It was a bad week for Pat McCrory. This week in CIB:

Campaign Watch: Welcome to the Dirty Dozen, Governor

The Conservation Votes PAC announced that NC Governor Pat McCrory has been named to the “Dirty Dozen in the States” list. That list is a state-level analogue to the national League of Conservation Voters (LCV) trademark federal “Dirty Dozen” list of the worst candidates for Congress in each election cycle. McCrory is the third individual nationwide named to LCV’s “Dirty Dozen in the States” list this year. At the same time, Conservation Votes PAC also announced plans to spend $750,000 on a “persuasion canvass effort to engage Charlotte area voters” in the North Carolina governor’s race.

In its news release announcing both items, Conservation Votes PAC director Dan Crawford said, “Governor McCrory is such a threat to North Carolina’s clean air and water that he’s earned national attention. As Governor, he’s made sure Duke Energy, his former employer, received sweetheart deals to avoid cleaning up its toxic coal ash mess, including the massive coal ash spill and the 33 coal ash ponds that continue to poison our drinking water. McCrory even signed the Polluter Protection Act, which brazenly throws out critical environmental protections by letting polluters police themselves – and even lets them off the hook for civil penalties if they ‘self-report’ their mess. We’re ready to make sure voters learn that McCrory has been a great friend to Big Polluters, not to the people of North Carolina.”

Executive Watch: Deniability Derailed on Toxic Politics

Representatives of the McCrory Administration and his re-election campaign spent much of last week attempting to smear a career public servant and widely respected scientist, State Toxicologist Kenneth Rudo. This sorry spectacle of politics at its rock-bottom worst followed the release in court filings of parts of the transcript of Rudo’s deposition (sworn out-of-court testimony in a pre-trial process) in a case against Duke Energy over coal ash pits.
In the deposition, Rudo is questioned by attorneys for parties to the case. Parties to the case include Duke Energy, the state of North Carolina through its environmental agency, and citizen environmental groups represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC).

Rudo details a March 2015 meeting with McCrory Administration officials, during which he is called upon to explain why he can’t check off on a letter falsely reassuring contaminated well owners that their water met federal drinking water standards. The revelation that he was being pressured to do so in the first place is damning enough to worsen a deepening public health scandal reaching the highest levels of an administration already under sustained fire for its poor environmental decisions.

What seemed to set off the explosion of attacks on Rudo, however, was the part of his testimony in which he recounts that Governor Pat McCrory was personally involved. Rudo stated that he was given to understand that McCrory himself wanted him called on the carpet for questioning. Rudo further recalled that McCrory personally called in to a meeting participant during the meeting.

Why was that the breaking point for McCrory’s spokespeople? After all, the meeting was at the governor’s office, with the governor’s communications director (Josh Ellis) and the Department of Health and Human Services’ communications director (Kendra Gerlach). The subject of the meeting—why aren’t you with the program, Dr. Rudo?—is also undisputed. It’s the sub-point of whether McCrory personally asked for Rudo to come in, and then called in to speak with Ellis during the meeting, that the governor’s office now disputes.

Curiously, there’s been no statement released from the Governor personally denying his involvement, or from Josh Ellis personally denying that he got a call from the Governor during the March 2015 meeting. There was just an unscheduled late-evening news call last Tuesday by the Governor’s chief of staff (Thomas Stith) to read a statement denying McCrory’s direct involvement and accusing Rudo of lying. This was followed up in social media and elsewhere by attacks from McCrory’s campaign and “a publication run by ex-McCrory staffers.” The Governor himself has not been made available for questions.

Perhaps Governor McCrory’s staff are simply operating under orders to buy time and confuse the issues for public consumption. After all, the legal representatives for Duke Energy have been fighting to keep the Rudo deposition from being released to public review. (Read the currently publicly available sections of the deposition here.

The parties involved all plainly understand the significance of the State Toxicologist’s directly advising his political superiors, including the Governor’s office, that they were making scientifically inaccurate and dangerous statements to well users whose health was at risk.

Perhaps the Governor’s re-election campaign is even preparing an attempt to throw his most direct representatives and highest subordinate officials “under the bus,” by claiming that McCrory wasn’t personally involved in this public health scandal. Left unchallenged, Rudo’s testimony derails what is known in legal/political terms as McCrory’s “deniability” of a direct hand in the effort to cover up public health risks from toxic pollution of people’s well water.

We don’t know. What we do know is that in the court of public opinion they are wasting their time. Whether on the basis of ignorance or malfeasance, Governor Pat McCrory will be held personally responsible at the ballot box this fall for his administration’s failure to protect public health from contaminated drinking water. Whether or not he owns that failure, that failure will own him.

Coast Watch: Scientist Resigns from NC Coastal Panel

Dr. Stanley Riggs, distinguished professor of geology at East Carolina University, has resigned from a key state coastal scientific advisory panel over what he terms a series of “political actions” by the state that have rendered the panel “ineffective,” and by rejecting its advice “threaten the future viability of NC’s coastal economy and jeopardize [its] coastal resources.”

Riggs has served on the NC Division of Coastal Management’s Science Panel, advising the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission, since its founding in 1996. His resignation letter cites “a slow drip drip” of bad decisions on coastal planning and resource issues. “I want people to realize people and ecosystem are in danger out there,” he said.

Education & Resources: Deniability Derailed on Toxic Politics

A report released by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), “Dismantled,” documents four years of dramatic retreat from environmental and public health safeguards in North Carolina. The report goes into actions by the state executive and legislative branches involving “cuts to state agency funding, bans on environmental protections, and prioritizing short-term gains for special interests over long-term planning to benefit all North Carolinians.”

Read the details here.

That’s our report for this week.