Atlantic Coast pipeline fight leads to whistleblower bill

A unanimous Senate voted Thursday to tweak whistleblower protections for state employees, legislation that bubbled out of an ongoing fight between Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's administration and the Republican legislative majority.

Legislative leadership hired private investigators to look into administration negotiations on the planned Atlantic Coast Pipeline, but the administration told rank-and-file employees not to talk to them.

The two sides have been back and forth over the issue via official letters. Senate leadership said it repeatedly asked the Governor's Office and Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Michael Regan to promise they wouldn't retaliate if employees agreed to speak with investigators anyway. Leadership said the promises never came.

Senate Bill 127 expands existing whistleblower protections to employees who speak to appointed legislative panels or agents employed by the panel. It was amended on the floor to require all state agency heads to inform their employees of the change.

The bill passed 44-0 Thursday, with bipartisan support, and heads to the House for more discussion. Cooper spokesman Ford Porter said the administration " fully supports protecting state employees from partisan politicians as well as partisan private investigators" and any suggestion that the administration would fire employees for talking to investigators was "a baseless claim."

"Legislative Republicans continue to scrape the bottom of the barrel looking for nonsense political attacks," Porter said in an email.

Senate leaders said the bill puts North Carolina whistleblower protections more in line with those in other states. Current North Carolina law protects employees, but it doesn't specifically protect employees who want to speak with legislators or investigators brought in by the legislature outside of a public hearing.

The Cooper administration has said it's willing to see these interviews happen in public hearings, but Republican leaders want investigators to speak to employees privately.

Legislators are probing whether the Cooper administration did anything wrong in negotiating a $57.8 million fund promised by Atlantic Coast Pipeline builders while DEQ finalized a key permit for the pipeline.