You may have noticed it's been pretty quiet around here.  It's likely to stay that way, at least for awhile.  The Tavern is taking a break. 

I'm not sure how long the hiatus will last, but leave your RSS on or watch your Twitter feed for updates. 

Thanks for reading!

The State Board of Elections today levied a $30,000 fine against the campaign committee of Governor Bev Perdue.   By a bipartisan 4-1 vote, the board approved the fine as punishment for the campaign's failure to timely report more than 40 campaign flights taken on private planes during the 2004 and 2008 election cycles. 

But by the same motion, the board also cleared the Perdue campaign of intentional wrongdoing in the case.  That was good news to campaign spokesman Marc Farinella. He isn’t thrilled about the fine, but he says he accepts responsibility for the errors. 

I think the most critical thing to us that we feel gratified that the board voted that no one in the Perdue campaign had any intent to break the law or conceal information.  And that means a lot to us.

At today's meeting in Asheville, NCGOP Chairman Tom Fetzer tried but failed to convince the board to approve a motion by its Republican members to open public hearings on the matter. 

According to Fetzer, the board’s findings contradict the work of its own chief investigator, Kim Strach.   He says Strach’s latest report references correspondence from 2007 that proves the committee was told about at least some of the unreported flights.

They never even bothered to even think about reporting the flights until it became clear during the board’s investigation of former Governor [Mike] Easley that they had a problem.

Fetzer says the board’s Democratic majority is “whitewashing” the Perdue campaign’s actions.

First, it was a computer glitch. And then, “Oh, we didn’t have the processes in place.”  And then, “Well, we didn’t know about the flights.”  Well, if you look at the staff reports, all three of those explanations just don’t hold water.

Farinella says Fetzer’s accusations are just political theater.

Mr. Fetzer can call it a "whitewash."  I expect that’s what he would do… Look, Tom Fetzer’s job is to make Democrats look as bad as possible. So I think you need to discount this kind of hyperbolic rhetoric from him that he delivers so well, so frequently.  

Farinella also dismissed Republican calls for public hearings into the reporting errors.

Although this investigation went on for 8 months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, there’s still nobody near the campaign or within the campaign or in close proximity to the campaign or anyone who had any knowledge of how the campaign operated who suggested that anyone in the Perdue Committee intentionally sought to break the law or intentionally sought to conceal information.  No one has made that suggestion.

Fetzer might not meet those criteria, but he’s definitely making that suggestion, and he’s showing no signs of backing down even after today’s vote.  In an NCGOP statement today, he renewed his calls for Wake DA Colon Willoughby to launch a criminal investigation into the board’s actions.

Fetzer is accusing SBOE Director Gary Bartlett and Chair Larry Leake of colluding with Perdue campaign attorney John Wallace to edit Strach’s report and limit the investigation – accusations both Leake and Bartlett vehemently deny.  In fact, WRAL’s Cullen Browder reports Leake accused the GOP chair of trying to turn the SBOE hearing into a “Tom Fetzer campaign stop.”

Fetzer says he’s not surprised Democrats are trying to make this into a partisan issue.  But he insists it isn’t.

The major issue here is – and this transcends partisan politics – how can a Board of Elections appointed by the governor – and they’re appointed by their partisan affiliation to the governor’s party – how can they be called on to responsibly investigate the person who appointed them? This is a flawed system. And they have proven it once again today.

Defenders of the current board like to point out that this is the same Democrat-controlled panel that sent former Gov. Mike Easley’s case to state prosecutors. But as Fetzer points out, that investigation wasn’t opened until Easley had left office – more than three years after the first allegations of improper dealings first surfaced.

Comments?  Drop me a line.

Vajda out

UNC-TV Production Director Shannon Vickery confirmed today that Senior Legislative Correspondent Eszter Vajda “is no longer employed” by the station.  Vickery couldn’t comment further, citing confidentiality reasons. 

Sources at the station say Vajda was the subject of a disciplinary hearing late last week, even before Saturday’s news stories that revealed she’d taken money from former House Co-Speaker Richard Morgan.  Morgan is currently working as a strategy consultant for the NC Water Rights Committee, an umbrella group of organizations backing the state’s bid to deny Alcoa’s request to renew its federal license for its Yadkin dams. 

Vajda did not respond to a request for comment, and the phone for her researcher/producer/agent  Martin Sansone appears to have been disconnected.

Friends in High Places

In a phone interview today, Morgan confirmed that both Vajda and Sansone were actively involved in asking him for money to pay for Sansone’s travel to the US and subsistence while here.  The final sum was $3000, up from the $2500 payment originally agreed upon, Morgan said.  

Morgan also confirmed what emails released by UNC-TV hint at - that he and Republican strategist Carter Wrenn were working closely with State Commerce Secretary Keith Crisco to convince UNC-TV to air Vajda’s story on Alcoa. 

Crisco is a Stanly County native who served on the Water Rights Committee before being named Commerce Secretary in 2009 by Governor Bev Perdue.  Crisco was asked by both Morgan and Senate J2 chair Fletcher Hartsell (R-Cabarrus) to contact UNC-TV on the matter.  He says he did so willingly, due to concerns about local allegations that Alcoa hasn’t adequately cleaned up its pollution in Stanly County.  He also says he felt it was important for lawmakers to have new information he was told would be contained in Vajda’s report.

Crisco had a phone conversation with UNC-TV director Tom Howe on April 5th, and visited the station personally on June 28th .  But he insists his communications with UNC-TV weren’t meant to pressure the station to air the “documentary” -  only to educate station managers about the timeline of the legislative battle over the FERC license.  He says no promises were made regarding any airdate for the story.

UNC-TV’s Shannon Vickery agrees.  She met with Crisco June 28th on behalf of UNC-TV director Tom Howe, who was on vacation. Vickery says she was not aware of the political coalition behind Crisco’s visit.  “I talk to a lot of people about what they think the station should cover,” she said.

Comment?  Drop me a line.

First, a Confession

I spent a full week agonizing over whether to ask UNC-TV for the emails it was turning over to Alcoa.   After blasting the Senate, Jim Goodmon, and Alcoa for treating UNC-TV as a public agency, I just couldn’t stomach doing the same thing.

Shouldn’t ethics trump the easy route?  On the other hand, shouldn’t the public know what Alcoa has?

Then came Saturday’s N&O article, detailing how Vajda’s “researcher”/”producer”/”agent”/? Martin Sansone reeled in three grand from anti-Alcoa forces.  That info was in the emails UNC-TV turned over to Alcoa.    WRAL had the story, too. They rescinded their official records request, but I’m told they made a less official request for whatever records the station was giving Alcoa, and they got them.

In other words, it’s all out there at this point.  How can I argue that UNC-TV’s records deserve protection when the station itself has handed them around to Alcoa, the N&O, and WRAL?   So I got them, too.  I know it’s the right news decision to make. But on ethical grounds, I really hate it. 

Early Reactions

I can’t say too much because I’m working on a story on this.  But I will say that, after reading through the 5000+ pages of emails, I take back my criticism of UNC-TV management’s compliance with the Senate J2 records request.  What looked from the outside like “rolling over” was really nothing of the kind. 

Internal emails show no one in station management ever wanted to obey the request -- they fully intended to fight it on journalistic grounds.  But they got no backing on that from UNC President Bowles, from board members, or from the AG’s office, where they sought legal expertise.

I can also say that, despite rumors to the contrary, the emails make it clear that the station was NOT trying to kill the Alcoa story.  In one email after another over several months, station managers asked Vajda to come up with a work schedule and proposed airdate(s) for her work.  It wasn’t about whether to air the story.  It was about how – as a documentary, or as segments on NC Now.  Managers wanted the latter, while Vajda (and others) pushed for the former, even after she’d been told that wasn’t going to happen.

(Update:  Lynn Bonner has a follow-up story here.)

Who is Martin Sansone? 

I’ve had a lot of email interaction with Vajda’s agent/researcher/producer Martin Sansone over the past few weeks.  He describes himself as Vajda’s longtime friend – and if the “babe,” “luv,” and other endearments in their UNC-TV emails are any indication, they’re still pretty close.

According to Sansone’s Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, he’s an expert in social media and public relations, “known as the Don Sansone for his input on the Internet.”  (It takes about 5 seconds on Google to see that only Sansone is calling Sansone anything of the kind, a fact you might think a self-described "search engine optimization expert" would’ve noticed.)

Sansone's altruistic work is well-documented, especially that which involves exotic locales like Cape Verde.    But if his Facebook profile is any indication, he spends most of his time having adventures.  Skiing shirtless.  Riding a camel in the Sahara. Rappelling in the UK.  Driving nice cars.  (He was also involved in a Rwandan orphanage project – amahora.org – but that site hasn’t been updated since 2008. Again, odd for a self-professed media guru.)

So how did Sansone come to be involved in the Alcoa project?  As he explained it in an email to me in July, he came to visit Vajda and got interested in her research.  It’s also perhaps germane that, at least as of 2008, Sansone’s profile on Filmaka.com indicates he was hoping to become a filmmaker.  (He posted an animated film there, too, but warning: it’s NSFW, and pretty misogynistic to boot.)

When I asked Sansone about his involvement in the project, he said,

“Essentially I am the researcher and co-producer of the real story.. not the UNC-TV pantomime.  An entrepreneur and Christian activist from England.” 

Sansone says his ultimate goal is to produce a feature film for release around the globe.  (That’s kind of a problem, given that UNC-TV owns the rights to all the footage Vajda shot using its cameras. )

Last weekend, the N&O’s Lynn Bonner reported that Sansone and Vajda solicited a $3000 payment to Sansone from anti-Alcoa strategist Richard Morgan and friends in early April.  That revelation casts a long shadow on the credibility of all the work Vajda has done on this story.

Sansone told Charlotte NPR affiliate WFAE that he didn’t see why the payment was a big deal. “It wasn't even an issue to me. I haven't got a problem with it.” 

He also told WFAE the money was meant to help him get back to the US in challenging circumstances:

“…The volcano eruption in Iceland last spring grounded him in London. Sansone says that's when Morgan helped him out. The $3,000 helped him afford the extra flights he needed to fly around the volcano debris that stranded many travelers in Europe.”

That would be a great story if it were true.  But it isn't.  According to the UNC-TV emails, Sansone and Morgan negotiated the payment on April 7th – a full week before April 14th, when the volcano actually erupted.  

The most ironic moment of the story is when Sansone tells WFAE he’s certain UNC-TV will fire Vajda over the payment from Morgan.

"Take that to a bank," he says.

You already did,  Mr. Sansone.

Comment?  Drop me a line.