Speaker Joe Hackney is an unusual pick for cover boy.

The Chapel Hill Democrat, a mustachioed cattle farmer and divorce lawyer, is not as good-looking as Brad Pitt, as charismatic as Will Smith or as omnipresent as Barack Obama.

But Governing magazine is not GQ, Entertainment Weekly or, um, every magazine currently in publication.

It's cover story, "Legislatures in 2009" (see what we mean?), highlights Hackney as a "squeaky clean" reformer who came to power as disgraced former Speaker Jim Black fell from grace.

Still, it says he was not the "consensus choice."

He attributes that to his cleaner-than-thou image. "When you're running for speaker," he says, "that's a help with some people and a hindrance with others." But most members recognized the chance Hackney's reputation offered them to begin rebuilding public trust. He was elected speaker after four caucus ballots.

The article notes that Hackney has grown more business-friendly as his district has shifted away from Chapel Hill and into rural Chatham County, though he remains "perhaps the leading environmentalist" in the House.

It also says he's opened up the legislative process, allowing more time for debate and study and avoiding running roughshod over the Republican minority.

When House Speaker Joe Hackney put the brakes on legislation that would have awarded legal fees to those who win public records battles against state and local governments, he went against the wishes of Democrats in a big chunk of his legislative district.

The Chatham County Democratic Party's executive committee had passed a resolution in 2007 advocating the passage of legislation that provides an automatic award of legal fees, Dan Kane reports. This was after some of its members were involved in a public records lawsuit with the Chatham County Board of Elections.

The citizens won against the board, but the judge in the case made the citizens pay all but 10 percent of their $35,000 legal bill.

"The entire burden of making sure the public records law gets enforced lies upon the citizens, and that's not fair," said Nick Meyer, a member of the Chatham Democrats executive committee.

Thursday night, the committee passed another resolution again urging lawmakers to pass "legislation requiring the award of legal costs to successful plaintiffs so as to reduce the temptation to play games with the legal process wasting the court's time and citizens' resources."

Representatives for local governments and public hospitals oppose the idea, saying it does not take into account cases in which there's a question as to whether a record's public.

The Senate unanimously passed the legislation on the first day of the session's final week, but Hackney, an Orange County Democrat, did not want it taken up in the House. He said there wasn't enough time, but he also confirmed that he does not like taking legal fee decisions out of the hands of judges.

Robert Potter was kicked out of the state House over a card game.

The Granville County lawyer served in the state House in 1826 and 1827, and then was elected to Congress in 1828. He had to step down, however, after he was convicted of assaulting two Methodist ministers.

During his three years in jail, Potter launched another campaign, and he was elected to the state House again in 1834, according to a Nov. 18, 1939, article in The State magazine.

His career didn't last long:

On Christmas night, 1834, Potter engaged in a game of cards with Carney Cotton, member of the House of Commons from Chatham County, and after suffering heavy losses he seized all the money on the table and covering Cotton with a pistol, got away with it.

Potter was expelled by a vote of 62-42 on Jan. 2, 1835. He moved to Texas, where he served as secretary of the Texas Navy and signed the state's constitution.

He was later killed by an armed mob that showed up at his house one night, but that's another state's history.

Hat Tip: Lamara Hackett 

The price of some fruits and vegetables in school lunches has doubled since the U.S. Department of Defense outsourced the work.

Produce distributor Foster-Caviness Foodservice of Colfax has added a $4.30 surcharge on each case. That's in addition to a 5.9 percent charge Defense Department purchasing agents have already added.

The food is distributed under a decade old federal program called "farm-to-school."

The program subsidizes the purchase of home-grown produce by more than 60 North Carolina school districts, including Wake, Johnston and Chatham. (N&O)