Lancaster to join Raleigh's largest law firm

Martin Lancaster, retiring president of the N.C. Community College System, will join the Raleigh law firm of Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan.

The firm announced this week that Lancaster would serve in an "of counsel" role. He will work part time, serving as a resource to more than 100 lawyers at Raleigh's largest law firm.

Lancaster, a former congressman and state legislator, was also a special adviser to President Clinton and an assistant secretary of the Army for civil works.

Lancaster's lunch calendar is booked until he leaves the job May 1, he said. He will help ease the transition for the system's incoming president, Scott Ralls.

During an hourlong break Thursday, Lancaster began to empty out his personal file drawers, he said.

Lancaster was not in the audience Thursday at Wake Technical Community College for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's appearance: His contract specifies that he not be involved in partisan politics.

Moore protests NEA ad

State Treasurer Richard Moore filed a complaint Thursday with the State Board of Elections about an ad being aired by the National Education Association.

The 60-second radio spot touts the work of Moore's chief rival for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, though it does not mention her current campaign.

But Moore argues that the ad is not "grassroots lobbying," as claimed by the NEA, and instead is a political ad that would be governed by different state laws.

"This is a political ad pure and simple," Moore's deputy campaign manager Julie White said in a statement. "Claiming it is 'grassroots lobbying' insults everyone's intelligence and breaks state campaign finance laws."

Moore asked the state board to demand the NEA stop airing the ad immediately.

The national teachers group has said it will spend $360,000 on the ad campaign.

Beating case rolls on

Richard Wayne Barfield's 23-year-long battle for compensation from the state after he was badly beaten by a state trooper during a traffic stop will go on for at least another month.

Barfield's attorney, J. Michael Gay of Hillsborough, said Thursday that Deputy Commissioner Wanda Taylor of the N.C. Industrial Commission heard preliminary arguments in the case Thursday morning, then gave Gay and the state Attorney General's Office 30 days to submit legal briefs.

Sometime after that, Taylor will decide whether to award up to $100,000 in compensatory damages to Barfield, dismiss the case as the state wants, or call for an evidentiary hearing.

Barfield suffered severe head injuries from the beating by Trooper Geary Blackwood outside a convenience store in Fayetteville in 1985. Surgeons had to remove a piece of his skull and then patched his head together.

Blackwood said he did nothing wrong and was defending himself, but the patrol let him go shortly after the arrest and said he had acted outside of the scope of his authority.

The state is also using that argument to deny having to pay Barfield compensation.

No response

Eddie Davis can't get anyone on the Council of State to pay attention to him.

Davis, president of the N.C. Association of Educators, is seeking a seat on the Council of State as a candidate for superintendent of public instruction. He is running in the Democratic primary against incumbent June Atkinson.

But his problem has come since he began trying to get the Council of State to pass a resolution marking the 50th anniversary of the integration of public schools in North Carolina.

Davis said in a letter released this week that no one on the Council of State is responding to his call to mark the first black students' entry into previously all-white schools.

"To say the least, I am highly disappointed, particularly because I have worked with most of you on a multitude of issues over a wide span of years," Davis wrote to Gov. Mike Easley and other members of the Council of State.

Davis said in his letter that he wondered whether they were not responding because he is a candidate for public office and that his actions are considered "overly political."

"If that is the rationale," he wrote, "then to totally ignore a constructive concept that comes from a political candidate, thus, creates a political statement in and of itself."