The office of House Speaker Jim Black (D-Matthews) would like you know that it would be wrong to draw any conclusions from the fact that a lottery company in Georgia hired his former top aide. Scientific Games of Alpharetta hired Meredith Norris to keep track of lottery legislation in North Carolina, Alpharetta evidently lacking Net or other connections to the outside world. Only an experienced political hand on the ground in Raleigh could supply this vital information to executives at Scientific.
At no point did Norris lobby anyone in the state capital on the lottery or Speaker Black. That would be wrong.
And, as usual, our local Knight Ridder outlet is MIA on this story.
Update: The Charlotte Business Journal found space to post the story.