RALEIGH – Former House Speaker Jim Black was a crook.
This was evident while he wielded power for many years in Raleigh, though few would say so publicly. Others, I believe, were truly duped by Black, believing his story about being the target of a right-wing conspiracy to defame him and then being shocked at his guilty plea. On Sunday, Raleigh News & Observer reporter Dan Kane served up a timely reminder of the extent of Black’s corruption. The result, I suspect, was a spate of teeth-grinding in the state capital.
Kane’s story centered on the pest-control business of Jim Black’s son Jon. The state awarded contracts to Jon Black to perform services in three new prison facilities despite the fact that he had not submitted the lowest bid. According to Kane’s sources, the private firm handling the prison construction, Centex, felt pressure to steer the contracts to Black by an unnamed state lawmaker.
It doesn’t matter whether this lawmaker was Jim Black himself or one of his lieutenants. There is simply no reasonable doubt that the contracts were awarded because of the power of the speaker of the House.
The political class in Raleigh no doubt consumed Kane’s reporting ravenously, because the politicos enjoy gossip and skullduggery. But the story also exposed the fact that there is much about Black’s political machine that we still don’t know. And for some of them, continued discussion of the Jim Black regime makes them profoundly uncomfortable because they personally benefited from it.
As I have written about before, people in politics have a great facility for rationalization and self-deception. They think that the ends justify the means. Some Democrats knew that Jim Black had at least strode out onto the borderline between campaign fundraising and extorting bribes, and probably had stumbled over it, but they preferred not to think about it too much. After all, he was raising the hundreds of thousands of dollars they thought they needed each election cycle to keep the dastardly Republicans from taking power.
At the federal level, Republicans were guilty of the same self-serving fictions and evasions. They complained about gerrymandering in Democratic-led states such as North Carolina while taking comfort in offsetting schemes of gerrymandering in Republican-led states. They learned of crooks on the take in their own caucus but preferred to avert their eyes rather than take action. These character flaws do not correlate with one’s beliefs about taxes, transportation, or the Iraq War. They aren’t partisan. They are, unfortunately, pervasive.
State government is a massive enterprise expending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars annually. Most of these dollars flow to public employees, to vendors, and to medical providers. There’s a lot of money to be made by securing contracts, placing your allies in positions of financial or regulatory authority, and manipulating the legislative process to include your group and exclude others from the bounty of government largesse.
Jim Black is in prison, and his son is now in the crosshairs. But they are just two individuals. Raleigh’s political class knows that there are many other politicians and political operators who play similar games and just haven’t been caught yet.
That’s why Kane’s story deservedly made waves in Raleigh this week. Those who derive personal and financial benefit from the current system would have liked it much better had Jim Black taken not only himself but also all whiffs of scandal with him to the federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania.
What he left behind, however, still smells pretty bad.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.