The N.C. State Board of Cosmetic Art Examiners gave business to an insurance company co-owned by a former board member.

Earl Johnson left the board after two terms in late 2008. In January 2009, the board began looking for a new health insurance plan for its employees as part of an effort to meet state mandated spending cuts required of all agencies.

The eventual contract went to a plan put together by Johnson's company. Johnson is a third cousin to Ray Mitchell Jr., chairman of the cosmetic board.

Mitchell said the business went to the lowest of three bidders and the decision had nothing to do with his relationship to Johnson.

"The other side to that story is it saved the state agency a lot of money," Mitchell said.

Johnson, who owns a 20 percent stake in Triangle Insurance Group, said he was not involved in the deal and never discussed it with Mitchell.

Johnson said the deal was "an arms-length transaction, nothing to do with favoritism, nothing to do with nepotism."

Board records show the plan the board selected was $382 cheaper per month than a comparable plan from another company.

The insurance deal comes amid revelations that the board asked the legislature to change the rules on its executive director, who was challenging his termination. Mitchell said there is no reason to be concerned about the insurance deal.

"The appearance is probably there, but it was all discussed openly and it was not something behind the scenes and it was all really a matter of public record," Mitchell said.

It's clear that in the middle of an employment dispute with its former executive director, members of the N.C. State Board of Cosmetic Art Examiners went to the legislature to get the rules changed.

The board successfully lobbied lawmakers to stick a sentence into an unrelated bill. The change would mean that the protections that Doug Van Essen was using to challenge his termination would no longer apply. In other words, if he wins his job back, he could get fired again without recourse.

What isn't as clear, is who led the charge for the board.

At a hearing over Van Essen's case, Board chairman Ray Mitchell Jr. said it was board member Rita Harris, a lobbyist for the Commerce Department and a licensed cosmetologist.

"Who on behalf of the board decided to approve presenting this amendment?" Van Essen's attorney, Faith Herndon, asked Mitchell at the hearing.

"I would say Rita Harris," Mitchell said.

Harris disagreed when reached by Dome.

"I don't know that I was the person who did that," said Harris. "I think Ray [Mitchell] was really in charge of doing that and I think he was at the meetings where that happened if I recall."

Harris hung up the phone in the middle of an interview, saying Mitchell needed to answer questions about the Van Essen case.

More after the jump.

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* Doug Van Essen might win back his job in state government.

But he wouldn't be surprised if he is fired again the moment he returns to work.

That's because the state legislature, in the final hours of its session this year, voted in favor of a bill that was in name about the regulation of hair braiding.

In fact, the bill included a little-noticed section that dealt with Van Essen's job at the N.C. State Board of Cosmetic Art Examiners. It gave the board the authority to fire him again if an administrative law judge determines that the board was out of bounds when it fired him the first time.

The bill also offered a glimpse into the political nature of working for state government, even in an obscure agency whose mission is to make sure that 13,000 salons and spas in North Carolina adhere to sanitation standards and that barbers, stylists, manicurists and cosmetologists have the training they need to keep their clients safe as well as pretty. (N&O)

* In a book proposal, former John Edwards aide Andrew Young says that he assisted Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter by setting up private meetings. He wrote that Edwards once calmed an anxious Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band. (NYT)