How Good is Gov. Cooper at Vetting his Hires? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post, by Francis De Luca, was originally published in the Environment & Energy section of Civitas's online edition.

    Has Roy Cooper nominated a telephone scammer? Governor Roy Cooper's nomination of Michael Regan to be the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality is troubling in light of information obtained from the NC Secretary of States Office (NCSOS).

    Regan was with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) from 2008-2016. During that time EDF was actively soliciting money by phone from North Carolina taxpayers.

    During his time there, EDF reported taking in over $4.6 million from Tar Heels - yet only used about $1.3 million for charitable purposes according to published records at the NCSOS website.

    While many people register with the Do Not Call list to avoid annoying phone calls - charities are exempt from the national and state laws prohibiting unsolicited calls.

    While Regan was employed in a leadership position at EDF, the organization used the law to raise millions of dollars from good people concerned about the environment, but used less than 1 out of 3 dollars (under 29%) to actually support environmental work.

    What makes this ironic is Roy Cooper has loudly proclaimed himself the defender of the consumer. In 2011 he actually hired Ken Eudy (now his senior adviser) to do a presentation to the NC Department of Justice on "financial scams." I guess that presentation didn't include how to keep radical environmental groups from fleecing our citizens...

    Cooper needs to do a better job vetting his nominees and stop nominating controversial, radical environmentalists - who also look like they are fleecing our citizens!