A North Carolina legislative committee is drawing passionate support — and criticism — as it pushes forward with recommendations to inject more secrecy and politics into a group tasked with disciplining lawyers across the state. 

The committee plans to meet again this week, fresh off a dramatic hearing Tuesday, during which members of the committee sniped at one another, at least one appeared to have had no idea they’d be asked to vote on one particularly contentious item, and security had to forcibly eject a former state lawmaker who had refused to stop yelling accusations from a podium. 

The target of that speaker, as well as the committee he was addressing: the North Carolina State Bar, a regulatory board in charge of licensing and disciplining North Carolina’s lawyers.

It’s the central focus of the State Bar Grievance Review Committee, which has tussled with the Bar and its supporters in the state’s legal community as it has sought to investigate allegations of cancel culture against politically outspoken lawyers and as it has recommended other reforms or demanded political inquisitions.

The committee, created in 2024, is a rarity in North Carolina: It consists of zero members of the state legislature. It’s led by Larry Shaheen and former state Sen. Woody White, two GOP insiders close with Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger. It can’t make changes on its own but can recommend them to the state legislature for approval. 

Some previous suggestions by the committee have won broad and bipartisan approval at the state legislature, such as limiting who can report lawyers to the Bar.

But its most recent proposals — including making lawyer discipline a more secretive process, controlled entirely by political appointees — has raised concerns inside the Bar, as well as with some of the lawyers who make a living fighting the Bar on behalf of their clients.

Some of the new changes Shaheen and others on the committee are backing would ban non-lawyers from being involved in hearings of the Bar’s Disciplinary Hearing Commission, which is tasked with deciding whether — and how harshly — to crack down on lawyers accused of things such as stealing clients’ money, sleeping with clients or abusing drugs or alcohol.

The committee also wants to staff the Disciplinary Hearing Commission entirely with political appointees — almost all of them Republicans — and decrease transparency in the process, making more details confidential. 

The Bar has deep reservations about those and other proposed changes, saying they’ll harm its goal of protecting members of the public from predatory or simply bad lawyers. The committee has not asked for the Bar’s input during this process, and relations between the two groups have become strained. 

State Bar Executive Director Peter Bolac told WRAL he questions the need for these changes, which he said appear to have been put together “without broader input or a comprehensive understanding of the State Bar’s work.”

Bolac was at the most recent hearing on the changes, but he wasn’t invited to speak — whether to provide his own presentation, or to answer questions and concerns. He told WRAL the committee should attempt to learn how the Bar works, first, before trying to change it.

“Without a clear and shared understanding of how the current system functions, it is difficult to engage in a meaningful discussion about potential improvements,” Bolac said. “Nevertheless, we remain willing to participate in thoughtful, good-faith dialogue aimed at strengthening the system.”

Shaheen says he knows firsthand how the process works, having served on Disciplinary Hearing Commission he and his committee are now targeting. And he sees it as his mission to drastically change the way it operates, saying he has lost friends because of his association with it. “I have several lawyers, who have been long term friends of mine, who have come to me and, because of some of the things said to them, feel like I’m the devil,” Shaheen said.

‘Radical changes’

The committee’s most recent meeting was just the latest in the committee’s years-long attempt to make reforms to the Bar.

Alan Schneider, who has represented more lawyers facing disciplinary hearings than perhaps anyone else in North Carolina, often finds himself at odds with the Bar. He previously gave a formal presentation to this same committee on suggestions to reform it.

But he says the latest suggestions, to ramp up the political appointments, go too far.

“There were problems in the past in terms of maybe old cases weren’t heard as quickly as they could,” Schneider said. “But the changes were made. The State Bar heard, and the State Bar has acted. What I’d like this panel to understand is the necessity for all these radical changes. I believe it is unnecessary.”

White and Shaheen said the changes are necessary. Shaheen said increasing political control over the Bar would increase accountability, by making members of the Bar answer to politicians who ultimately answer to the people.

Under the new proposal, 19 of its 26 members would be chosen by various Republican politicians and the remaining seven would be chosen by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein.

“To have more folks appointed by public officials, we want to create more accountability, to make sure that the process is not weaponized against attorneys,” Shaheen said at the committee’s meeting on Tuesday.

White defended the push for less transparency.

“Nowadays when you can weaponize allegations in a nanosecond and publish them, put them out in a political context … that is unfair, for a lawyer to be accused of something before he or she is convicted of it,” he said.

‘Such sweeping reforms’

The committee is set to meet again Wednesday. The committee hadn’t released information on what issues it plans to discuss, but it’s expected to be closely watched by the state’s legal community.

The relative lack of public notice on what this committee is considering also raised the ire of interested parties at last week’s meeting.

Jane Meyer, a Tharrington Smith attorney in Raleigh who also chairs the Bar’s disciplinary group, questioned why the proposals voted on Tuesday were only made public a few days beforehand, and with no opportunity for the Bar — or the general public — to respond.

White had originally attempted pushing through a vote Tuesday without allowing members of the public to speak. But he relented after Andrew Heath, a conservative lobbyist who serves on the committee, urged him to allow Meyer and other members of the public to have two minutes each to give brief comments.

“That troubles me — that such sweeping reforms are being considered without much study, and without asking for input,” Meyer told the committee.

Given the sweeping nature of their recommendations, Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby suggested the committee should “do a little bit more study and maybe get a little bit more information.” 

Willoughby specifically criticized the proposal to make it harder for members of the public to learn about accusations against attorneys.

“We should not be trying to restrict and make things more confidential,” he said. “We should make it more open. The public needs to have quicker and more complete access. I think people find their lawyers now, not from their Sunday school class or their bowling league or their Lions Club, but through the internet searches. They want information.”

They were among the passionate speakers at the hearing, but perhaps not the most passionate. 

Two-plus hours into its most recent hearing on Tuesday, former state Rep. Edwin Hardy had his mic cut off and then was escorted out of the room by security. He was several minutes into speaking during the open public comment period as his comments turned into a rant involving former President Barack Obama, the late Gov. Jim Hunt, allegations of political favoritism, cocaine usage and more.

Hardy, a Republican who used to represent Beaufort County in the state House, was the only one ejected — even though he was also one of the few speakers who appeared to support the committee’s goal of major overhauls to the Bar. His comments were in line with the allegations White, Shaheen and others have been claiming for years about cancel culture.

“I got very vocal online because Obama won,” Hardy told the committee. “… Well guess what: I was very vocal, and the day after Obama won reelection, I got a phone call and the Bar told me I had been randomly picked for an audit.”

State records show that that 2012 audit found Hardy had been using poor accounting practices with trust accounts where he held onto money for clients — including taking actions that “allowed entrusted funds to be disbursed in a manner not authorized by or for the benefit of the client.”

However, the Bar found he didn’t steal any of the money, and that there wasn’t any evidence of his clients being harmed by his trust fund missteps. It allowed him to continue practicing law.

• A growing divide exists between new, successful shopping centers and older, stagnating properties from the 1970s.
• Newer centers with national tenants are commanding record-high rents, while older centers struggle with vacancies.
• Experts suggest that older retail centers must be torn down or significantly reimagined to remain competitive.

Contrary to popular belief, the internet did not kill retail and Oklahoma City is seeing an influx of new construction.  

But a new retail survey shows a growing divide emerging between the success of newer shopping destinations and fading fortunes of those built in the age of disco balls and leisure suits. 

Jim Parrack, who leads the retail division at Price Edwards, said the Oklahoma City metro at first glance is doing well compared to the national market in which rental rates are going up and new development is slowing amidst higher construction costs and rising economic uncertainty. 

Large new retail properties in Oklahoma City include OAK, the mixed-use upscale development at Northwest Expressway and Pennsylvania Avenue, Grove Marketplace at NW 178 and Portland Avenue, and Rose Creek Plaza at NW 164 and May Avenue.  

And a next-generation prototype Walmart Supercenter, meanwhile, is being built as part of Deercrest Marketplace at the corner of John Kilpatrick Turnpike and Rockwell Avenue. More announced retailers are moving forward in northwest Oklahoma City, including a Scheels store and a Crest Foods. 

Legacy at Covell in Edmond is set to include some of the biggest names in retail and dining, including Whole Foods and a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. And multiple new developments continue in Norman, including construction of a large development anchored by a Target store. 

More: This luxury grocer is the first Oklahoma-based business to open in OAK

“Retail in general is doing better than people tend to think,” Parrack told The Oklahoman. “There is a lot of negative news nationally. But even nationally, retail is doing better than people often give credit for mainly because people are still spending money.” 

Nationally, he said, not a lot of retail construction is being seen, which has helped occupancy rates and landlords are able to raise rents and are “doing pretty well.” 

“There has developed, over the past couple of years, what I would call good centers and then there are centers that have fallen off pace. The good centers are those that are newer and have mostly national tenants.” 

Older locations seeing rent stagnating

Parrack identified Oklahoma City’s two power retail corridors where much of the growth is happening as those at Northwest Expressway and Pennsylvania Avenue, and along the Memorial Road corridor between Portland and Western avenues, which Parrack said has the highest concentration of retail in the city.  

“The other locations are those that are older, maybe aren’t configured right and have more mom-and-pop tenants,” Parrack said. “The surprising part to me is the gap between the two has widened significantly. We’re seeing certain centers, like Classen Curve, get $50 to $60 a foot in rent. There are some small strip shopping centers in that same range. And we haven’t seen those kinds of rents here ever.” 

Older centers, meanwhile, are seeing rents stagnating between $12 and $14 a foot.  

“The discrepancy is very noticeable,” Parrack said. “A lot of the older centers in the ‘70s are in that older tier. Sometimes the markets have grown away from them. But sometimes the centers just get old; the ceilings are low and maybe their spaces are too deep. Something is wrong with them.”