The N.C. Board of Funeral Service didn't keep minutes of its closed sessions, as required by state law.

The State Auditor's office, acting on a tip, reviewed five years of board minutes and found that typed minutes were not kept for closed sessions, in violation of the state's open meetings law. The board regulates the funeral business.

Executive Director Paul Harris told auditors that he was aware that typed minutes were required to be kept for closed meetings. The current and previous three secretaries took notes of closed sessions, but those notes had never been turned into minutes and could not be located, according to the auditor's office.

Board President Larry Andrews promised to create minutes for future meetings and to keep notes taken during those meetings in a special file.

The state auditor's office says an employee asked for a voluntary layoff, changed his mind and then filed suit because he fears a layoff.

Attorneys representing the auditor filed a motion Thursday to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Darryl Black, an assistant state auditor who says his bosses have targeted him because his is a Republican. 

Black claimed in his suit that his bosses approached him about a buyout and mentioned that involuntary layoffs were impending, which Black took to mean that his days at the office were numbered. A spokesman for Auditor Beth Wood said the office has a different interpretation how talk started about the buyout, known in state government as a Reduction in Force or RIF.

"This fella came to us and asked for a voluntary RIF, which involves us paying severance pay among other things and health benefits and we agreed to that and go back to him with the paperwork, and all of a sudden he's changed his mind," said Dennis Patterson, a spokesman for the office. "And now we're being sued for trying to accommodate him."

Patterson said that under Republican Auditor Les Merritt, Black had quit his job and returned a day later. He was hired back with the understanding that he would find a new job.

"We inherited this fellow," Patterson said. "Party registration is simply not a factor. It's competence."

Black's attorney, Michael C. Byrne of Raleigh, said "They are free to characterize their actions how they wish and we look forward to seeing how they are characterized under oath in a court of law."

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An assistant auditor has sued the state, claiming that his bosses are going after him because he is a Republican.

Darryl Black sued the Office of the State Auditor, saying that after Democratic Auditor Beth Wood was elected, supervisors in her office began pressuring him to take a voluntary layoff because he is a Republican.

A spokesman for Wood and the Auditor's Office said he could not comment on the lawsuit because it involved personnel issues.

Prior to 2007, Black says in the lawsuit, he received good or even outstanding performance reviews. In 2008, before the most recent election for auditor, Black wrote letters published in The News & Observer. He did not identify himself as a state employee and the issues he wrote about were not connected to his duties as an auditor.

Black previously had run for the legislature as a Republican and he believed his managers knew of his political leanings.

More after the jump.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the administrative employee who had previously been let go. The employee is a 23-year veteran of the office, not a 23-year-old. Dome regrets the error.

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State Auditor Beth Wood today released a January audit that said the salary N.C. State University paid to then-First Lady Mary Easley was excessive and should have been reduced by nearly $90,000.

But Wood, in a follow-up "interim report" said the January audit was incomplete and that more investigation was needed, reports Dan Kane. She noted that NCSU had provided additional information to justify the $170,000 salary. The January audit recommended that the salary be reduced to $79,000 and that Easley's five-year contract should be replaced by a two-year contract.

Mary Easley's salary, and her hiring at NCSU, have become part of wide-ranging state and federal investigations into perks given to former Gov. Mike Easley and his family.

Most state agencies fall far short in providing taxpayers with access to information about their work, according to a new survey of transparency in government.

The John Locke Foundation this week unveiled nctranparency.com, an ongoing look at how state and local agencies in terms of making information available to the public.

Most of the 22 state agencies that were graded on the site were given a "D" or an "F". The state Department of Public Instruction earned the highest grade - a "C."

The foundation graded agencies on information that they make readily available online. Joseph Coletti, a fiscal analyst for the foundation, said in a release that grades were weighted to "reflect access to the most important information." Budget information, for example, was given greater weight.

DPI earned the highest grade among state agencies by making available its budget, contracts, the salaries of employees by job code, the salaries of top employees, and other information.

The Office of State Auditor, the state community college system, the Office of the State Controller and others received an "F" because they do not make much of that and other information available online, according to the site.

Cabinet members oversee more money than the Council of State.

A review of the 2007-08 budgets for the 10 appointed members of the governor's Cabinet show that they typically oversee larger budgets than the 10 statewide elected officials.

Only the departments of Public Instruction, Justice and Agriculture come close, and the superintendent of public instruction does not have similar authority over that department as a Cabinet official.

The smallest Cabinet budget was larger than all but three of the Council of State budgets.

Public Instruction: $9.5 billion

Justice: $121.7 million

Agriculture: $98.4 million

Treasurer: $38.5 million

Insurance: $36.2 million

Labor: $25.3 million

Auditor: $15.9 million

Secretary of State: $11.9 million

Governor: $6.7 million

Lieutenant Governor: $914,122

As before, the figures include money received from both state and federal sources. As a major player in the state budget, it goes without saying that the governor has more authority over state spending than these numbers indicate.

The revised numbers for 2008-09 are not yet available.

A state audit has questioned N.C. A&T State University's use of state procurement cards to buy suits for student leaders to wear at homecoming festivities.

The audit, released today by State Auditor Les Merritt, questioned the purchase of $1,672 for the suits, along with two cases of gift and gift card purchases without proper documentation and credit card finance charges of $755. It also found that N.C. A&T violated policy when it made purchases to support travel to the Jena Six Rally last year in Louisiana.

University officials defended some of the purchases, saying the $206 spent for student bus travel to the rally was for an emergency first aid kit. They also said the student government association had the right to charge clothing for special occasions and pageants within its student fee budget, which is reviewed by the student senate.

In a news release, Merritt said: "NC A&T has a good system of internal controls in place. However, there is clearly room for improvement in controlling [procurement card] purchases to prevent opportunities of future abuse."

A former State Ethics Commission employee who was fired after raising concerns about possible preferential treatment to Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue filed a whistleblower lawsuit in state Superior Court today.

Amanda Thaxton, an office assistant, said the firing has hit her hard financially and she wants a judge to reinstate her immediately, Dan Kane reports. She said in the suit that she is also seeking an award of triple damages — as the state's whistleblower law allows — plus legal fees for being fired for reporting her concerns to the Office of the State Auditor and to the State Personnel Commission.

"This was this girl's first job out of college," said her lawyer, Michael C. Byrne of Raleigh. "She comes in from Elon University, gets a job from the state and then is abruptly fired for cooperating and engaging in protected activity. That's just not right."

Perry Newson, the commission's executive director, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. He has said that Thaxton, 24, was not fired in retaliation.

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A legal battle involving the State Ethics Commission and the Office of State Auditor could end up costing taxpayers $40,000.

The N.C. Attorney General's Office has determined that it has a conflict in representing either party in a lawsuit the commission filed earlier this month, reports Dan Kane.

So both sides are hiring private lawyers to handle the matter. Gov. Mike Easley authorized an initial cap of $20,000 for each party.

Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, said chief deputy Grayson Kelley had unsuccessfully sought to mediate the dispute.

The battle is over whether the commission has to comply with the auditor's investigation into an allegation of preferential treatment for Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, the Democratic nominee for governor. A Perdue aide visited the commission's office to review Perdue's financial disclosure statements and was allowed to look at them alone in a vacant office.

Since then, a log noting the arrangement was altered and the employee who made the notation has been fired. Ethics commission officials say nothing was improper in the visit and the employee was not fired as a result of the notation.

A bill that would prevent the state auditor from investigating potential ethics violations cleared a House vote Thursday and is nearing final passage.

The bill, which designates the N.C. State Ethics Commission as the sole authority on ethics in North Carolina, has already cleared the Senate.

The bill came up after state Auditor Les Merritt began examining the ethics filings of Sen. Martin Nesbitt, an Asheville Democrat. Merritt and the commission disagreed on whether Nesbitt needed to report the business dealings of his adult son.

The bill, which must still have one more vote before the House, requires the auditor to refer potential violations of the ethics act to the commission. He or she must refer potential violations of elections laws to the Board of Elections and potential criminal violations to the SBI or a district attorney.

That would leave fraud, waste of government resources and mismanagement in the auditor's jurisdiction. Debate on the House floor Thursday broke into two positions: those who thought the law was simply a clarification and those who believed the law was unnecessary.

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