Mary Easley got a $79,700 raise this week.

Easley, wife of Gov. Mike Easley, is an executive in residence and senior lecturer in the provost's office at N.C. State University. Her job duties have expanded and she will get more money for it.

Effective July 1, her salary went from $90,000 to $170,000, according to personnel records from N.C. State.

Mary Easley, 58, has been in the news this week because of the expense of trips she took to France in May 2007 and Russia and Estonia this May.

News of the raise appeared in a story in the Carolina Journal on Wednesday.

Mary Easley's job entails development and direction of the Millennium Seminars, the university's principal speakers program. She runs a spring semester course called Public Law for Public Administrators. She is a faculty member in the Administrative Officers Management Program teaching legal aspects of police supervision.

Her new responsibilities include directing the development of the Public Safety Leadership Initiative, expanding the existing program to include first responders and security professionals, co-directing
pre-law services at N.C. State, and acting as the University’s liaison for partnerships with the legal profession and area law schools, including the development of dual-degree programs.

Debbie Crane said the Carolina Journal shouldn't have to ask to get its calls returned.

Gov. Mike Easley acknowledged last week that his press staff doesn't return calls from the newspaper because the governor's staff considers it an advocacy group. Crane, a fired spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said advocacy group or not, the journal and every other member of the public has a right to public information.

Crane had previously said public information officers for other state agencies were also told not to deal with the Journal, which is owned by the John Locke Foundation.

"The name of those offices for the most part was public information offices or public affairs offices," Crane told N&O reporters today. "That means it doesn't matter who is doing the calling they deserve a call back and they deserve their information."

Crane spoke to N&O staff members today about public records and the best ways to get them from state government.

Easley told Carolina Journal editor Richard Wagner last week that he would have the newspaper removed from the do-not-call-list if the press association would write a letter vouching for the paper. Crane said that should be unnecessary. She allowed that the governor's public information office focuses on the news media, but other offices in state government are supposed to respond to the public.

Full disclosure: Crane signed an affidavit in support of a lawsuit against the governor by news organizations, including The N&O.

Update: The governor's office has directed state public information officers to treat the Carolina Journal the same as other news media, said Dan Gerlach, a senior aide to Easley.

Gov. Mike Easley says he’ll ask his press staff to start treating the John Locke Foundation’s Carolina Journal like any other news media outlet from now on.

Easley said Wednesday that he has told his senior staff and spokespeople to cooperate better with the state’s news media to get information to the public.

And Easley said he’d prod them to give equal access to the Journal, which routinely gigs him, reports Matthew Eisley.

In a meeting Easley convened at the Executive Mansion with the head of the N.C. Press Association and the top editors of The News & Observer, The Charlotte Observer, and the Carolina Journal, Journal Editor Richard Wagner asked the governor why his press office won’t respond to the publication’s information requests.

“It’s been reported that we were at the top of the do-not-call list,” Wagner said.

Perhaps coincidentally, the conservative Journal regularly publishes investigations critical of Easley, a Democrat, and other people in his administration.

Easley said his press office’s policy is not to respond to information requests from the Journal or other nonprofit advocacy groups, including its liberal counterpoint, N.C. Policy Watch.

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Gov. Mike Easley said today that he has instructed his press office and other state government spokespeople to cooperate better with news media outlets to provide information to the public.

A controversy over the deletion of government e-mail records at his office's behest is distracting his administration from its final year of work, Easley said at an informal meeting this afternoon with the executive director of the N.C. Press Association and the top editors of The News & Observer, The Charlotte Observer and The Carolina Journal.

"I've got basically nine months left in office," Easley said. "We've done a lot of good, but there's a lot more to be done. I want every day to count. I do not want to be distracted with pettiness."

Easley organized the meeting in response to criticism of his administration's handling of requests for information about the state's beleaguered mental health system, including the deletion of staff e-mails that might have been public record.

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The John Locke Foundation was on the do-not-call-back list, according to the former public affairs director for the Department of Health and Human Services.

In an interview Tuesday, the day she was fired, Debbie Crane said the governor's office told state public information officers not to return calls from the conservative think-tank.

"There are certain people you're not supposed to talk to, like if the John Locke Foundation calls, you're not supposed to return their calls," Crane said. "Basically we just sort of tried to ignore that or go a back way but you weren't supposed to return the John Locke Foundation's calls."

Gov. Mike Easley's press office has not responded to a request for comment on Crane's comment.

Crane's comments weren't a surprise to those who work for The Carolina Journal, a newspaper owned by the foundation.

"I suspected something like that was going on, but I didn't think that everyone would actuallly act that way," said Don Carrington, the newspaper's executive editor. "We have a giant hurdle to go over just to produce stories because of the way they treat us."

Carrington said state public information officers rarely answer questions from the newspaper's reporters.

Paul Chesser, a contributing editor, said public information officers are often keen on asking why a reporter wants information.

"It's none of their business why we're after something," Chesser said. "At lot of times in my experience I've found these agencies and these PIOs part of a public obstruction office rather than a public information office."

John Hood received a letter from William F. Buckley 20 years ago.

Then editor of his college newspaper, the president of the John Locke Foundation said he was inspired by the famous conservative who died earlier today.

"It was very brief but gracious and nice," Hood said of the letter. "It helped to cement my own career aspirations."

Hood credits Buckley, who is heralded as the founder of the post-World War II conservative movement, for where he is today. "I'm not sure I'd be doing what I'm doing if Bill Buckely had not blazed the trail," he said. "Buckley helped to create the post-war conservative consensus."

He also said Buckley influenced conservative organizations and magazines across the country, including in North Carolina.

"Organizations like The John Locke Foundation and publications like our Carolina Journal probably wouldn't exist in their current form if Bill Buckley had not created National Review in the 1950s," Hood said.

Hood met Buckley several times in Washington, D.C., but they were not close. Hood often writes for The National Review, the magazine founded by Buckley in 1955.

"I was shocked and saddened to hear the news today," he said of Buckley's death. "The conservative movement and American politics clearly bear his impact."

Roanoke Rapids officials have hired a Raleigh law firm to fight Randy Parton.

After a closed session Tuesday, the City Council referred questions about possible legal action to Johnny M. Loper of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.

Loper said he will be reviewing documents before helping the city determine how to run the theater and whether to end its relationship with Dolly Parton's brother.

Also Tuesday, Carolina Journal reported that the former president of a state-financed economic development partnership that recruited the Partons had an ownership stake in their company, Moonlight Bandit Productions.

It is unclear whether Rick Watson had a stake in the company when Parton signed the deal, however. (N&O) 

Gov. Mike Easley said today that he was not asked in early 2003 by House Speaker Jim Black to find a state job for the man who helped keep Black in power, Rep. Michael Decker.

Decker told Carolina Journal, a John Locke Foundation publication, that he overheard Black tell the governor in a phone conversation that Decker "may need need a job when this is over," Dan Kane reports.

The conversation took place, Decker said, just after Black held on to the speaker's job by agreeing to a power sharing arrangement with Republican Rep. Richard Morgan. Decker, a Forsyth County Republican, helped make it happen by switching parties and backing Black for speaker, deadlocking the House.

Decker told the journal that he knew it was the governor because Black handed his cellphone to Decker so the governor could thank him.

"I never had that conversation with Speaker Black," Easley said. "He never called me about Michael Decker or a job, so that's just misinformation."

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Michael Decker says he didn't ask for cash the first time.

The former state representative, who pleaded guilty to accepting a bribe in 2003 from former House Speaker Jim Black, said he first approached him about switching parties in 1997.

At his state sentencing hearing, Black, a Democrat, testified that Decker, a Republican, asked for money in return for his vote. He said he turned him down because he thought Decker was wearing a recording device.

But in a two-part interview with the Carolina Journal this week, Decker said that he only asked for the usual legislative favors.

"What I wanted was money in the budget for certain projects," he said. "It was not money for personal use or for campaign contributions."

Decker said he made the proposal because he was angry with the Republican leadership.