Feb 18, 2007
Black's case shows sway of cash in N.C. politics
James Ramoser - Winston-Salem Journal

In the end, it all came down to cash in a restroom. 
 
That stunning image - three chiropractors using the restrooms of restaurants to deliver illegal payments to one of the state's most powerful politicians - was what ultimately brought Jim Black down. 
 
Black, the former four-term speaker of the N.C. House of Representatives, pleaded guilty last week to a federal corruption charge and will likely go to prison. He admitted that he took the chiropractors' secret payments while he pushed for legislation favored by chiropractors. 
 
But Black's misjudgments, and the system that allowed them to fester and grow, extend far beyond his relationship with three members of a narrow interest group that cared mostly about spinal-safety laws and insurance co-payments. 
 
Black's arrangement with chiropractors is simply the most extreme symptom of a political system that links private money to public power, legislators and political observers said last week. 
 
"The feds took the smoking-gun example of a quid pro quo, and it had extra unseemly aspects to it," said Bob Hall, the research director of Democracy North Carolina, a watchdog group in Raleigh that supports campaign-finance reform. "But I think it is the result of bad habits and a warped sense of judgment that develops from the fundraising and the relationships with donors, where you get to trade policies and money." 
 
Black, a Democrat from Mecklenburg County, made that trade explicit. In exchange for supporting certain legislation, he personally pocketed five separate transactions, mostly in cash, according to court documents. Federal prosecutors say that the transactions totaled about $29,000, and they have not named the three chiropractors who delivered the money to Black. A state investigation of Black is ongoing. 
 
What he did is clearly illegal. 
 
"He has pled guilty to the only criminal offense he's committed," said his attorney, Ken Bell. "Dr. Black knows and admits that he should not have received and accepted that cash." 
 
What other legislators do all the time - take campaign contributions from groups that have a clear interest in pending legislation - is not illegal. But the line is not always distinct. 
 
"There's a quid pro quo relationship either way," said Joe Sinsheimer, a former Democratic political consultant who is one of Black's biggest critics. "On one hand, you're talking about criminal behavior. On the other hand, you're talking about something that I think we should change because it would lead to better public policy." 
 
Sinsheimer was referring to what some people see as the "pay to play" system in Raleigh, in which interest groups believe that by contributing financially to a legislator's campaign, they can gain access to that legislator or prod him to vote a certain way. Critics say that the problem has grown much worse in recent years, as the amount of money in politics has skyrocketed and party leaders such as Black have exerted more influence in distributing campaign funds. 
 
For donations to be illegal, there must be an explicit promise of a direct exchange between a legislator and a donor. 
 
"You can have expectations, and sometimes even the winking of an eye, but you can't have an explicit understanding of currying favor," state Rep. Dan Blue said on Wednesday, the day that Black resigned from the House seat he held for 20 years. Blue, a Wake County Democrat, was the speaker of the House from 1991 to 1994, five years before Black became speaker. 
 
For some people, Black's close ties to several industries typified the pay-to-play system. He received many campaign contributions from the video-poker industry - and he worked against a ban on video-poker machines. He is an optometrist by trade, and he got financial support from other optometrists - and he pushed for mandatory eye exams for schoolchildren. 
 
Chiropractors were also among Black's most loyal supporters. For three specific but unnamed chiropractors, that support extended beyond standard campaign contributions. According to court documents related to Black's plea agreement, the chiropractors' illegal payments were in exchange for specific legislation. 
 
In 2005, Black got a bill passed that required insurance companies to charge patients the same co-payments for chiropractors that they paid for physicians. In the past, insurers had charged higher co-payments for chiropractors. Black also supported two other bills that chiropractors favored, but they were never passed into law. 
 
Sinsheimer said that the co-payment bill and other aspects of the chiropractors' agenda represented potential millions of dollars worth of business for the state's chiropractic industry. That made it worthwhile for the three chiropractors to pay off Black, especially because of his unusually high level of influence. 
 
For instance, the co-payment bill did not pass as a standalone bill; Black inserted it into the House version of the state budget. He was one of a handful of legislators who had the power to do that. 
 
Todd Shaver, the president of the N.C. Chiropractic Association, said last week that he was unaware of the illegal cash payments to Black, and that any contributions from his association were made legally. 
 
The scandals that have dogged Black for two years have sparked a lot of talk about reforming the state's political system. Last year, the legislature overwhelmingly passed a broad ethics law intended to limit the financial influence of lobbyists. 
 
But there is more that must be done, legislators said. 
 
Some have proposed limiting the number of terms that a person can be speaker of the House or the leader of the Senate, which are considered the two most powerful posts in state government after the governor. 
 
Rep. Julia Howard, a Davie County Republican who co-heads the House ethics committee, said she believes that placing term limits on the House speaker is the key to preventing future scandals such as Black's. 
 
"Jim Black is not an evil person. You take Jim Black as a human being - he's a very, very goodhearted, compassionate, good doctor, good father, good grandfather," Howard said. "He got caught up in a power struggle. Power breeds corruption. You have it, you want to keep it. And you cross the line to keep it."