Critics say Tillis' appointment to the "fracking commission" should be examined for potential conflicts of interest | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    At a recent Beaufort Patriot TEA Party meeting a former FBI Special Agent told about how he was sent to North Carolina before he retired from the Bureau. He told the group that the Director of the FBI called him in one day and told him he was assigning him to clean up the politics of the most corrupt state in the nation. The agent immediately assumed he was being sent to Chicago. He was shocked when the Director told him his new assignment would be in North Carolina.

    It would appear that North Carolina's ethics system is no better today than it was back then. Since the agent's assignment Jim Black was sent to prison, as was Frank Balance, Ruffin Poole and Governor Mike Easley was spared jail time by a plea deal. Many thought that when the Republicans took over that things would improve. Early indications are that such optimism may indeed be misplaced.

    Recently a citizen of Beaufort County filed an ethics complaint against a local politician asking an investigation of economic development incentive grants that went to the Beaufort County Committee of 100 which then purchased the politician's property and leased it back to the company that had already been operating it. The Ethics Commission declined to even investigate the matter.

    Now there are reports that a man, Ray Covington, who co-founded a business called North Carolina Oil and Gas and makes its money handling oil and gas leases has now been appointed to the N. C. Energy and Mining Commission. But whether the gentleman has a real or perceived conflict of interest has not even been considered by the Ethics Commission.

    You can read more about the story at WRAL.com. Click here to read the rest of the story, which contains links to other related stories.

    Commentary

    Going all the way back to George Washington it has been a tenet of American government that noone who serves as a government official should benefit from that service except as duly paid for such service. Washington himself warned against allowing government officials to enrich themselves by the decisions they made or the knowledge they gained that others did not have.

    That same tenet is needed today. The simple rule should be that you don't make personal gain from government service, except what you are legally paid for such service. It's time we returned to that principle.

    Click here if you want a more indepth discusison of ethics in government.

    We don't know Mr. Covington. For all we know he is an honest and honorable man and will make a great contribution to this process. The problem here, as we see it, is with the ethics system in this state. The Ethics Commission is demonstrably impotent. The law that would allow such a commission as this Oil and Gas group to be appointed and begin work without an impartial outside review of the actual or potential conflicts of interest is the problem here, not Mr. Covington. But that's only the tip of the iceberg of the ethics deficiencies in North Carolina. This case simply illustrates this problem and the need to address it.