Gov. Mike Easley inducted close associates on his last day.

The two-term Democrat awarded 15 of his staffers and Cabinet members the Order of the Long Leaf Pine on his last day in office, Jan. 9, 2009.

The list includes longtime aide Franklin Freeman, chief legal counsel Reuben Young, spokeswoman Sherri Johnson, state health director Leah Devlin and senior assistant Susan Rabon.

He also gave an award to troubled parole chief Robert Lee Guy, although it was not included in state records.

As noted previously, Easley gave the award to more than 4,000 people over eight years, a rate of more than one a day.

A list of last-day awards after the jump.

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Walter Dalton wasn't paid for acting as governor.

The lieutenant governor served in the place of Gov. Beverly Perdue while she was on a vacation out of the state last week. 

State law says he should have been paid her salary, too:

During the period that any individual serves as Acting Governor ... his compensation shall be at the rate then provided by law in the case of the Governor.

It's not much of a pay raise. The governor makes $139,590 a year and the lieutenant governor $123,198, so the difference would be $63.04 for each day he was in charge.

But Dalton did not take the extra money.

"He has not received her salary at all," said Sherri Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Office of the State Controller, which cuts pay checks to state officials. "He didn't get that, and he didn't ask for it."

She said they are not aware of any recent lieutenant governor who has received the additional pay while acting as governor. 

State employees checking their W-2 forms last week found some of the numbers out of whack.

It was another attack of the BEACON payroll system.

A box that was supposed to have numbers in it, one showing the amount of pre-tax money set aside for dependent care was blank, while a box for distributions from a retirement plan should have been blank had numbers in it, Lynn Bonner reports.

Sherri Johnson, spokeswoman for the state controller's office, said the mistakes found their way into 17 percent of employee tax forms, or about, 17,000.

The office sent notes to state agencies' human resources and payroll departments, and to employees with computer access who log their own time, saying new W-2s were being printed and delivered.

It took two employees a day to fix a "configuration switch" that was not set correctly, Sherri Johnson, spokeswoman for the state controller’s office, wrote in an email.

Johnson made a point of noting the old payroll system had its problems with W-2s. About four or five years ago, all W-2s from central payroll put “deceased” in the employee boxes, Johnson wrote, and all the forms had to be reprinted.

First lady Mary Easley is using private money to pay state Sen. Tony Rand to be her attorney.

Rand, the Senate majority leader and a Fayetteville Democrat, has been representing Easley in her dealings with state Auditor Les Merritt, a Repbulican. A spokeswoman in the governor's office said Rand is not being paid with state funds.

Merritt released a report Thursday about two trips to Europe. In 2007, Easley and an assistant went to France. A year later, Easley and a delegation of state arts officials went to Russia and Estonia. The two trips cost taxpayers a total of $110,000. Merritt found that $45,000 worth of those expenses were unreasonable.

Merritt, who is seeking re-election, was criticized Thursday for releasing the report days before the election. He said it was only because he had tried for a month to ask Easley questions. Merritt released a list of his office's attempts.

The list shows that Merritt's staff and officials in the governor's office started trying to arrange an interview on Sept. 15. After agreeding to send questions by e-mail, Rand entered the picture on Oct. 10. On Oct. 13, Rand offerred to make his client available.

By then, Rand said, Merritt didn't want the interview.

Gov. Mike Easley will try to attend an economic discussion with Barack Obama and other Democratic governors in Chicago Friday, Easley's office said Wednesday.

"The governor is planning to go, but with everything going on with the (state) budget, it's kind of up in the air," said Easley spokeswoman Sherri Johnson.

The governor and state legislators are hoping to finish negotiations on the budget before the new fiscal year begins July 1, David Ingram reports.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is hosting the event to discuss the health of state budgets and to "develop innovative solutions to the economic challenges the American people are facing every day," his campaign said.

Gov. Mike Easley's chief legal counsel today declined to comment on the letter he wrote this week saying that "absolutely no evidence" exists to support a former public affairs director's claim that the governor's communications staff directed public information officials in executive branch agencies to destroy e-mails after sending them to the governor's office.

In a brief interview, Chief Legal Counsel Reuben F. Young, declined to say whether the governor's press aides had denied telling the agency spokespeople to kill e-mails, or what he meant by saying there was no evidence it happened, reports Dan Kane.

Young repeatedly referred all questions to the governor's communications staff.

"I understand your question and I'm not giving you a hard time here," Young said. "I just want you to understand my response and that is I will refer you to the press office."

More after the jump.

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