U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge says a House ethics investigation should take its course.

As one of the newest members of the House Ways and Means Committee, Etheridge will soon be working closely with Rep. Charlie Rangel, a New York Democrat who chairs in the influential committee.

The House ethics committee is investigating whether Rangel helped preserve a lucractive tax break that benefited an oil-drilling company while its CEO was pledging $1 million to a college center in his honor. Rangel has called the allegations "ridiculous."

Etheridge said he'll refrain from comment while the investigation continues.

"Normally, when it's in the Ethics committee, you kind of stay away from it until they get through with all their work," he told Dome. "Some of those charges are pretty serious if they're true and we'll probably get an answer on those in the next several months."

Should Rangel step aside in the meantime? 

"If they found out as they do the ethics work how much of it is true or if it was tied to his responsibilities as a member of Congress, then appropriate action will be taken," Etheridge said.

Will any of Andy Willis' past lobbying efforts come back to haunt him?

Not likely. As a chief lobbyist for N.C. State and the University of North Carolina system, the newly appointed legislative liaison for Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue was not in charge of too many controversial things.

The only controversial issue he lobbied for was a national biodefense facility in Butner that some residents feared could spread deadly pathogens.

As a spokesman for UNC, Willis said that security concerns were valid, but the facility would be safe, noting that Triangle-area labs have handled hazardous material for decades.

"People are going to drop test tubes," he said in a Dec. 22, 2007, article in the N&O. He compared the facility to "a safe within a 6-inch cement box within a 6-inch cement box in a submarine down in the Atlantic Ocean."

That remark may grate among opponents of the proposed facility, though it's something of a moot point now that the federal government has recommended a Kansas site instead.

In other articles, Willis has been quoted being grateful for state higher education funding, explaining why the UNC system has so many vacant jobs and noting that UNC leaders did not ask for athletic scholarships in the state budget.

An offhand remark in a Jan. 21, 2007, N&O article did draw a complaint.

"I'm not sure business will change that much," Willis said of newly instituted ethics rules. "Even though the perception is that lobbyists wine and dine people, 99 percent of the business takes place at the legislature."

A Carrboro woman criticized the quote in a letter to the editor the next week.

A family feud may be brewing between two cousins who are former members of the state Board of Transportation — Louis Sewell and Tommy Pollard.

According to the Jacksonville Daily News, the N.C. Department of Transportation is removing a traffic light that Pollard got installed 20 years ago while he was on the board, Dan Kane reports. The light caused some controversy for Pollard because he owned property at the location. A state investigation cleared him of wrongdoing, but also suggested the board needed better conflict-of-interest rules.

Pollard wrote a letter to the Daily News protesting the light's removal, and in a Daily News story published on Monday, he suggested his cousin may have had something to do with it.

"Louis Sewell has the political power and clout even today to keep the stoplight's removal on the backburner if he wanted to," Pollard told The Daily News.

Sewell told the paper he did not push for the light's removal, but he did pass along complaints about the light to the DOT.

The DOT told the paper that the light is being removed after a study in October showed it wasn't warranted. Earlier this year, the DOT had spent about $40,000 to upgrade it, the paper reported.

Sewell resigned from the board in September after The News & Observer reported that he had steered state transportation money for two projects near land that he or a son co-owns.

Pollard told the Daily News that he informed Sewell in the summer that he was backing Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory for governor. At a recent campaign event, Pollard boasted raising $50,000 for McCrory's campaign.

Sewell has been a longtime Democratic fundraiser, even though he is a registered Republican. He backed the winner in the race, Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue, a New Bern Democrat.

Sewell told the Daily News that he was not happy with Pollard's decision to support McCrory.

In the six years since the Better Government Association first rated the states for its "integrity index," North Carolina has added an ethics law for the executive branch and banned lobbyists from offering golf trips, Super Bowl tickets and other expensive perks to state lawmakers.

But the changes had little effect on North Carolina's rank, Dan Kane reports. In fact, it dropped a spot from 22nd to 23rd place in a recently released report.

The association, a Chicago-based watchdog, rates the states on three core principles — transparency, accountability and limits on campaign contributions, gifts and other perks. States that  have strong laws for freedom of information, whistleblower protection, campaign finance, open meetings and conflict-of-interest disclosures fare best.

North Carolina may have dropped a notch because the association changed its ranking system. In the 2002 index, the association rated states for limits on gifts. This time around, the association dropped the rating, saying that the loopholes many states have regarding such perks makes it hard to evaluate which states have the best practices.

That was an area in which North Carolina made significant strides after the scandals that put House Speaker Jim Black in prison.

In other areas, the index found that North Carolina ranked 40th in making information public, 19th in whistleblower protection, 14th in campaign finance accountability, 29th on open meetings and 19th on conflict of interest disclosure.

"North Carolina has come a long way, but obviously we still have a lot of work to do," said Jane Pinsky, director of the N.C. Coalition for Lobbying and Government Reform, which pushed for many of the reforms enacted in the past few years.

Sen.-elect Kay Hagan is getting to know Washington.

The Greensboro Democrat said she doesn't know yet which wooden desk she'll use in the Senate chamber, but she knows it'll be in the back right — a rather crowded area for Democrats these days.

During a tour, she looked for the desk belonging to her uncle, former Florida Sen. Lawton Chiles. It's not uncommon for such desks to be handed down, as Sen. Elizabeth Dole used the desk that belonged to her husband, Bob.

In several days of orientation, Hagan saw the electoral college counts from the disputed Jefferson-Burr race, learned about ethics rules and looked for a house to rent or buy near the Capitol.

She said she plans to keep Dole's office in Raleigh open and may hire some of her state staff as well. (N&O) 

The state Republican Party is filing a complaint with the N.C. State Ethics Commission against state Sen. Janet Cowell over allegations that she used her state office for campaign business.

A former staffer for Cowell said that she had members of her staff contact a Dell computer lobbyist to fix a campaign laptop, Mark Johnson reports.  And the manager of her campaign for state Treasurer exerted influence over her official duties to benefit her campaign.

Cowell faces Republican state Rep. Bill Daughtridge in the race for Treasurer.

State Republican Party Chairwoman Linda Daves said the incidents should give voters pause about Cowell. 

"The State Treasurer is entrusted with state pensions and must have integrity that is beyond reproach," Daves said.

Cowell dismissed the claims as a last-minute, partisan attack.

"I am shocked and disappointed that a disgruntled former employee who resigned half a year ago would make unfounded and untrue allegations three days before an election. These unfounded and untrue allegations are now being used in a desperate, last minute partisan attack," she said in a statement. "We have looked into the matter and feel confident that everything possible was done to ensure that there was a clear separation between the campaign and Senate staffs."

Pat McCrory wants investigative grand juries to investigate political corruption.

The Charlotte mayor and Republican nominee for governor released a slate of proposals designed to curb corruption. McCrory's announcement sought to tie recent scandals that have involved prominent Democrats to Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, the Democratic nominee for governor.

McCrory said in the news release that federal prosecutors have had more success in bringing corruption charges because they can force witnesses to testify to grand juries.

"We must clean up our own state government and not continue to depend on federal courts to do our work," McCrory said in a news release.

In state courts, grand juries typically hear evidence presented by law enforcement officials and decide whether to a case should proceed. McCrory's proposal would give state and Wake County prosecutors the ability to call grand juries that could investigate allegations of corruption.

Attorney General Roy Cooper has supported allowing investigative grand juries and proposals to allow them have died in the legislature.

More proposals after the jump.

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Louis Sewell, the Jacksonville businessman who stepped down from the state Board of Transportation last week, told his hometown newspaper that his resignation puts an end to a State Ethics Commission probe his steering public money to two transportation projects near properties that he or his son co-owned.

The Jacksonville Daily News reported Friday that Sewell said "he has been assured the N.C. State Ethics Commission will not investigate his decisions while on the BOT now that he has resigned," Dan Kane reports.

Ethics commission officials could not be reached by the Daily News or Dome, and typically they do not comment on investigations.

But Walker Reagan, the legislative staff attorney who crafted the ethics law, said unless Sewell is the subject of a criminal investigation, there's no reason for the commission to be digging into a possible conflict of interest. That's because worst civil sanction that can be handed down to a public official who runs afoul of the ethics law is removal from that position.

"You can't do anything more than get him out of office, and he already is out of office," Reagan said.

The ethics law, which took effect Jan. 1, 2007, gives the commission up to a year after a public official leaves office to conduct a criminal investigation. But even there, Sewell's case might not apply because his public actions involving his personal property took place from 2004 to early 2006.

State Ethics Commission Chairman Robert Farmer blasted State Auditor Les Merritt Friday, accusing him of leveling "bogus and spurious allegations" in an investigation that is a "total sham."

Farmer, speaking at the start of a commission meeting, lambasted Merritt's inquiry into the ethics commission's dismissal of an employee over an incident involving the lawyer for Lieutenant Gov. Beverly Perdue reviewing Perdue's file, Mark Johnson reports.

Farmer charged that Merritt released a recent report on his investigation without waiting for a pending court ruling on a lawsuit filed by the commission over that same probe, with Merritt saying he is exempt from such interference.

"In other words, he is above the law," Farmer said.

He also accused Merritt of violating government accounting standards, his own duties, his own confidentiality rules and the ethics act.

"Now he thumbs his nose at a court of law," said Farmer, a former judge, "by proceeding to file a report of an investigation that is the very subject of a lawsuit."

The commission later entered closed session to discuss the lawsuit with their lawyer.

State Auditor Les Merritt says an ethics probe is being blocked.

On Thursday, he released an "interim report" accusing the State Ethics Commission of unlawfully blocking his staff's investigation into possible preferential treatment of Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue.

The report also backed findings by two other state agencies that found the commission lacked clear administrative policies and was strugling to perform its tasks.

Merritt, a Republican seeking re-election, said in a statement that his staff's report "paints a picture of potential destruction of evidence. I say 'potential' because the Commission is hiding facts from the public that may implicate or exonerate their past actions."

The investigation stems from a complaint from an office assistant who noted that a staffer for Perdue was allowed to review records alone in an office with the door closed. She was later fired after the N&O asked about the log. (N&O)