When a Resignation Comes in Close Proximity to a Scandal

Lee Roberts has been Governor Pat McCrory's budget director for only 16 months, but he announced his resignation on Thursday very soon after he was implicated in paving the way for the pay-to-play prison maintenance contract that has been dogging and besmirching the already besmirched McCrory administration.

According to the News&Observer,

After Thursday’s announcement, Roberts said that neither the prison contract issue nor the high-pressure politics of the job prompted him to resign.

You can buy that (along with the large stone bridge I have stored in my garage) if you want to, and welcome to your credulity.

McCrory's Growing Political Corruption Scandal

North Carolina's real bossman, Phil Berger, is obviously pissed about the evolving scandal over the private prison maintenance contract given to McCrory pal Graeme Keith's company, and he's launching an investigation.

The Government Operations Committee, which Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore jointly chair, will convene a hearing on the contract on Nov. 18. The committee is calling three key men to testify: Secretary of Public Safety Frank Perry (who had warned that the contract was going to taint the governor's office), Commissioner of Prisons David Guice, and major playah Lee Roberts, director of the Office of State Budget and Management, who appears to have misled bossman Berger in getting a no-sweetheart-contract clause out of the state budget.

From this N&O report, it really seems that Lee Roberts was a considerable enabler of the governor's corruption. You'll remember perhaps that Roberts, who's the son of political commentator Cokie Roberts, replaced Art Pope as McCrory's budget director.