The lead editorial in today’s News & Observer goes to bat for Golden LEAF, the largest political slush fund in North Carolina history.
As an editorial in the March Carolina Journal points out, Republican lawmakers tried to divert more than $100 million from Golden LEAF, the two other funds supported by the Master Settlement Agreement, and various “economic development” pots of money to help balance the budget and to place that funding under the control of the General Assembly and away from the boards, stacked with political insiders who parcel out millions of dollars annually with scant oversight and little public scrutiny.
The tobacco funds, the One North Carolina Fund, and the Job Development Investment Grants that would have been diverted by the Senate Bill 13 ? which Perdue vetoed ? were created or championed by Mike Easley, who made them dens of cronyism, pork-barrel politics, and in some instances, corruption. Using classic ends-justifies-the-means logic, the N&O editorial says while it may be tempting to revert Golden LEAF money to the General Fund,
sensible lawmakers will resist. Golden LEAF’s endowment, if preserved, will continue spinning off earnings that can be put to good use. Taking it to help plug the anticipated $2.4 billion hole in the upcoming state budget would ease the task of budget-writers as they look for places to cut, but once the money was gone it would be gone for good. And one of North Carolina’s key efforts to bring people who used to depend on tobacco into a more sustainable, diversified economy would be stubbed out.
Because Golden LEAF does “good work,” the editorial argues, it should be preserved, even though it does spend public money with no accountability to the people of North Carolina. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
CJ pointed out in January that the boards governing Golden LEAF, other tobacco and economic development funds, and just about every other executive branch board and commission with a mixture of members appointed by the governor and the legislature has become a shadowy, fourth branch of government, accountable to no one other than the handful of politicians who pick them.
The N&O’s editors presumably have no problem with that.