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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A bill that would prohibit the state auditor from investigating violations of the state ethics act passed a key Senate committee Monday afternoon.

The bill would require the state auditor to turn over possible violations of the ethics act to the N.C. State Ethics Commission. The ethics act deals with possible conflicts of interest involving officials and their duties.

A similar bill in the House is scheduled for a committee Tuesday.

Lawmakers took up the change after State Auditor Les Merritt began investigating a senator over his son's business dealings. The N.C. State Ethics Commission sees no problem in the case. Merritt disagrees.

In a news release, Merritt said Monday that two eyes are better than one.

"I believe that this legislation is unnecessary because two watchdogs, the State Auditor and the Ethics Commission are better than one when it comes to uncovering abuses in state government," Merritt said in the release.

The problem with two eyes, ethics commission officials have said, is that in the ethics law is complex and in the case of a disagreement, officials would be unsure what to do.

The bill would also require the auditor to refer potential criminal matters over to law enforcement and possible election law violations to elections officials. That would leave waste and fraud as the auditor's main areas of responsibility.

The senate bill is 1875. The house version is 2544.

N.C. State University has successfully avoided major problems with misuse of state procurement cards, State Auditor Les Merritt said today.

The auditor, who recently issued a string of blistering audits of UNC-Greensboro, N.C. Agricultural and Technical State University and Fayetteville State University, had praise for NCSU in a news release.

A review of spending card use found that NCSU's internal controls had prevented most improper charges. The review said two NCSU employees had used the cards for their own personal expenses, but the university had already detected the improper use, collected reimbursements from both workers and dismissed one of them.

"NC State should be recognized for proactively installing proper internal controls that detected the waste of State resources and recollected that money for the public’s use," Merritt said in the release.

NCSU had a total of 85,263 procurement card transactions worth $23 million, the review said.

The review is the first in a series of examinations of card use among universities and state agencies.

A bill that would prohibit the state auditor from enforcing the state's Ethics Act will move forward.

The Legislative Ethics Committee voted to have the bill filed with the understanding that it's still got some kinks to fix. The bill would designate the N.C. State Ethics Commission, created in 2007 in response to a series of scandals, as the sole entity charged with enforcing the act.

The bill has come up because State Auditor Les Merritt, a Republican, has investigated a legislator for potential ethics violations. He supports having the ability to investigate ethics violations. Ethics Commission members and staff say that the commission is best suited to the job.

Merritt's chief deputy, Kris Bailey, told the committee Tuesday that the bill could interfere with the auditor's ability to do his job. At the minimum, audits would have to carry a sentence stating that the audit might be incomplete because of the limitations placed upon his office by state law.

Figuring out how to keep the auditor from the ethics act without interfering with his other duties will be the next task for the committee, members said.

Want to know how much state and federal money made its way to local governments in North Carolina last year? The State Auditor's office has tallied up that money in a new public report, and it comes to just under $13 billion.

According to the report, about $8.8 billion of that money came from the state, and the remaining $4.1 billion from the federal government.

The auditor came up with the tally after receiving information from the state Local Government Commission and the UNC system.

A majority of the money, $8 billion, went for public education, while mental health centers received $342 million.

Chris Mears, a spokesman for the auditor's office, said the report represents the first time a state agency has pulled together a total of state and federal dollars coming into North Carolina's local governments on an annual basis.

A state auditor's review has found that the N.C. Department of Administration was not re-certifying businesses as minority-owned and women-owned, a status that gives them a better chance of winning state contracts.

A deputy director in the department's Historically Underutilized Business Office confirmed that roughly 20 businesses had lost the designation because of a computer glitch, the review said.

The review also found 60 vendors doing business with the state that qualified for HUB status but did not have it, Dan Kane reports.

Another five had the designation but shouldn't have, the review said. They had been "inactivated" by the HUB office, or had not been listed on the office's web site as HUB businesses.

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The Senate passed a bill to create more auditors.

Under the legislation, state agencies with more than $10 million annual budgets, more than 100 full-time employees or more than $10 million in annual receipts would have to hire internal auditors.

"Right now the only office of an internal auditor is in the Department of Health and Human Services," explained Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat.

The internal auditors would review the need for programs; their effectiveness, costs and justification; and major systems and controls. Their work would complement that of the state auditor, who would sit on a council that oversees the new auditors.

The bill passed unanimously and heads back to the House.