Jack Betts says Mike Easley made his problems worse.

On his This Old State blog, the Charlotte Observer editor writes that the governor mishandled his response to a series of stories on mental health reform in the News & Observer, especially at a recent press conference.

It was a bad setup from the start, and resulted in the governor avoiding follow-up questions from writers who authored the series — and who seemed to know more about what was going on than the governor. And when it ended after a relatively few questions, reporters who staked out a building exit hoping to get in more questions found that the governor had ducked out another way and was gone.

Betts says firing spokeswoman Debbie Crane was also a miscalculation — "a symbol of a botched process start to finish."

Debbie Crane has been asked to be the luncheon speaker at the N.C. Open Government Coalition's Sunshine Week festivities at Elon University on March 20.

Rick Willis, News 14 Carolina's news director for its Raleigh newsroom, said Crane will speak on public records and access to public officials at the luncheon, reports Dan Kane. She'll take questions afterward, said Willis, who is a member of the coalition's board.

Crane, who was fired this week as public affairs director for the state Department of Health and Human Services, has shaken up the Capitol with her assertion that Gov. Mike Easley's press office had repeatedly told executive branch public information officers to kill e-mails after they sent them to the governor's office.

Easley's legal counsel said there's no evidence that happened, and public information officers have told The News & Observer they were unaware of such a directive.

Crane was fired Tuesday in the fallout over The News & Observer's investigation into the failings of the state's mental health system. She claims she was fired for doing her job and helping The N&O gather information for the series; Easley's staff claims she hindered reporters from getting information.

Willis said he has invited the governor's office to attend. But he said he is not seeking a debate.

Debbie Crane rejected an order to lie to a reporter in 2003.

According to a story by veteran N&O reporter Pat Stith today, he met with Crane and a top staffer at the state Department of Health and Human Services five years ago on a story.

A source had tipped Stith that the department had mistakenly sent Medicaid payments worth $200 million to hospitals that did not qualify and would now have to repay the money.

At first, the official, Gary Fuquay, said he did not have the information. Then, Crane took Stith aside and said the governor's office had ordered him to lie. She said they would not and told Fuquay to give Stith the information.

Crane's admission about the governor's office was off the record then. But she was fired Tuesday by Gov. Mike Easley, who, she said, sent word to DHHS Secretary Dempsey Benton that he had "lost confidence" in her. I now have Crane's permission to tell the story.

Fuquay, now retired, said whatever directions he had been given came from Crane. 

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."

A former public affairs director said Gov. Mike Easley's office ordered e-mail sent to him destroyed.

Debbie Crane, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, was fired Tuesday amid the fallout from an N&O investigation of the state's mental health system, Dan Kane reports.

"The governor's office, press office, to bypass the public records laws, they ask the second you e-mail them anything, to kill it, then kill it again out of your trash so it doesn't exist," she said. "That's what they tell all the public affairs people, that they don't want to create any public records."

Seth Effron, a spokesman for Easley, denied the allegation and said that Crane was "dishonest, untruthful and insubordinate" and hindered reporters from getting information from the department.

If Crane's contention is true, it would be a violation of the state's public records law, said Amanda Martin, a press attorney for the N.C. Press Association.

Several public information officers in state agencies said they had not been told to delete e-mail, but Ernie Seneca, chief spokesman for the Department of Transportation, said he deletes all of his e-mails at the end of the day.

N&O reporters have made numerous requests for e-mail to the governor's office only to be told no such records exist.

Correction: An earlier version of this post included an incorrect word.