At the fingertips. Of these boobs.
One final jab in the eye, Mr. and Mrs. North Carolina taxpayer: You are still paying Meredith Norris for her work.
Evidently, there is nothing you can do about it. Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?
