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Friday, December 13, 2013
News / Opinion Lassiter creates enormous conflict of interest for McCrory administration
Posted By John Grooms on Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 4:30 PM
Chris Fitzsimon at NC Policy Watch points out some very obvious and frankly disturbing conflicts of interest around Gov. McCrory and the new private nonprofit that is supposed to replace the Commerce Department's economic development, i.e., business recruitment efforts. McCrory named his old friend and former Charlotte city councilman and GOP mayoral nominee John Lassiter to the nonprofit's board.
- James Willamor (Flickr Creative Commons)
- Lassiter
As a board member, Lassiter, a business-oriented Republican in the McCrory mold, will be negotiating incentives deals worth millions for big corporations. As Fitzsimon points out, however, Lassiter is also now the head of the Renew North Carolina Foundation, which is raising anonymous money from corporations to help broadcast commercials defending McCrory's record.
In other words, as Fitzsimon notes, Lassiter "will literally be involved in negotiating millions of dollars in incentive deals with corporations at the same time he is raising cash from corporations to help McCrory politically" (my emphasis).
To say that this constitutes a flagrant conflict of interest is simply stating the obvious. Unfortunately, it's an obvious occurrence the News & Observer and Charlotte media have so far not picked up on. With Lassiter's long record of corporate-friendly politics in Charlotte, it'd be nice to see the media outlets with money pick up the ball and run with it.
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