Charles van der Horst: Real conflicts of interest
Regarding the Jan. 14 news article “Cooper taps Obama official to head DHHS”: Thanks for my morning giggle while reading the comments of Phil Berger, Tim Moore and Nelson Dollar about Gov. Roy Cooper’s appointment of Dr. Mandy Cohen to run the Department of Health and Human Services. They mentioned the issue of conflict of interest.
A small lesson for them: Leaving a public sector job for another public sector job is not a conflict as Cohen would receive no personal benefit other than the satisfaction of helping thousands of North Carolinians.
Dollar as chair of the Appropriations Committee has received $160,000 from the health industry, $57,000 from the finance, insurance and real estate industry among others. Berger (Senate president pro-tem) and Moore (House Speaker) received even more.
Each makes decisions daily that benefit those industries all the while pocketing the lobbyist dollars. That is a conflict of interest.
Charles van der Horst
Chapel Hill
This story was originally published January 21, 2017 at 6:18 PM with the headline "Charles van der Horst: Real conflicts of interest."