House Speaker Joe Hackney says he is willing to take another run at a bill that would award legal fees to those who win in public records lawsuits.

Open government types and news organizations sometimes complain that the expense of successfully suing a governmental body or agency over public records disputes discourages such lawsuits. They say that automatically awarding legal fees would give government officials pause before restricting the public's access to records. 

A bill that would automatically award fees in such cases sailed through the Senate but died in the House last session. Bill Holmes, a spokesman for Hackney, said the Speaker is interested in passing a bill that would allow automatic recovery of costs as long as it wouldn't strip all discretion away from judges.

"He just wants to make sure the fees are reasonable," Holmes said. "There's no other area of law in North Carolina that allows for automatic recovery of fees."

The 2010 Senate race is heating up.

With Democrats coming off one of their best election cycles ever, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr already has two potential opponents: Attorney General Roy Cooper and U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler (and maybe outgoing state Treasurer Richard Moore).

To prepare, Burr has stepped up his press efforts in recent weeks.

And today, his office unveiled a revamped official Web site that features a blog, a podcast and video. 
The site has been redesigned and streamlined and is, to Dome's eyes, more attractive than the usual Senate Web page.

Meantime, MMI Marketing, a Raleigh public relations firm, has been sending Dome lengthy e-mails about Cooper's years-long fight against a lawsuit filed by his 2000 Republican opponent, Dan Boyce. 

"It will be interesting to see if N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper will argue something to the effect that he is above the law in his own lawsuit when it goes to trial on May 18, 2009," reads a typical sentence from an e-mail sent yesterday.

Burr's office has no connection to the Cooper lawsuit, but it is a sign that some Republicans are keenly interested in the state attorney general.

Janet Cowell says the treasurer's legal authority should be clarified.

The Democratic state treasurer-elect said she believes the office should have the authority to hire its own attorneys to lead class action lawsuits, such as one proposed by Treasurer Richard Moore against mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

North Carolina's attempt to play a lead role in that suit was rejected by a judge after Attorney General Roy Cooper objected, saying that his office should handle the lawsuit.

Cowell told Dome that was unfortunate. She hopes the legislature will clarify the legal role of the treasurer and she pledged to work with Cooper's office to come up with a list of outside law firms approved by both offices that could be hired for such suits.

"Clearly, as treasurer I would like to have that kind of authority and know I've got the full set of tools at my disposal to go after losses," she said. 

She added that she would still prefer the matter be resolved, even if the legislature stopped short of giving the treasurer the full legal authority she prefers.

"I think that's a question worthy of clarification," she said. 

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says campaign donors could sue John Edwards.

Buffett, an Barack Obama supporter, speaking to CNBC anchor Becky Quick on Friday said that Edwards was misleading donors by assuring them there was no truth to a tabloid report that he had an affair. Edwards has acknowledged having an affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter.

He has a responsibility to the donors who sent in small amounts, Buffett said.

They sent it in while they were being misled by the person who was soliciting the money from them. You know, I think if I were Edwards, I might give up a haircut or two and refund at least, you know the people that gave the $50 or $100, $200 dollar items because if they had known the facts, they wouldn't have sent him the money and he was the guy that didn't give them the facts. I mean he knew that in effect he would not be elected president.

Buffett goes on to say that a class action lawsuit by donors might have a chance of success, although he's heard no rumblings of such a lawsuit.

"I've seen a lot of class action suits with less to it than this particular case," Buffett said. "The facts are clear. He solicited money and he wasn't telling the truth to people he was soliciting it from."

Hat Tip: American Thinker 

State Sen. Kay Hagan was not very bipartisan in her second term.

With the Democratic Senate nominee touting her bipartisanship in the legislature, Dome has been taking a closer look at the number of Republicans who signed on to her bills.

In the 2001-02 session, the Greensboro Democrat was the primary sponsor of 29 bills. Of them, 14 had no cosponsors, five had only Democratic cosponsors and 10 had Republican cosponsors.

Again, a few of the bills had more than one Republican cosponsor. Overall, her 74 cosponsors included 61 Democrats and 13 Republicans, or about a four-to-one ratio.

The most frequent Republican cosponsor was Sen. Robert G. Shaw, also of Greensboro. He signed on to four Hagan bills on local issues: UNC-Greensboro's parking authority, helping the High Point furniture market, giving the city of Greensboro more roads jurisdiction, and funds for a business court.

Other bills that attracted GOP support: suspending driver's licenses for stealing gas, teaching financial literacy in school, making changes to financial oversight of local housing authorities, limiting secrecy orders in civil cases, amending domestic violence laws, and revising laws on electronic transactions.

Previously: Cosponsors in 2003-04, 2005-06 and 2007-08.

The head of a state workers' group said claims of bribery are "crazy allegations."

Dana Cope, president of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, told Dome after a hearing today that he was involved in an offer by attorney Tom Harris to drop a public records lawsuit if state Treasurer Richard Moore would back a bill.

He said that the records request was directly related to the bill, which would transfer the treasurer's role in managing the state pension fund to a board of trustees.

"The only reason why we sought the public information request is to make an independent determination is there a pay-for-play going on," he said. "If that is true, that would help us obtain a statutory change that we filed last legislative session in order to reform the system like every other state in the country."

He said Moore's attorney, Kieran Shanahan, was trying to "take the public's eye off the ball."

"Shanahan shenanigans are in play here," he said.

Judge Jim Hardin did not make a ruling on the allegation or the motion to dismiss the case today.

An attorney for Richard Moore said a state worker's lawsuit was ironic.

After a hearing in Wake County Superior Court today, Raleigh attorney Kieran Shanahan said that the State Employees Association of North Carolina originally filed a public records lawsuit because it wanted to see if there was any evidence that Moore had improper dealings with pension fund managers.

But he argued that SEANC's proposal to drop the lawsuit was itself improper.

"They're claiming they started the case because somehow they're protecting against a quid pro quo, and yet they unlawfully have suggested a quid pro quo for a settlement," he told Dome.

Shanahan, a prominent Raleigh Republican, went on to attack SEANC's recent decision to affiliate with the national Service Employees International Union.

"The organization is in trouble; now they've associated with a union," he said. "Those aren't North Carolina values at all."

As for the lawsuit, Shanahan argued that Moore not only answered SEANC's request for public records, but gave them "special treatment," including a personal 90-minute presentation on the records.

How does a state workers' group pronounce its name?

At a court hearing this morning, an attorney for the State Employees Association of North Carolina took a bit of offense at a rival lawyer's pronunciation.

The group typically goes by its acronym, SEANC.

But Raleigh attorney Kieran Shanahan, a former City Council member and prominent Republican representing state Treasurer Richard Moore in a lawsuit with SEANC, repeatedly pronounced the group's name SEE-nack.

When SEANC attorney Tom Harris had a chance to speak before the judge, he corrected Shanahan.

"The State Employees Association — by the way we pronounce it SEE-nick — has long been a supporter of Treasurer Richard Moore," he said.

Update: After the hearing, Shanahan said he tries to pronounce the group's name correctly.

"I pronounce it SEE-nick," he told Dome. "It was a bad scene in court for them, however you pronounce it." 

An attorney for a state workers' group said he will not defend himself today.

As a lawyer for the State Employees Association of North Carolina, Tom Harris proposed dropping a public records lawsuit against state Treasurer Richard Moore if Moore would back a bill SEANC supports.

In a hearing on the suit in Wake County Superior Court today, Harris brought an outside attorney and said he would not talk much about his own actions yet.

"If this case should mushroom into a criminal proceeding or a bar hearing, I would like to defend myself in that context," he said.

However, Harris said he had a different take on SEANC's settlement offer. 

An attorney for a state workers' group said a proposal to drop a lawsuit was not bribery.

At a hearing in Wake County Superior Court this morning, John K. Wiles argued that an attorney for the State Employees Association of North Carolina was not trying to bribe an attorney for Richard Moore when he said it would drop a lawsuit if Moore backed a bill.

Wiles argued that the proposal was standard "political bargaining." He said that kind of back-and-forth is "goes on all the time" in a democracy.

"It's messy, but we happen to think it's the best way to run a country," he said. "It's a lot better than what's going on in Iraq, where people shoot each other to settle things."

Wiles said the offer was not a bribe, since Moore's support of the bill would not be part of his "official duties" as state treasurer. He also argued that while such support would not have been a likely outcome of the trial, it was still a legitimate bargaining chip.

"It's simply a bargain for resolution in a civil lawsuit," he said. "Lawsuits are settled all the time on terms that neither party could have gotten if they had pursued the lawsuit all the way to final judgment."