Today the Charlotte Observer discusses “A missed chance: Speaker Hackney declines call for ethics investigation”:
House Speaker Joe Hackney
a. a Republican
b. a Whig
c. a Green Party member
d. a Democrat
has declined to investigate what appears to be a breach of ethical legislative practice during the 2005-06 session. In doing so, he correctly noted that his office doesn’t have the staff and isn’t authorized to do so.
That’s technically correct, but curiously short of an adequate response to a serious allegation of wrongdoing.
Considered against the backdrop of appalling ethical lapses that resulted in the guilty pleas of two former House members — former Speaker Jim Black
a. a Republican
b. an Independent
c. a Reform Party member
d. a Democrat
and his ally Michael Decker
a. a Democrat turned Republican
b. a Libertarian turned Anarcho-Syndicalist
c. a Communist turned Democratic Socialist
d. a Republican turned Democrat
— Speaker Hackney missed an opportunity to show the public how seriously he and his House take substantive complaints about corruption. …
As the Observer’s Mark Johnson reported in March, a committee chaired by Rep. Thomas Wright, D-Wilmington, approved a bill requiring nurse anesthetists to work under a doctor’s supervision. But Rep. Wright then sat on the bill, refusing to let it go to the House floor for a vote, as a committee-approved bill normally would.
Campaign reports show that nurse anesthetists, who opposed the bill, later contributed thousands of dollars to then-Speaker Black, an ally of Rep. Wright, as well as to Rep. Wright and Rep. William Wainwright,
a. a Republican
b. an Anarchist
c. a Socialist
d. a Democrat
another committee member. “The bundling of these donations in close proximity to an action that thwarted the will of the members of the House Health Committee is very troubling,” Mr. Sinsheimer wrote.
