Wide-ranging appointments bill would put reprimanded lawyer on state bar's disciplinary committee

Republican state lawmakers on Wednesday made a surprising appointment to the North Carolina State Bar Disciplinary Hearing Commission: a man who nearly lost his law license before that commission in part because he didn’t pay his taxes for six years.

Kenneth Robert Davis, the in-house attorney for the Robeson County Commission, was one of dozens of state appointees approved Wednesday on a pair of party line votes as the General Assembly’s Republican majority named new members to various boards, including the State Board of Elections.

Some of those appointments may never be seated because of pending legal challenges filed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is fighting legislation from earlier this year that shrunk his own appointment authority and reworked the State Board of Elections. One of those lawsuits is due in court next week, and they’re both part of a long-running power struggle.

Appointments to the Board of Elections, State Board of Transportation and North Carolina Utilities Commission, which sets electricity rates, hang in the balance, as do appointments to other important decision-making boards.

State lawmakers combined high profile appointments to those boards with more mundane ones Wednesday, including four appointments to the state bar’s disciplinary commission, which hears complaints against attorneys. That includes Davis, who in May signed a consent order with the commission in which he acknowledged that he failed to pay federal taxes from 2013 to 2018 and failed to pay state income taxes from 1997 to 1999 and again from 2014 to 2019.

Davis also acknowledged mishandling client money as recently as 2019. The commission suspended his law license for three years, but it stayed that punishment for five years, essentially letting Davis practice law during a probationary period, as long as he fulfills 19 different requirements spelled out in the consent order.

That order says Davis has paid his back taxes, cooperated with the disciplinary commission and that he has “an excellent reputation in the community.” It also says a cocaine addiction caused him to close his law practice in 2011 causing “a ripple effect that compromised” his ability to file and pay his income taxes for several years.

Davis didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Speaker of the House Tim Moore, who recommended the appointment, said Wednesday that he knew Davis had some issues but that he’d been told “it was like a minor bookkeeping thing.”

Now that he has more details, Moore said, “we’ll have some discussion on it,” signaling that the appointment might be short lived.

Davis’ appointment is part of Senate Bill 761, a five-page bill of appointments that was introduced at the General Assembly Tuesday and passed both legislative chambers Wednesday on votes that broke on party lines. Republicans voted for it and Democrats against, primarily because some of the appointments in the bill used to belong to the governor.

Rep. Tim Longest, D-Wake, called the bill “the fulfillment of the consolidation of powers in this body … that constitutionally belong to the governor.”

Republican leaders have said repeatedly that the state constitution empowers the General Assembly to delegate appointment powers, and that they feel the changes they’ve made are constitutional. Similar changes have been rejected in the past, but in November North Carolina voters elected a Republican-majority state Supreme Court that could overturn past precedent.

Republican lawmakers are also relying on the new Supreme Court majority to uphold an overhaul of the State Board of Elections. Traditionally a majority of State Board of Elections members have been from the sitting governor’s party. Republican lawmakers say it would be more fair to have an evenly divided board, and they created one earlier this year.

Democrats fear the new board will deadlock, kicking key election decisions to the Republican-controlled legislature. Republican appointees to the new board of elections were part of Senate Bill 761:

• Stacy “Four” Eggers, who serves on the current board
• Kevin N. Lewis, who serves on the current board
• Angela Ashworth Hawkins, who is on the Wake County Board of Elections
• Martin Oakes of Lincoln County

The board’s four Democratic appointees will be named at a later time, though it remains to be seen whether the board will be seated. Cooper has also sued over the bill creating this board.

Moore, R-Cleveland, said he’s proud of the appointment power shifts the legislature has approved, and the ensuing appointments.

WRAL State Government Reporter Will Doran contributed to this report.