Black ally in House comes under elections board scrutiny

Wright dodged records requests

RALEIGH -- State Board of Elections officials are examining bank records and campaign contributions to Rep. Thomas Wright, a top legislative ally to former House Speaker Jim Black.

Board officials plan to take the unusual step of personally asking Wright to authorize access to his campaign and personal bank accounts over questions of whether thousands of dollars in contributions were properly reported. A board official visited Wright's legislative office Wednesday with the forms he needs to sign, but he wasn't there. A return visit is planned for today.

The elections board's scrutiny comes within days of Black's guilty pleas to corruption charges and is aimed at one of his closest lieutenants. The inquiry likely will heighten already acute anxiety at the General Assembly and help fuel a drive for further ethics reforms.

Elections officials decided to confront Wright, 51, a Wilmington Democrat, in person only after he failed to meet two deadlines for providing information and gave the board access to a bank account that officials found was closed.

"[Wright] has been given every opportunity to work with us," said Gary Bartlett, the elections board's executive director. "Certainly we hope that he will work with us, but we've had enough. We think we're being used and abused."

Wright did not return a message left at his legislative office Wednesday.

House Speaker Joe Hackney, a Chapel Hill Democrat who reappointed Wright as chairman of the House Health Committee, said he has not decided whether to take action.

"I'm still looking for additional facts," Hackney said Wednesday.

Wright, who has been a House member for 14 years, handled a variety of high-profile issues and served as a committee chairman for Black, who pleaded guilty in February to public corruption charges in state and federal court. In federal court, Black admitted to taking illegal payoffs from three chiropractors and then pushing three pieces of legislation favorable to their business. Wright was the primary sponsor on one of those bills, which failed to pass.

The elections board is following a December complaint filed by Joe Sinsheimer, a former Democratic consultant who is a Raleigh venture capitalist who ran an anti-Black Web site for a year.

He alleged that Wright hid contributions during a competitive primary, including money from leaders of a company trying to open a large landfill and recycling center for junked cars in Brunswick County, next door to Wright's district.

The junked car landfill was an election issue for Wright last year.

Wright filed a campaign finance report at the end of October 2006 that listed contributions from July through October. It also included more than $20,000 worth of contributions dated weeks or months before that time period.

Many of the contributions that were reported late lacked information on the donors' employment. That made it difficult to identify their work or employers, many of which were tied to controversial issues, such as the junked car landfill or payday lending.

In an interview after Sinsheimer's complaint was filed, Wright said the late disclosure might have been an honest mistake.

He said he listed all the information he received on donors' employment.

This is not Wright's first entanglement with elections officials. In 2002, the board refused to certify his re-election until he turned in a year's worth of overdue reports.

(Charlotte Observer staff writer David Ingram contributed to this report.)