Since becoming House speaker, Jim Black has taken a strong, pro-industry interest in the state committee that regulates his son's pest control business.

The Structural Pest Control Committee, one of more than 400 state boards, regulates exterminators and products used to kill termites. It has tremendous power over the livelihood of Black's son, Jon Black, who owns Black Pest Control, an extermination business in Charlotte passed on to him by his father.

Documents that Jim Black recently provided to a federal grand jury, interviews and other records indicate that Black has:

* Put into law that the speaker's appointee to the pest committee must come from the industry.

* Persuaded Gov. Mike Easley to put two members on the board.

* Succeeded, for a short time, in adding another industry member to the board.

On two occasions, correspondence shows that Meredith Norris, a top aide to Black, tried to address his son's concerns about the committee's makeup.

Most recently, in December 2004, a Black staffer asked whether he could help Jon Black add "balance" to the committee, just as it was about to vote on reapproving a termite treatment that Black Pest Control uses for new homes.

The nine-member committee now includes three seats for people in the pest control industry. The others are an entomologist, an epidemiologist, an agriculture department employee and three at-large members. Black and Senate leader Marc Basnight each control one seat, and Easley has three appointees. The agriculture commissioner controls two seats.

Black, a Mecklenburg County Democrat, and his son did not respond to interview requests. At a news conference last month, Black said he did not help his son.

"We chose -- we chose -- not to do that," Black said. "My son is a young, good-looking guy, and Meredith Norris was trying to help him."

Black's staff said he acted to try to remake a board that had too many bureaucrats and was too hard on exterminators.

It is unclear how Black's latest actions have affected the committee's work or his son's business, and there is no indication that he broke any law. But some worry that Black's moves might make it more difficult for homeowners to get a fair hearing on matters such as improper termite treatments. The committee handles consumer complaints and disciplines exterminators who do inferior or dangerous work.

"The whole thing is just gross," said Fawn Pattison, executive director of the Agricultural Resources Center, which seeks pesticide-use limits.

She and Larry King, chairman of Common Cause North Carolina's state governing board, said Black's efforts to change the committee amount to a conflict of interest. "One wonders how much influence the son has as compared to the rest of us who are affected by the pest control board," King said.

Federal subpoenas

Federal authorities may be trying to answer that question.

Federal subpoenas served on Black's office in October list Jon Black and his business as "relevant parties" in a criminal investigation of the state lottery's creation; the work of Norris, a lobbyist who had been the speaker's unpaid political director; the video poker industry; and other subjects.

This is not the first time Black's involvement in committee matters has drawn fire. In 2000, he defended four job cuts in the pest control division made by House budget writers after the committee fined his son's business for improper pesticide use.

Black said at the time that the division was performing fewer inspections so it didn't need as many inspectors. Agriculture department officials who oversee the division said staff turnover led to the reduction in inspections. They said they suspected the cuts were retaliatory.

The laws that govern the pest control committee give Black one appointee. But correspondence and interviews show that Black has ties to three other recent committee appointees.

One of Easley's appointees, exterminator Wallace "Benny" Ray of Winston-Salem, came on board after Black recommended him. A second Easley appointee, construction company owner Fred Mills of Raleigh, said in an interview that he went to Black to get on the board. A third Easley appointee, exterminator Phillip Clegg of Durham, donated $1,000 to Black in each of the past two campaigns and gave him another $1,000 last year. Clegg said he visited Black and Basnight to help him get on the board and that his contributions had nothing to do with his appointment.

Correspondence shows that Jon Black sought to put two people on the committee. In April 2002, Norris, then a legislative aide to the speaker, sent the speaker a memo regarding his son's request.

"He will get us two names," Norris wrote, "one for your slot and one for Senator Basnight's."

Basnight, who said he recalls no conversation about the appointments with Black or his staff, chose to reappoint his committee member.

Two months later, Norris wrote to Jon Black with another suggestion: "Jon -- we are going to see if Sen. Basnight will agree to add another person to the [committee] so that we can put both of your nominees on the board," she wrote. "... Be sure to let me know the priority of your two nominations so we at least get the most important one named on our end."

Norris could not be reached for comment. Black's press secretary, Julie Robinson, said Black's son did not drive the effort to add the seats. She said the speaker had met with officials at the state pest control association and at N.C. State University.

"The speaker agreed that the board needed to be more balanced in order to allow the voices of both sides to be represented in relevant discussions and decisions, and he asked them to provide to his office recommendations for appointments," Robinson said.

The additional seats were inserted into an omnibus appointments bill, which the legislature passed in October 2002. Easley vetoed it for technical reasons.

Termite treatment

Two years later, Jon Black had another request -- for the speaker to look into the seat on the committee held by an epidemiologist.

At the time, the committee was considering whether to reapprove a product called Bora-Care as a stand-alone termite pretreatment for new homes.

Bora-Care is applied to the first 2 feet of all wood rising from a home's foundation. The manufacturer, Nisus Corp., provided data showing that the treatment keeps termites from invading homes, but some question its effectiveness because termites can reach the home's foundation.

Black Pest Control is a Bora-Care provider. Jon Black told the committee at its September 2004 meeting that his business had treated about 3,000 homes with no complaints.

In October 2004, two months before the vote on reapproving Bora-Care, the committee received a Bora-Care complaint regarding a Lincoln County homeowner who reported termites in her crawlspace. In an e-mail message, Norris told an aide to the speaker to fax the complaint to the speaker and his son.

On Nov. 30, 2004, according to a written phone message to the speaker, Jon Black asked about the epidemiologist position. "He said he needed help with it soon, given meeting was coming up," the message said.

Black's staff and state health officials say there was no attempt to get the epidemiologist off the committee.

As it turned out, Jon Black had nothing to worry about. The committee unanimously approved the use of Bora-Care.