State solutions to the "culture of corruption"

As pundits and politicos lament the "culture of corruption," North Carolina last week made some small but important steps towards cleaning up politics.

True, the headlines in NC today are leading with this story:

Former state Rep. Michael Decker admitted in federal court Tuesday that three years ago he abandoned the Republican Party and supported Jim Black for a third term as House speaker in exchange for a legislative job for Decker's son and $50,000.

But the major state politics news from last Friday was this:

The General Assembly, as it prepared to adjourn for the year, voted overwhelmingly yesterday for what would be the first comprehensive ethics legislation in North Carolina history.

Proposed in reaction to a series of recent scandals and criminal investigations, the legislation authorizes the creation of a State Ethics Commission to oversee standards across most of state government. It also requires the disclosure of most gifts to state officials and forces legislators and other officials to give more detail about their personal finances.

State lawmakers didn't accomplish everything they could have. Bob Hall of the leading reform group Democracy North Carolina grades the package as a "C+, showing solid performance and recognition that more is expected and can be done."

Bob Hall says the biggest let-down was the failure to pass a pilot program to give candidates in four legislative elections the option of using public funds in their campaign if they refused special-interest funds and obtained a large number of small contributions from voters in their districts. As Hall notes in a recent email dispatch,

Until candidates have a realistic source of "clean" funds, they will continue to rely on special-interest donations that wind up costing the public billions of dollars in special favors.