Randy Parton pulled into debate

Everyone is pointing their finger at everyone else. That is how these things go. Perdue points at Moore who points at the City of Roanoke Rapids who points at Parton and now the Scotts. Jones wants it off him so he points to Moore. Now Perdue can point at Betts. Bottom line. Can we possibly imagine how many of these deals - consultants, fundraising, bad investments - there are going on in NC right now? Probably too many to count.

Moore is right - Board of Transportation and the entire department needs to be cleaned up and removed from politics. Has Betts not learned that emails end up in the newspaper? Wonder who all he has raised money from for Perdue?

Roanoke Rapids needs to clean up the situation and put the theatre to use. Did anyone really think people flying down I-95 would stop for a few days at the monstracity that rises out of the flatlands? Scotland Neck, Rocky Mount were all trying to get spin-offs from this deal. What do they have going on and who was involved with projects there?

Perdue's campaign pushed a Roanoke Rapids city official to raise $20,000 for her campaign from Parton.

Perdue said that in December her campaign began telling fundraisers and staffers to steer clear of contributions from people connected to the theater.

She is wrong to attack Moore

My reply is above, but as to your P. S., yes, I think Joines is implying that he was duped. That's why he is talking about not having information that is not traditionally provided and that he didn't ask for. The state does the feasibility study for the state's purposes, not at the behest of the local government and not as any expected contribution to the local government's decision making process. For example, when the General Assembly takes a request from the local governments for a given local bill, and the expenditure of money is involved, a fiscal study is conducted. The fiscal study is for the use by the members of the committee who are hearing the bill. They state doesn't as a matter of routine forward that fiscal study back to the county commissioners before the committee members vote on that bill. The General Assembly treats the local government as though it were a big boy and it is assumed that the local government has some inkling of what it is asking for. However, it is a public document and is readily available to any commissioner who would like to see it.

This issue doesn't cut both ways in any sense. The feasibility study is a routine part of these kinds of requests. The COMMISSION is the body making the request, assuring the Sec. of State that this is a good idea and that it can be done. They are the ones who would have supplied the Secretary's office with all the reasons supporting its feasibility.

The only reason the Secretary's Office would have for offering that study would be as a preface to denying the request. In fact, it would have been the local government's responsibility to determine for itself whether it could do what it was assuring the state it could do. Had the state said, "Hey, you know, this might not be in your best of all possible worlds interests," the local government would rightly have objected that it didn't freakin' ask the state for the state's opinion as to whether it was a brilliant move. All it was asking from the state was to certify that it was DO-ABLE.

And that's what else is so ridiculous about the implication that the study was withheld. According to the feasibility study, YES, the local government COULD do what it said it could do.

Again, to go back to the N&O report, local governments have not, historically or as a matter of routine or common practice used the state's feasibility study as a tool for
determining whether they wanted to proceed with a project they were proposing. THEY were the ones selling the idea!

So why suddenly is it the Secretary's fault when this process was consistent with every other instance in which the local government has made this kind of request?

Geez. Had the Secretary made the radical move of intervening and saying "Hold on, Roanoke Rapids, BIG BROTHER is going to step in and tell you you don't know what the hell you're doing," we'd have heard a big hullaballoo about how Roanoke Rapids was being denied its opportunity for progress because Mr. BIG GOVERNMENT Moore decided to substitute his reasoning for the reasoning of the people's local representatives. Yeah, that would have gone over well.

A Local Government Commission MEMBER is saying he didn't have the same information Moore had. Maybe he's lying and he really did have it. But if he didn't, that's not right.

This campaign has been a mud fight from the word go. We probably have different opinions about who started what, but both candidates have been lobbing bombs through the Dome every week.

That said, there's something wrong with your logic, in my opinion. If I were on the local government commission and being asked to vote on a project, I would want access to the same information everyone else had. It doesn't matter whether it was a feasibility study or summary of the city's certified audit. I'd want to know about it. When I was on the Chapel Hill Town Council, it never occurred to me to ask "Does anyone have information about this issue that I don't have?" As a council member, I expected information to be delivered - without having to request things I didn't know about - in a timely fashion.

Using your logic, a Commission member would have to say: "Hey Treasurer Moore, are you aware of any reports about the financial feasibility of this theater that may or may not exist that I don't know about?"

That's crazy.

What's "fishy" is the lame effort to suggest that a report that wasn't requested was withheld. I think it's understandable that the local government wants to say it was duped, but the fact of the matter is that it was Roanoke Rapids that requested this be done.

A feasibility study is a limited study. Its purpose is to determine whether what is being requested is actually do-able, not whether it's a great idea. State government is not supposed to substitute its druthers for what local government says it wishes to do. State government's obligation is to determine whether local government can back up what is it asking for, and it could. That's the limit of what the state is EVER supposed to do when local government makes this kind of request. Were it otherwise, you'd hear some hell being raised by mayors and city managers and commissioners all over this state.

Perdue knows this good and well, and her campaign managers SURELY know this. The pretense that some crucial bit of information was buried in a document that for some mysterious reason the secretary would want to withhold from the local government makes no sense whatsoever. Think about it. WHY would the state deny the local government information about what local government is asking the state to approve? Did Moore just have it in for Roanoke Rapids? Obviously not. Can you come up with some motivation the Secretary of State's office would have for trying to fool Roanoke Rapids into doing something that Roanoke Rapids was asking the State to approve?

This effort on the part of Perdue's campaign is really, really cynical, super sleazy, insulting to the voter's common sense, exploitative of peoples' ignorance about how local government and state government perform their respective duties, and should give people a heads up on what to expect from her campaign.

Answer me this:

Why didn't other Local Government Commission members have this "report" (or whatever it's called) at the time of their decision about the Roanoke Rapids request. Moore had it, they didn't. That seems weird to me. The mayor of Winston-Salem is quoted in the N&O as saying he didn't have the report and he's on the Commission.

A study done before the theater was built said it could succeed if at least 200,000 square feet of additional shops, restaurants and other amenities were in place when the venue opened.

Allen Joines said Wednesday that he did not know about that stipulation. He is on the N.C. Local Government Commission, which is responsible for signing off on the type of borrowing Roanoke Rapids used. The commission unanimously approved Roanoke Rapids' request.

"There was no mention or discussion of the feasibility study," Joines, the mayor of Winston-Salem, said in a letter Tuesday to State Treasurer Richard Moore, who oversees the commission.

A Moore spokesman said Joines' letter was motivated by politics. Joines supports Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue against Moore in the Democratic race for governor. There's been some finger-pointing on the campaign trail about the Parton project.

Joines rejected that allegation, adding in an interview Wednesday: "The full commission did not get all the information that was available."

His letter shows possible problems with the approval process. And a city e-mail message highlights deficiencies afterward.

Something's fishy.

Given that Perdue has been in state government for a little bit of time here, I think she knew that a document relating to a state agency's action (like, say, that by the state treasurer) is or isn't exempt from our comprehensive public records/open meetings law.

In other words, Perdue and her staffers knew good and well that there was no issue with respect to Moore "releasing" the feasibility study, but they went ahead and let her well-meaning supporters run with the implication that Moore was actually holding the report back. He wasn't. He didn't. He provided it. Ain't some of you folks who thought Perdue was on the up and up all shame-faced now?

Tut tut tut, Ms. Perdue. That was pretty cynical. It's one thing to lie about your age because you thought your husband's masculinity depended upon it, but you knew better than to suggest Moore could or did withhold a public document, didn't you?

Didn't you?