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Note: Follow today's testimony live at this Capital Beat blog post

ANALYSIS

RALEIGH — There will be many questions left unanswered even after the State Board of Elections rules on its investigation of former Gov. Mike Easley today .

Some may or may not be answered later when a federal grand jury wraps up its work. Others may be unanswerable, lost to hazy memories and incomplete records. Still others, like whether the state’s campaign finance system is too vulnerable to abuse, may have to be answered by the legislature.

But for purposes of their ruling today, board members are faced with three basic questions:

Did someone commit a crime that warrants jail time?

The board could refer some or all players in the case to a district attorney who could bring criminal charges. Although there were several lines of inquiry this week, the evidence most likely to provoke this reaction came from McQueen Campbell .

Campbell is a young businessman and an Easley family friend who the former governor appointed to the N.C. State board of trustees. He testified that Easley ordered him to circumvent campaign finance laws. Rather than bill repairs to the governor’s home directly, Campbell said, Easley asked him to submit bogus invoices for airplane flights.

Easley’s personal lawyer called that notion “ludicrous” and challenged the board to refer his client for prosecution.

“The fact of the matter is, no matter what happens, the public is going to question, did Mike Easley slip one over on the board? He’s saying, refer it. That’s his position,” Hicks said, adding he was making that statement at the behest of his client. “Do I think there’s enough evidence to justify a criminal case? Absolutely not.”

Board members said they’d only refer a case if there was evidence of actual wrongdoing.

It’s worth noting that a federal grand jury has been conducting its own probe into Easley, reaching far beyond questions of campaign finance, to judge by the subpoenas issued and witnesses called.

Did Easley’s campaign committee commit honest mistakes or purposely evade reporting requirements?

Much of the testimony this week centered on the value of trips Easley took on private planes owned by Campbell. Investigators and Campbell assert the value of those trips approached $100,000 and were never accounted for by either Democratic Party or Easley campaign records.

Lawyers for Easley contended those trips should have cost far less and, to boot, Campbell never invoiced for them, so there was no way for the campaign to record or pay the bills.

They also issued a mea culpa, saying there was no intent to break the law but tracking such flights can be maddening.

To illustrate the difficulty of accounting for private aircraft use, Easley committee lawyer John Wallace called a forensic accountant to testify Thursday about the flights by Republican gubernatorial candidates over the past two election cycles.

Patrick Ballantine in 2004 and Fred Smith and Bill Graham in 2008 all used aircraft to campaign across the state. While Smith and Graham had some ownership of their planes, none of the three properly accounted for the use of the planes on their campaign finance forms, Wallace said.

“We’re not, by introducing that evidence, attempting to suggest that the board should in any way excuse the Easley committee’s failure to report all its flights,” Wallace said after the hearing. “I want the board to be aware of the challenge that’s faced by all the candidates, aware that the problem is a continuing one.”

Although the Easley committee and Democratic Party already have surrendered some money as compensation for failing to report the flights, the board could issue further fines.

Were the Easley campaign and the Democratic Party too closely joined at the hip?

That’s a funny question, given that Easley was known more for butting heads with party functionaries than for playing nice. But that was the question that kicked off this week’s hearings, raised by Bob Hall , head of the government watchdog group Democracy North Carolina.

He said it looked as if the Easley campaign was funneling large contributions through the party. Individual candidates usually can take only $8,000 per election cycle from any particular donor. But the same donors can give unlimited amounts to parties.

Internal memos entered into evidence exposed plans to get around the individual donor limits and tap high rollers for money that could be used to help Easley win election in 2000 and re-election in 2004.

Board members must decide whether that cooperation amounted to creating an illegal “shadow” committee within the party that was, in reality, controlled by Easley.

Former party Executive Director Scott Falmlen testified that he always maintained control and discretion over party funds.

“I never received any direction from the Easley committee,” Falmlen told the board Thursday. “I received requests from the Easley committee.”

Hall said it made no sense for a candidate to raise huge sums of money without expecting some control over it.

“Mr. Hall, isn’t a lot of the problems you find with this due to what our law is?” asked Robert Cordle, a Democrat who asked questions decidedly friendly to his party.

“The law is clear on the $4,000 (limit) and also on the circumvention of the $4,000 limit,” Hall said. But Cordle and other board members pressed Hall, saying that the bookkeeping showed the party and the Easley campaign kept their books separate.

“That’s where the fantasy is here,” Hall said. “This is beyond that, we’re beyond that and we need to recognize that.”

If the state board decides the arms-length appearance between the candidate and party was a fantasy, the fines could run into six figures.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com