Former state House Page Coordinator Ann Lassiter admits she made a serious mistake when she arranged for teenage pages to stay with her son, a felon with a history of drug and alcohol problems.

But after her mistake became known to House Speaker Jim Black, he allowed her to retire from the position in April 2005 and then hired her back a month later as House historian, a position he created.

Lassiter now makes $50,627 a year, but has no office, is rarely seen at the legislature and says she is unlikely to produce her major project -- a report on the history of the House -- before her temporary position runs out at the end of the year.

Lassiter, 61, a career state employee, said her work as historian has turned out to be more than she expected.

"I started out with big dreams for it," she said. "But it's like a lot of things -- you get into it and you can get bogged down."

Black, a Mecklenburg County Democrat, declined to be interviewed for this story. He said in a statement that the revelation of Lassiter's son's having a criminal record and hosting pages led him to shift the program to House Principal Clerk Denise Weeks. Weeks has instituted criminal background checks for families that host pages from out of town when the legislature is in session.

"Ann Lassiter clearly made a serious mistake when she allowed her son to keep pages at his home, and I was extremely upset when I heard about it," Black said.

Black said he approved the historian position because he was "amazed" the legislature did not have a "detailed history of our chamber." The Senate has no such position.

Because Lassiter is a temporary employee as House historian, the only person who had to approve her hiring was Black, said Wesley Taylor, the legislature's financial services manager.

Black is seeking a record fifth term as speaker despite state and federal investigations into his campaign and legislative activities. He has not been charged with a crime, but four people who worked with him have been convicted of various crimes.

'My bad judgment'

In a series of interviews, Lassiter offered differing explanations for how the new job came about.

It is clear the major factor in her departure as coordinator of House pages was that she had steered pages to her son, Stephen Patrick Lassiter, shortly after she took over the program in mid-2003.

Her son had been convicted on a felony charge of selling and delivering marijuana to a Cary police officer. He was in prison from April to September of 2000. Additionally, court records in Wake and Chatham counties show that he was charged with breaking the law more than 30 times in the past decade. The charges cover speeding, driving while intoxicated, selling marijuana and resisting arrest. Most were dismissed or withdrawn by prosecutors, records show.

"It was my bad judgment to have him in the program," Lassiter said. "That was my choice. My call. It should not have happened."

Pages come from across the state and typically work at the legislature for a week. The pages' parents pay the host families $100 a week to provide a bed, transportation and some meals.

"If you are sending your child to be a page, you want to know that they are going to be in a safe environment," Weeks said. Weeks said she makes sure families are visited by a House official to check out the home.

Lassiter said she allowed her son to house as many as three pages in his home per week during the 2003 session. He lived in Apex.

It's unclear how many pages Stephen Lassiter hosted or any personal details about them. He could not be reached.

Ann Lassiter estimated her son hosted between one and three pages a week in May, June and July of 2003. He was not charged with any crimes during that period, according to court records.

"They liked him -- he had video games and things like that," Lassiter said of her son, who she said was 24 and married at the time. Lassiter said no one complained about her son's care.

She said she caught wind of gossip about the arrangement and realized it was a mistake. She said she stopped referring parents of pages to her son after about three months.

Weeks said she received one complaint about Stephen Lassiter -- that he had dropped off pages at the legislature without serving them breakfast, which would have been part of his duties.

Weeks said she found out about Lassiter's criminal record in July 2004, at the end of the legislative session. She said she told Black and then co-speaker Richard Morgan.

"They both said 'Oh my gosh,' or something to that effect," Weeks said.

Lassiter said that in early 2005, as the legislature returned to Raleigh, she heard from friends that others at the legislature were talking about what she had done.

She said she decided to retire, but needed to work until March to qualify for retirement benefits. She is now drawing more than $17,000 annually in retirement on top of her pay as historian.

Historian's job

Weeks said Rep. Bill Culpepper, who provided oversight for the page program as chairman of the House Rules Committee, asked her in March 2005 to take over the program. Weeks received a roughly $32,500 pay increase that year, in part for taking over the program. Weeks has hired a new page coordinator, Bonnie Trivette, who makes $51,127 a year.

Culpepper left the legislature at the end of last year after Gov. Mike Easley appointed him to the N.C. Utilities Commission.

During a telephone interview Thursday, Culpepper initially said there were no concerns about how Lassiter ran the page program. Culpepper later said that he and Black had been told of Stephen Lassiter's criminal record.

Lassiter said her son was upset at the removal, both for the loss of income and because he had done nothing wrong.

Culpepper said he told Lassiter she was being removed. He said he then asked her what kind of job she would like instead.

"She came up with the idea of House historian," Culpepper said. "And she was describing to me what her vision of the position was and it sounded like a good idea to me, and I took it to the speaker and he agreed that it would be OK."

Culpepper, who continued to supervise Lassiter, said she was entitled to the job because she had stepped in to run the page program in a pinch in 2003 and had "signed on" with the speaker's office to work for him during the 2005-06 term.

In her career, she also had been a Department of Transportation public information officer and worked for a state highway safety program. Lassiter worked as a sergeant at arms in the legislature, which provides security in the building before taking over the page program.

After months of work, Lassiter said, she is likely to produce only a 20-page report on the House speakers since 1963, detailing biographical information and some key legislation that each sponsored.

She said her main goal was to produce a complete history of the House of Representatives, but she won't finish.

"You have to go way back on something like that and I started in the 1600s," she said. "I'm up to the 1800s, but that's it. ... Unfortunately, it's a lot of research."

(News researchers Lamara Hackett and Paulette Stiles contributed to this report.)

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