Bob Hall, whose complaint led to the State Board of Elections hearings this week, praised the board's decision.

Hall, executive director of Democracy N.C., said the board sent a strong message that it is illegal to try to funnel contributions through a political party.

It’s a sad day when evidence justifies referring a governor for criminal investigation, but it’s in the best interest of the public and of the thousands of candidates who are acting properly for the State Board to make it clear that no one is above the law.  In another unanimous vote, the Board recommended that the General Assembly amend state law to require the candidate to personally bear the cost of fines imposed as a result of election law violations if the candidate’s campaign committee is too broke to pay. Again, the Board sends a strong message that candidates must be held accountable for the conduct of their campaign.

Fear the State Board of Elections.

That may be the one lesson learned by political figures who have been dragged before the board in recent years.

Starting Monday, the board will begin a hearing into the campaign finance activity of Gov. Mike Easley.

Dome has no way of knowing how the hearing will go. But over the past several years, the board has been a crucial player in shining the light on political shenanigans.

It's come a long way from the day 11 years ago when a hog farmer told the board "Kiss my [expletive] I'm not coming" when he was ordered to testify about political rough housing over fundraising.

Now, the board is recognized as a key agency in fighting corruption, according to Bob Hall, the director of the liberal-leaning Democracy NC.

"They have shed light on problems, they've exposed wrongdoing and they've documented problems in a way that not only points to specific wrongdoing, but also to policies that should be changed," Hall told reporter Joe Neff.

As political theater goes, next week's hearing will be the best show in the state, and The News & Observer's investigative and multimedia staff will be there with lots of coverage, images and analysis.

This weekend, the N&O's investigative team will bring you stories to help set the stage for the hearing. From that work, we'll tease out some highlights, a brief history of the State Board of Elections hearings in posts to follow.

A Wake County Superior Court judge Monday upheld a $50 annual fee charged to attorneys to help pay for a public campaign financing fund, but he also gave them a bit more discretion in how the money can be spent.

Two attorneys, Catherine M. El-Khouri and W. Anthony Purcell, had sued the state over the fees, which are assessed through the North Carolina State Bar, Dan Kane reports.

The campaign fund pays for publicly-financed campaigns for state appellate judicial races and for a voter education guide. The attorneys had contended the fee represented a violation of their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and was an impermissible tax. They sued in October 2007.

Judge Howard E. Manning Jr. found that the fee is legal, but he also granted attorneys the option of designating their $50 fee to the voter guide. That way, he said, they would not be paying into the campaigns of candidates that they don't like.

"Overall, it's a positive decision for continued funding of a program that Judge Manning says serves a compelling state interest," said Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, a nonprofit that supports public campaign financing.

He said the attorney fee generates $1.1 million annually, about half of the total funds for the judicial public financing program. The rest comes from a voluntary $3 check-off on the state income tax form.

Update: Bob Orr, a former state Supreme Court judge who heads the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, also found plenty to like in Manning's decision. The institute had supported the lawyers' suit.

"From our perspective, the constitutional claim the suit was based on was upheld by the court," Orr said. "The remedy may be broader than we advocated for, but the underlying claim was upheld as unconstitutional. The $50 fee cannot go to candidates by fiat of the General Assembly."

Judging from emails, phone calls and online comments, a lot of people have opinions about our story today on the effort to reduce Jim Black's prison sentence or move him closer to home, Jim Morrill of The Charlotte Observer reports.

Lawyers for the former N.C. House speaker, who is serving five years for corruption in Lewisburg, Pa., have organized a letter-writing campaign to commute his sentence or at least get him moved back to North Carolina. They cite his ailments as well as his wife's recent diagnosis with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease.

About 150 people have written in support of Black. Not everybody is sympathetic.

"The key piece to remember is that Jim Black had a chance to get a shorter prison sentence," says Bob Hall of Democracy North Carolina, who's research into Black's campaign contributions helped set the stage for his prosecution. "There was a considerable period of time between his conviction and his sentencing when prosecutors sought his cooperation in their investigation of corruption, but he gave them no help....

"So if he wants a reduced prison time now, does that mean he's changed his minds and is ready to tell the truth about the full extent of pay-to-play politics in North Carolina?" 

How do you feel about Black's sentence?

Weigh in with the authorities after the jump.

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A record $22 million was spent lobbying the state in 2007.

According to data compiled by the nonpartisan Democracy North Carolina, nearly 900 businesses, trade associations and nonprofits lobbied state officials in 2007, the last long session of the state legislature.

That amounts to nearly $125,000 for each of the 170 legislators.

The $19.5 million in compensation for individual lobbyists was $5 million more than reported in 2005, but executive director Bob Hall said that may be because we know more.

"That big a jump is largely due to the state's new ethics law that requires more groups to file more complete reports about more of their activities," he said.

The top lobbying groups were the N.C. Association of Realtors, which reported spending $972,384 on six lobbyists and other expenses; Land for Tomorrow, $403,092 on three lobbyists; and the N.C. Automobile Dealers Association, $287,959 on four lobbyists.

The highest-paid lobbyists were former state Sen. Steve Metcalf of Asheville, who reported $485,362 in compensation; former Secretary of State Rufus Edmisten, $396,764; and Alexander "Sandy" Sands of Womble Carlyle, $325,055.

The watchdog group Democracy North Carolina offered a reminder Friday of just why North Carolina got rid of video poker.

Research Director Bob Hall warns of a "pandora's box of mischief and miscreants" if Judge Howard Manning's order from Thursday overturning the state's ban on the electronic gambling machines is upheld: "Video-poker," Hall wrote, "has rightly been labeled the 'crack cocaine' of gambling."

Hall's group was ringing the alarm bell about video poker and its influences on N.C. politics years before former state Transportation Secretary Garland Garrett or former House Speaker Jim Black went to prison on federal corruption charges. Garrett was convicted of running an illegal gambling operation involving video poker, and the federal investigation that brought down Black started with video poker.

Hall and his group helped drive the 2006 State Board of Elections investigation into video poker contributions to Black, which totaled about $200,000 between 2000 and 2004, Hall reminded reporters in a memo Friday. Video poker money made up more than a third of the $30,000 that Black paid to then-Rep. Michael Decker in 2003 to switch parties and vote to keep Black in the speaker's chair. 

A campaign finance watchdog says university boosters are big givers.

Bob Hall, president of Democracy North Carolina, announced today that two political action committees tied to trustees and boosters of UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State have given heavily to state legislators.

Citizens for Higher Education, which is tied to Tar Heel boosters, gave $485,000 in the 2007-08 election cycle and $425,000 in 2005-06. It was one of the five largest PAC contributors in the last election.

The University Development Coalition, which supports the Wolfpack, gave $100,500 in the last election.

According to Hall's research, 76 percent of the 170 legislators in office today have received contributions from one or both PAC, including Senate leader Marc Basnight and House Speaker Joe Hackney, who each received $24,000.

Hall said the donations are of interest as the legislature considers whether to end a program that allows out-of-state athletes to pay in-state tuition rates at state colleges.

The program is estimated to cost about $10 million a year.

Democracy North Carolina says 2008 was the Year of the Voter.

In a year-end recap, the nonpartisan voting rights group says high interest in the Democratic primary and the November elections made this "a banner for voter participation."

A few of the numbers it cites:

VOTER TURNOUT: North Carolina led the nation as the state with the biggest increase in voter turnout over 2004. A record 4.35 million Tar Heels cast ballots in the general election, a big jump over the 3.55 million in 2004 and a 70 percent turnout of 6.2 million registered voters, compared to the 64% turnout in 2004.

EARLY VOTING: A record 2.4 million people voted at 368 Early Voting sites across the state. That's more than double the number who voted at the 250 sites opened in the 2004 general election. Another 228,000 voted absentee by mail, bringing the total number of early voters to 2.64 million, or 61 percent of all voters.

SAME-DAY VOTING: During 2008, just over 49,000 used Same Day Registration to participate in the primary and another 188,000 used it during the general election. About half of them were first-time voters in the county, while the other half used the new law to update an old registration.

BLACK VOTERS: More than one million African Americans voted in North Carolina in 2008. In 2004, only 59 percent of registered black voters turned out compared to 66 percent of registered whites. But in 2008, a record 74 percent voted, surpassing the rate of whites (69 percent) for the first time.

PUBLIC FINANCING: Eleven of the 12 candidates in contested races for the state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals qualified for public financing, as did nine of the 11 candidates in the primary and four of the six candidates in the general for auditor, insurance commissioner and schools superintendent.

Still, the group saw room for improvement in voter involvement.

"One third of the voting-age citizens didn't vote in 2008, so we have plenty of room for improvement, but this year showed the way toward moving North Carolina closer to a government of, for, and by the people," said Director Bob Hall.

It's official: The November election is over.

The State Board of Elections signed off Tuesday on the results, approving the numbers in a canvass that brought no objections.

Elections director Gary Bartlett said that the board usually hears up to 10 election concerns, but there were no protests and the only pending issue had already been investigated.

"Zero issues — it doesn't get any better than that," he said.

He attributed the quiet to luck and training. Two candidates for school board in Nash County were inadvertently left off the ballot, but they had no opposition.

Two potential trouble spots turned out to be non-issues: The high volume of voters and the tricky "straight-ticket" ballot.

Bob Hall of Democracy North Carolina said he'd like to expand early voting, which was a success. (AP)