Good riddance.

With Tim Moore and Jason Saine leaving the NC House for $$$greener$$ pastures, the stink in-and-around the Jones Street legislative complex should be lessened by about — oh — 11 percent.  Those two took the lessons they learned from their mentor Thom Tillis — about turning public service into self-service — to whole new lows.

In 2009, then speaker Joe Hackney (D) took one of his members, Ty Harrell (D-Raleigh) to task for using his campaign fund as a slush fund to pay clearly personal expenses.

Jason Saine got caught using his campaign funds — supplied mostly by lobbyists and others with business before the House — to pay for airplane tickets, hotel rooms, Las Vegas stays, two to three meals per day, dry cleaning and more than $19,000 in clothing.

We even found a payment his campaign made to a corporation that had been administratively dissolved the previous year. 

The excuse used to run Harrell out of the House was that it was “illegal”” to use campaign funds for personal use.  In the case of Saine, we got some nonsense about how campaign funds can be used for any activity that is part of being a legislator.  The “logic” goes on to suggest that the honorables in the House are acting as legislators 24-7-365.  So, EVERYTHING is part of being a legislator. (*Got it?*)

Saine is House leadership’s point man on finance and the budget.  Yet, he had monstrous difficulties with properly filling out his campaign expense reports.  After several clumsy, embarrassing attempts, a NCGOPe politico took over the task of filling out the campaign finance reports for the House’s “finance guru.”

To top it all off, Saine has reportedly involved himself in some PACs that promote governing-class GOPe candidates at the expense of actual conservatives.

Well, Saine appears to have found himself a high-paying job in a field — mental health — he apparently has no experience in.  (*Of course, being a chairman in the NC House can be a “high-paying” job, if you play your cards right and check your ethics at the door.*)

That is starting to be a thing in the North Carolina House.  Majority Leader John Bell was named president of a CBD, hemp company.  I know he’s been in insurance sales, and was in “marketing” for a credit union.  But I’m not aware of Bell ever running a company or working with CBD or hemp. (*Ah, the magic of being in the NC House majority’s leadership.  You TOO can be a CEO or president!*)

For what it’s worth, Bell is in line to be the next House Rules Committee chairman — IF the GOP keeps its majority and Destin Hall moves up to the speaker’s podium. That would put him in charge of determining whether the legislation you want ever gets to see the light of day.

I am hearing that the people of Cleveland County have nominated a conservative, grassroots replacement for Tim Moore.  Lincoln County will get to appoint a replacement for Saine to run in November.  You folks in Lincoln —  as your penance for making the rest of us endure Saine, you owe us a respectable, ethical candidate.