This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Chad Adams, vice president for development at the John Locke Foundation and director of the Center for Local Innovation.

What is the role of the state’s Attorney General? Recently the initials have humorously stood for “Aspiring Governor,” though the current A.G. skipped the hard-fought primary for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination this year. One would think the role would be to protect the citizens from corrupt public officials and harm in general, but a look back reveals a far different view of our state’s top cop.

Two specific duties as outlined by the North Carolina Department of Justice say that the Attorney General “may intervene in proceedings before any courts, regulatory officers, agencies, or bodies, either state or federal, on behalf of the State” and “may institute court proceeding on behalf of the State, its agencies, or its citizens in any and all public interest matters.”

It’s that “or its citizens” line that I’d like to focus on for just a moment. Roy Cooper, our current Attorney General, is in the midst of a lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority for the harmful effect of SO2 (Sulfur Dioxide) and NOX (Nitrous Oxide) emissions from its plants in Tennessee. That’s all well and good save for the fact that no scientific evidence exists that either NOX or SO2 has any harmful effects on humans. If there were harmful effects, a legitimate private lawsuit would have been brought forth. That’s the beauty of our legal system; private citizens can sue for damages actually done. In this case, since there weren’t any, the attorney general had to make them up.

The lawsuit would be laughable except that it’s not. The courts have heard the case, and we are all awaiting their verdict. One of the prime facts that Cooper has alleged is that 1,400 residents die prematurely annually due to these emissions. Again, this is supposition without scientific fact, and ozone days in general out west are nearly non-existent now.

We might all think that such an endeavor is worthwhile. We might even think it is truly altruistic. But consider that latter part of the duties outlined: “may institute court proceedings on behalf of … its citizens in any and all public interest matters.”

Was Cooper in front of the allegations involving former House Speaker Jim Black? Did his office lead the charge to end the corruption happening within the halls of our General Assembly? And where might Cooper’s office have been as the entire Randy Parton Theatre fiasco unfolded? We can further ask where his office was during the entire Thomas Wright corruption case?

In every one of these instances, the attorney general rendered little if any assistance. They might have been present, but leadership would require that Cooper and his attorneys represent the interest of the citizens in pursuing and protecting them from corrupt public officials. Even as the evidence mounted in the court of public opinion, it was only reluctantly that a word of opinion would find its way from Cooper’s office to the mainstream media.

The Attorney General might be a partisan position, but it should not act in a partisan way. The halls of power might be run by one party, but Cooper has an obligation to protect the citizens, not only from phone scams and insurance fraud, but from the very officials the public has entrusted with our tax dollars in powerful positions within state government. It isn’t necessary to be a zealot like Elliot Spitzer, but surely Cooper could have been a strong advocate for cleaning up our state government rather than simply standing on the sidelines. In the aforementioned instances, he was barely even on the field. He might pursue cleaner air out west, but the murky world of North Carolina politics has a stain he has done little to rectify.