What Bowles told the Easleys

When the UNC Board of Governors was vetting the details of Mary Easley's new job and big raise at N.C. State last year, UNC system President Erskine Bowles had conversations with both the first lady and her husband.

Bowles, who met Wednesday with News & Observer editors and reporters, said he had been skeptical of the new job, which has since become entangled in a federal investigation into Mike Easley, the former governor, reports Steve Riley. Bowles said he told James Oblinger, then the N.C. State chancellor, that he would have to "justify every single dollar or we would not approve it."

At one point during the process, Bowles said that Oblinger had given up trying to persuade Bowles and the board to approve the deal. But the chancellor later made another run at it, only to have Mrs. Easley balk at one of Bowles' conditions: That all the documents supporting the $170,000 salary be made public.

"I called her and told her that," Bowles said. "She said she'd get back to me." She did, and the board approved the deal with Bowles' blessing.

Bowles said he had also talked to the former governor at the time. "I told Governor Easley the same thing I just told you: That we were going to treat Mary Easley the same way we would treat everybody else."

More after the jump.

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He said the governor didn't say much in response. "The only things I remember him saying to me is that he didn't mind [The News & Observer] picking on him, but he didn't like you picking on his wife."

The fallout from Mary Easley's job has been significant. After interviews and e-mails showed that key advisers to the governor had pushed Oblinger to hire her in 2005 and that the chancellor was deeply involved, Oblinger resigned and Mary Easley was fired. NCSU Board of Trustees chairman McQueen Campbell had resigned previously after he acknowledged to Bowles that he had talked to Oblinger about hiring Mrs. Easley.