July 21, 2002
RALEIGH — John Locke Foundation vice president Don Carrington, who serves as associate publisher of Carolina Journal, appeared this morning during a segment of ABC’s “Good Morning America” program to discuss his recent reporting on how North Carolina’s share of the national tobacco settlement is being spent.
The news story quoting Carrington appeared at about 7:40 a.m. on Monday morning and focused on examples in New York and North Carolina of how money intended to be spent to reimburse taxpayers for the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses has instead been spent on pork-barrel programs, in some cases involving tobacco production itself.
In Carolina Journal, the Locke Foundation’s monthly newspaper, Carrington wrote a front-page story detailing the use of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the tobacco settlement, allocated to a private group called the Golden LEAF Foundation, to subsidize a horse park in Hoke County and a tobacco-processing facility in Rocky Mount. Carrington talked about both examples with ABC News.
In recent weeks, Carrington’s revelations about misuse of tobacco-settlement funds have also been featured in Time magazine and discussed on CNN and the Fox News Channel, in addition to the extensive coverage they received in the print and broadcast media in North Carolina. And he has been interviewed for an upcoming segment on “NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.”
Carrington has worked for the Locke Foundation since 1994, most recently directing the organization’s Carolina Journal division and authoring many of its investigative stories. He formerly worked in data collection and analysis for state government and as a private economic developer. He is a graduate of East Carolina University in Greenville.
For more information about the Carolina Journal expose on the Golden LEAF Foundation, visit http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusive/030502.html and http://www.fayettevillenc.com/obj_stories/2002/feb/n18leaf.shtml.
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