Former state Auditor Les Merritt said the N.C. State Ethics Commission has failed to keep government clean.

In an opinion piece published in the Fayetteville Observer, Merritt writes that the commission has been silent as multiple investigations focus on former Gov. Mike Easley.

However, in nearly three years of existence, the commission has done little to tackle real ethics issues in our state. Not a single resolution of note has come as a result of any Ethics Commission investigation, even though several dozen complaints have been submitted or referred. For example, the media have reported that former Gov. Mike Easley allegedly failed to disclose a seemingly inappropriate relationship on his Statement of Economic Interest, but this went undetected (or perhaps unchallenged) by the Ethics Commission.

Meanwhile, a Board of Elections investigation continues into alleged campaign finance violations by Easley, as well as a federal grand jury investigation of how his wife obtained her position (and subsequent 80 percent raise) at North Carolina State University.

None of these issues appears to have been surfaced or investigated by the Ethics Commission.

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The State Auditor's Office has had a long-standing ban on gifts to auditors.

The policy extends to all employees of the office and precludes all but a few narrow exceptions for nominal, token items that could arise out of a speech or service on a board. Gov. Beverly Perdue's executive order bans gifts to all state employees in her administration

The ban specifically precludes gifts from anyone associated with agencies or entities that are audited by the office, said Dennis Patterson, a spokesman for Auditor Beth Wood. Even a small gift to an auditor would be enough to have an audit re-assigned, he said.

"Our folks are pretty tight on it," Patterson said. "The whole idea of being an auditor is you are a totally independent third party...and I can tell you they take it very seriously."

The office also extends the state's ethics law to senior managers who might not have otherwise been covered by the law. Patterson said the office is unlikely to change its policy in light of Perdue's order.