The Best and the Worst News Clipping

    July 22-August 18, 1983 The North Carolina I~ 9PtN10N' 23 
- .......-

The Best and The Worst 
AI Adams: 
"The Most 
Important 
Good Guy" 

Finally, AI Adams has power. In a Gen­
eral Assembly fat with aging rural con­
servatives, Adams' power is often all that 
stands between the poor and working 
people of North Carolina and legislative 
disaster. 

Now in his fifth term, the Wake County 
Democrat- for years outside the House 
leadership-has always led the fight 
against banks, credit card companies and 
loan sharks in their annual foray into 
the General Assembly for higher inter­
est charges, and has often emerged vic­
torious. 

In 1981, Adams threw his support be­
hind long-time ally Liston Ramsey for 
Speaker of the House. Ramsey won and 
brought Adams into the inner circle of 
power. 

Conservation Council lobbyist Bill 
Holman calls Adams "the champion of 
the champions." AFL-CIO Secretary­
Treasurer Christopher Scott says he is 
"the most important good guy" in the 
legislature, the "lynchpin of anything 
decent." 

It's his power that distinguishes AI 
Adams from other progressive legisla­

.~,..,-.;~.AS.dlairoi theAppropria ons Base 
Budget Committee, Adams has his hand 
around the legislative jugular: the budget. 

That's power-the power that kept 
state social spending at a decent level, 
that leveraged money to make up federal 
cuts in AFDC payments and Medicare, 
that funded abortions for indigent 
women and preserved the Coastal Area 
Management Act. 

As the legislature stumbled toward ad­
journment, Adams said he might not seek 
a sixth term. A bleak prospect. It may 
take years for someone else of his sensi­
tivity to poor people and consumers to 
attain the stature he has in the House . . 
Those are years we can't afford. 

Joe Hackney: 
"People Listen" 

It's unlikely but true. Rep. Joe Hack­
ney, a two-term, liberal Democrat from 
Chapel Hill, has influence. 

At the climax of the 1983 session it was 
the House, led by young Hackney, face­
to-face with the redoubtable Harold 
Hardison and the Senate slugging it out 
over the hazardous waste bill. In the only 
clear victory for environmentalists this 
session- the renewal of CAMA­
Hackney was a leading proponent of the 
bill in committee. He advocated contro­
versial environmental impact statements 
for large-scale agricultural land dearing, 
and he put in the bill to initiate a state 
fund to support cleanup of "orphan" 
waste dumps. 

Aside from his environmental work, 
Hackney can claim one of the major 
achievements by progressives in the 1983 
session: the passage of several of his bills 
mandating and funding community al­
ternatives to incarceration. 

While AI Adams holds the line against 
_ conservative adV'ances, Hackney is per-

~ ~ . 

petually on the offensive. He picks issues 
with a clear chance for victory and rides 
them hard. One lobbyist says, "He's so 
smart he's overcome that Chapel Hill 
thing," and adds, "He talks a lot and 
people listen." 

Harry Payne: 
Guts and 
Principles 

Harry Payne stutters. Sometimes he 
strains to get syllables past his lips. Yet he 
chose to become a trial lawyer and now 
speaks daily in the N.C. House. His legis­
lative record is just as unusual: He seems 
to act on pure principle. 

An activist legislator, Harry Payne, D­
Wilmington, makes all the right enemies. 
He fought the Farm Bureau with relish on 
the migrant slavery bill. The scourge of 
the insurance industry, he introduced a 

. bill to get consumers 60 cents in benefits 
for every dollar they pay in insurance 
premiums- far above the state's current 
level. He angered the industry still further 
by pushing for abadly needed study com­
mission on credit insurance ripoffs. 

AI Adams: "The lynchpin of any­
thing decent." Photo by Alma Blount 

Then he took on Gov. Hunt himself 
over the nuclear waste compact, holding 
the bill in committee and offering an 
unsuccessful amendment to store nuclear 
waste above ground instead of in land­
fills. Hunt threatened him with reprisals 
over pork-barrel projects for Wilming­
ton, but Payne didn't budge. On princi­
ple, he never does. 

Ollie Harris: 
Racist In 
The Senate 

Something distinguishes Ollie Harris, 
D-Kings Mtn., from even the most con­
servative of his colleagues: Harris is an 
overt racist who carries his racism into 
the committee meetings of the General 
Assembly itself. 

During a meeting of the Judiciary I 
committee this session Harris stunned 
observers with one racial slur. Sen. 
George Marion, D-Dobson, dashed in 
late to the .committee meeting wearing a 
particularly outlandish jacket. Harris, an 
undertaker by trade, turned to Marion 
and said, "The last time I saw a coat like 

An activist 
legislator~ Harry 
Payne makes all 

the right enemies. 

th;,tt I took it off a dead nigger." 
Harris himself first denied the quote, 

then admitted to it when confronted by a ' 
reporter from The Independent. He said 
he was "kidding," adding, "I'm as strong 
for civil rights as anybody." 

His record indicates otherwise. On the 
second Senate reading of the migrant 
slavery bill, the vote in favor was 44-1. 
Ollie Harris was the lone dissenter. When 
Sen. William Martin, D-Greensboro, in­
troduced a bill to eliminate the death 
penalty, Harris immediately moved to 
table it before it even got a chance to go to 
committee; and he sponsored a bill this 
session to speed execution of prisoners on 
death row. As chair of the Human Re­
sources Committee, Harris has consis­
tently ignored the health and child sup­
port needs of poor people. 

There is no place for Ollie Harris in the 
Senate of North Carolina. It's time the 
people of his district sent somebody else 
-anybody else- to Raleigh. 

Ben Tison: 
The Senator 
FromNCNB 

Ben Tison represents better than per­
haps anyone else the new brand of eco­
nomic conservatism in the General As­
sembly. An NCNB executive from Char­
lotte, Tison often votes the interests of his 
urban constituency on soCial issues like 
abortion. But when it comes to the inter­
ests of big business Tison votes with the 
Harrises and Hardisons every time. 

Tison is, in fact, the water carrier for 
Duke Power. He is a strong proponent of 
mandatory CWIP and an advocate of the 
"prospective fuel clause" whereby utili­
ties can charge customers for fuel costs 
before they are incurred. He spares no 
effort to aid the insurance companies as 
well, lining up with them this session on 
proposed changes in the negligence laws 
and workers' compensation apportion­
ment. 

Christopher Scott of the AFL-CIO says 
Tison "continually represents his busi­
ness associates as if the corporations went 
out and voted on election day." 

As rural domination of the legislature 
fades, we will be faced with more and 

ccThe last time 
I saw a coat like 
that I took it off 
a dead nigger.n 

- Sen. Ollie Harris 

more legislators like Ben Tison, coupling 
moderation on social issues with un~ 
daunted big business advocacy. Overt 
racism may be going out of style in state 
government. The power of big business 
isn't. 

Harold 
Hardison: 
Senate 
Gravedigger 

There is a slow kind of death in the 
General Assembly. Alan Briggs of the 
Academy of Trial Lawyers calls it "veto 
by Appropriations." For it is in the Senate 
Appropriations Committee that many 
major reform efforts meet their fate. 
There Sen. Harold Hardison, D-Deep 
Run, presides, the keeper of the financial 
gates in the Senate's graveyard. 

Some bills do make it out of Appropri­
ations, often laden with amendments that 
render them unrecognizable. The most 
famous of these amendments are the 
"Hardison amendments," riders at­
tached by Hardiso~ to environmental 

Harold Hardison: Industry's most 
powerful friend Photo by Alma Blount 

laws mandating that state environmental 
regulations can be no more stringent than 
federal EPA standards. They remain the 
scourge of the environmental lobby. 

Hardison struck again in 1983, oppos­
ing CAMA renewal, doing his level best 
to gut the hazardous waste bill and hold­
ing a workers' compensation back injury 
bill in Appropriations for over two 

. months. 
Almost all the citizens' lobbyists in the 

General Assembly ranked Hardison as 
industry's most powerful protector. 
Three different people called him "evil." 
But as a measure of Hardison's power, 
only one lobbyist was willing to talk 
about Hardison on the record. Hardison, 
said Bill Holman of the Conservation 
Council, puts his "perlional ego" ahead 
of North Carolina's need for a clean 
environment. 

It is possible to beat Harold Hardison 
in the General Assembly. Twice his at­
tempts to attach Hardison amendments 
to county sedimentation ordinances have 
failed. Advocates of state funding of 
abortions for indigent women annually 
beat back his challenges. 

But Hardison's defeats are exceptional. 
H is committee remains his personal 
graveyard, and the bills buried there all 
too often represent the best our legisla-
tors have to offer. ' ·