Amended bill would open ethics hearings

House legislation that did some minor tinkering to the state ethics law appears to be the Senate's vehicle for a major makeover.

A new version of the bill would open up ethics hearings to the public, a major change that open-government advocates said needed to be done to dispel fears that violations could be dismissed without the public's knowledge.

The ethics law that passed last year --which includes tougher penalties on those who lie or mislead about their financial interests -- had closed those hearings.

The amended bill was introduced Monday at the Senate Select Committee on Government and Election Reform. It says that the Legislative Ethics Committee and the State Ethics Commission shall hold open hearings on ethics law violations, though complaints would remain secret until an investigation determined probable cause.

The legislation makes some exceptions for open ethics hearings. They include matters that are normally kept closed under the exceptions to the state's open meetings law, such as discussion of pending legal action or business trade secrets, matters involving minors or matters involving a personnel record.

Bob Phillips, executive director for Common Cause North Carolina, and Bob Hall, research director for Democracy North Carolina, have been pushing for the open hearings. Both said they needed to review the new legislation before endorsing it.

Sen. Dan Clodfelter, a Charlotte Democrat and a committee chairman, said he expects the committee to take up the bill later this week.

Miller takes stand on Sudan

U.S. Rep. Brad Miller met Monday with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations.

Miller, a Raleigh Democrat, and other House members are at the United Nations pushing to send a U.N. peacekeeping force to Sudan without conditions. The group also visited the troubled Darfur region of Sudan this spring. Up to 450,000 people have been killed in the region in the past four years.

Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, widely blamed for the violence, visited Darfur this weekend for the first time since the beginning of the four years of violence there. Bashir had agreed to a peacekeeping force without conditions earlier this month, but he now reportedly is demanding that the force be entirely African and be prohibited from applying military force, Miller said.

"That's why we're sending in the military instead of social workers," Miller said in an interview from New York. "The point is to use force if necessary to maintain order, maintain security. In my view, the Bashir regime is a monstrous regime that cannot be trusted to negotiate."

China has been Sudan's closest ally on the U.N. Security Council, and Miller said he asked the Chinese ambassador Monday whether he would support a resolution for peacekeepers without conditions.

"I didn't get an answer to my question," Miller said.

Miller said the United States' moral high ground has been diminished by the war in Iraq, a point the Chinese ambassador brought up.

"The Chinese ambassador, in his non-answer to my question, mentioned Iraq and said that regime change was not the Chinese government's policy," Miller said. "Which was kind of changing the subject, but I think is indicative of position we're now in, in asserting influence in the world."

Program targets trafficking

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families will announce a program today to educate agencies and individuals about human trafficking in North Carolina and across the country.

The federal department estimates that 14,500-17,500 people are trafficked into the United States every year.

Several high-profile cases have come up in North Carolina in recent years, including a sex ring in the Triangle and a legal suit filed by 22 Thai farmworkers from Johnston County this year.

The federal program comes alongside an ongoing statewide coalition that has been working several years to train social services and law enforcement agencies about how to identify and help trafficking victims.

"It's so hidden right now, and people are afraid to come forward and, often, don't have the capacity to come forward," said Kaci Bishop, an immigration attorney with the N.C. Justice Center.

The state legislature is considering a bill sponsored by Democratic Sen. Ellie Kinnaird of Carrboro to make human trafficking a state offense as well as a federal offense.