Whether he intended it or not, the governor gave a pretty good argument during yesterday’s budget briefing against the idea of fixing legislative ethical lapses through public financing of elections.
The specific topic was Jim Black:
I think everybody — you know — all colleagues and everyone who’s worked with the speaker feels betrayed any time you have somebody breaking the criminal laws.
This is not so much about ethics or campaign reform. This is a criminal law that’s been in effect — I don’t know — probably 200 years.
Everybody was stunned. Everybody was shocked. But I don’t want to turn this into a press conference on Speaker Black. It’s a sad day for North Carolina. It’s sad for the institution of the legislature, but it’s something we need to look at, learn from, and move beyond — recognizing that there are human frailties, there are human flaws, and you can’t control all of them with laws. People have to control a lot of that themselves with their own conduct and their own character.
