Forbes magazine named North Carolina the third best state for business in 2006 and 2007.

In an annual special report called Top States for Business, the business magazine ranked states on business costs, labor costs, regulatory environment, economic climate, growth prospects and quality of life. 

In 2007, North Carolina did particularly well on business costs, regulations and growth prospects. Overall, it came in third, after Virginia and Utah.

The magazine had this to say:

Our second runner-up was North Carolina, whose capital, Raleigh, is our best metro area for business and careers. North Carolina has the second-lowest labor costs in the country (18% below the national average), and incomes are projected to increase 3.8% annually over the next five years, the second-fastest rate in the country. 

Democratic Senate candidate Kay Hagan cited the Forbes piece in a recent TV ad. 

Why did Beverly Perdue beat Richard Moore?

In a primary election as unusual as this one, it's dangerous to get too confident when drawing conclusions, but here are a few educated guesses about how Perdue won the primary today.

She was the frontrunner. As a two-term lieutenant governor and longtime legislator with a bevy of endorsements from big groups, Perdue was the favorite from the start and Moore never managed to knock her down.

She had good issues. Perdue had a good portfolio on both soft issues (health care, education) and hard issues (the military). Moore's issues were more national (climate change, Wall Street reform) and wonky (the line-item veto, transportation reform).

She benefited from high turnout. Perdue had strong support among women and black voters, two groups that were energized by the unusually competitive presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

She went positive. Perdue and Moore both ran nasty campaigns through the fall, but Perdue went positive just as most voters started paying attention. That endeared her to Obama's "change" voters, won points for gutsiness and made Moore's attacks look bad.

She had fewer enemies. Moore manages the state pension fund? State employees sue him. Moore crusades on Wall Street? Forbes magazine attacks his campaign funding. Moore makes his case on education? The N.C. Association of Educators attacks him.

Moore never succeeded in opening any daylight between his campaign and Perdue's. When he endorsed Obama, she endorsed Obama. When he called for raising the minimum wage, opposed coal plants at Cliffside, etc. etc., so did she.

With the wind at her back from turnout, endorsements and expectations, Perdue managed to stay in the lead throughout the primary despite early missteps.

The N.C. Association of Educators and the National Education Association have sent a mailer attacking Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Moore, Ben Niolet reports.

What the mailer says: "Important message for NCAE retirees. Just the facts: Has Richard Moore really managed our pension fund responsibly? Here are the facts. Fact: Hardworking teachers and state employees regularly contribute money to the pension fund creating a large surplus that Richard Moore inherited when he became State Treasurer. However, in the last four years, Moore has lagged behind his peers in pension management performance. Fact: Richard Moore has not provided the General Assembly with state-mandated reports detailing the performance of the money managers he hires. When asked for the reports, Moore said they were unavailable. Fact: Richard Moore supported cuts to federal entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and military retirement."

The background: Teachers and other state and local employees contribute 6 percent of their paychecks to the state pension fund, a $77 billion fund that Moore oversees. In 2006, employee contributions were $745 million, according to the Treasurer's Office.

The pension fund earned $5.7 billion that year on its investments and had to pay $2.7 billion in benefits. So the employees' contributions would not have even covered the amount the fund owed retirees that year.

The claim that Moore has lagged behind in pension management is based on information compiled by Wilshire Associates, an investment firm. The state's pension fund has not always done as well as others. For example, in 2007, the fund had an 8.3 percent return rate, which was lower than the median rate of 8.7 percent for funds of similar size. Moore has said his goal as treasurer is steady income and not home-run investments.

The fund is required by law to invest 37 percent of its assets in fixed-income investments, which offer slow but steady growth, a Moore spokeswoman said. The chart included on the mailer shows that in one of the four years, the state pension fund performed the same as other state pension systems.

The claim that Moore has not provided reports to the legislature was based on a line from a March article in Forbes magazine that was harshly critical of Moore. According to Moore's office and the legislature's Fiscal Research Division, Moore's office has been in compliance with its reporting requirements. The division was able to provide copies of some of those reports Wednesday. A year's worth of those reports are available on the treasurer's Web site.

The claim about Moore supporting cuts to entitlement programs is based on a response by Moore to a News & Observer questionnaire when Moore ran for Congress in 1994. The newspaper asked, "The 10 largest entitlement programs are Social Security, Medicare, deposit insurance, Medicaid, federal civilian retirement, unemployment compensation, federal military retirement, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Which, if any, of those programs, would you support cutting to help reduce the federal budget deficit?"

He answered: "I think that I would support on a case by case basis cuts in any and all of those programs. If the way those programs were implemented does not make common sense and are not achieving the goals that they were specifically set up for, they should be changed. As an example, food stamps do not seem to be achieving — at least to a certain percentage of our population — the goals they were set up for. As a former federal prosecutor, I know there is a tremendous amount of fraud. In today's computerization, the concept of a coupon or a stamp may be obsolete and could result in tremendous cost savings."

Is the ad accurate? Not entirely. Employee contributions are a relatively small fraction of what the pension fund earns and did not create a surplus in the fund. In three of the past four years, the pension fund has not performed as well as other similarly sized funds. The claim that Moore has not provided state-mandated reports is false. And in 1994, he did say he supported cuts to entitlement programs if those programs were not working.

The State Employees Association of North Carolina has sued state Treasurer Richard Moore over a public records battle.

In March, the association, which represents 55,000 state employees, filed a records request with Moore's office in the wake of a Forbes magazine article that highlighted Moore's heavy campaign contributions from investment managers that did business with the state's pension fund, which Moore oversees.

The association was seeking, among other things, records detailing who was managing the state's money. The association received some, but not all of what it requested, Ben Niolet reports.

A spokeswoman for Moore said in a recent interview she considered the matter closed, although the association had still not received records detailing how much money the treasurer's office spent on legal advice in its dealings with Forbes magazine.

Then, in October, the association renewed and expanded its records request.

The lawsuit, filed Friday morning is seeking a judge's order that would require Moore to turn over records. It is also asking a judge to force Moore's office to pay for legal and attorney fees.

Update: Sara Lang, a spokeswoman for Moore released a written response to the lawsuit.

"The Department of State Treasurer has followed the spirit, the intent and the letter of the public records law and welcomes a judge’s ruling to that point. We have provided nearly 900 pages of documents to SEANC, and Treasurer Moore stood before the group to personally answer their questions. We have worked diligently to fulfill these complicated, complex and often vague requests. It is disappointing that SEANC leadership would attempt to scare the 820,000 police, firefighters and teachers in the pension fund by calling into question the security of what the Wall Street Journal has called the second best public pension fund in America. It seems this lawsuit has more to do with political games than public information."