Four waste disposal companies propose to build mega-dumps in North Carolina and haul, literally, mountains of garbage from New York, Massachusetts and other states here and dispose of it.

Democratic strategist Joe Sinsheimer has filed a complaint with the State Board of Elections against Representative Thomas Wright, which gives a glimpse of how the ‘backstage politics’ of one of the dumps worked in the legislature. Representative Wright, from Wilmington, supports allowing Hugo Neu corporation to build a mega-dump in Navassa. Last session, four bills were filed to stop the dump; two passed the Senate, but none passed the House where Wright, an ally of Speaker Jim Black, serves. What no one knew back then (around the time the House killed the bills) was that Representative Wright, who faced a primary challenge, was receiving donations from Hugo Neu executives and lobbyists. Why didn’t they know? Because Wright failed to report the contributions to the Board of Elections. (Later, after his primary, Wright did report the donations, but he made sure they wouldn’t be an issue in his General Election by failing to disclose the occupations of the executives.) As Mr. Sinsheimer says in his complaint, Wright effectively guaranteed that there would be no press coverage of these contributions until after his November 2006 general election.

Representative Wright also ‘guaranteed’ something else; when a special legislative committee was mandated to study the dumps he was eligible to serve as no one knew of his conflict of interest and, in fact, he was appointed to a committee by Speaker Black.

This is how ‘backstage politics’ works in the legislature: A representative blocks a bill for a waste company, refuses to tell the press where he stands on the waste dump (in his primary) and doesn’t report the donations from executives and lobbyists, so the voters in his district never know. Then he is appointed to the special committee so he can, presumably, oppose regulations that would stop the landfill. That’s the mixture of politics and money in the State Legislature that the press calls ‘pay to play’ – and it’s become business as usual in Raleigh.

What are the consequences? If the four dumps are built (one, in Hyde County, is actually in a flood plain) North Carolina becomes one of the largest trash importers in the nation, and no one has done a study of the environmental or economic consequences.

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