A portion of broader legislation reworking the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement would make board investigations of potential campaign finance violations confidential.
The Charlotte Observer published an editorial against the measure Friday, calling on Gov. Roy Cooper to veto the bill because of the language. The full bill passed the General Assembly earlier this week on lopsided and bipartisan votes.
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The governor's press office would say only that he will review House Bill 1029, parts of which the administration negotiated with legislative leadership. The broader bill was needed to revamp the state board to comply with court decisions that said Republican legislators usurped Cooper's authority in changes they've made to the board over the last two years.
The newspaper pointed to an October hearing the state board held into campaign violations committed by Rep. Rodney Moore, D-Mecklenburg. Moore lost his re-election bid this year, likely in part because of the revelations.
"Had this law been in place this year, the Board of Elections could not have disclosed what they found about Moore, or even that he was being investigated," the newspaper said.
The change requiring secrecy was made to protect state legislators and other politicians from frivolous claims, legislators said, or from malicious prosecution by a partisan elections board.
"Allegations can be made with no evidence whatsoever," Bill D'Elia, a spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, said in an email. "Confidentiality at least guards against baseless politically motivated charges while an investigation determines whether the accusations have merit."
Former board Chairman Andy Penry resigned recently over a series of partisan tweets, and that followed a back-and-forth with the campaign of Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, over the pre-election timing of a long-standing complaint against his campaign.
GOP legislators have pushed for this board to be fully bipartisan; Cooper has favored a more traditional structure that gives the sitting governor's party a small majority. Democrats have argued that an exact bipartisan split would frequently deadlock the board.
The bill also places a four-year statute of limitations on investigations, with the clock starting once the board knows, or should have known, about a violation of the state's campaign finance rules.
There was disagreement Friday over the confidentiality clause's impact.
Brent Woodcox, a staff attorney for the state Senate, said on Twitter that the newspaper displayed some "willful ignorance" and that the bill wouldn't keep penalties from becoming public or prevent a public hearing. It would keep the investigations themselves confidential to protect their integrity, he argued.
"All final decisions are public and that's not changed," Woodcox tweeted.
It wasn't clear whether the law's applications would be that cut and dried.
"We're going to have to take a much harder look at it," said Josh Lawson, attorney for the state board.
Among other things, the legislation splits the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement back into two bodies, one that oversees elections and another that handles ethics complaints. Ethics complaints have long been confidential and would remain so under the bill.
Campaign finance complaints have not been subject to this level of secrecy, but they would be treated more like ethics complaints.
The board is engaged now in an investigation of election results in the 9th Congressional District, and it plans a public hearing on the matter in January. That hearing won't be affected, and neither would others like it, Woodcox said, because the confidentiality clause deals only with campaign finance investigations, not election results.