North Carolina state employees won't be able to jump on Kalshi or Polymarket and bet using information they gained at work, thanks to an executive order Gov. Josh Stein signed Wednesday.
"Public employees with insider information must not participate in these prediction markets. People need to have faith that their public servants are working on their behalf, not leveraging their knowledge unfairly to win a bet and make money," said Stein, a Democrat.
The order is, Stein said, effectively an extension of the state's Ethics Act, which already bans public servants and legislative employees from boosting their financial interest by either disclosing or using non-public information gained through their jobs.
Stein told the press that he does not have any reason to believe any North Carolina state employees are making trades based off of inside knowledge but that it will increase the public's confidence that their interests are being served.
"I don't expect the executive order will impact (employees') daily lives, but what it will do is increase the public's confidence that we work for them," Stein said.
North Carolina joins California, Illinois, Maryland and New York in banning state employees from profiting off of non-public knowledge on prediction markets. All five states have Democratic governors.
The order applies to employees of all Executive Branch agencies, as well as their boards and commissions.
It does not apply to other Council of State agencies, the N.C. General Assembly, the N.C. Judicial Branch or the University of North Carolina System, although Stein's order urges leaders of those institutions to adopt a similar policy.
Stein's executive order is coming weeks after a soldier stationed at Fort Bragg who was involved in planning the operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was charged federally with using inside knowledge to place trades that earned him about $400,000 on Polymarket.
Asked if he signed the new order because of that case or because of wider concerns that he is hearing from the public about dozens of bets that seem to have been made with inside knowledge, Stein said, "All of the above. The reason we put in this executive order on ensuring that public employees do not exploit non-public information for their own personal gain is because there is story after story after story of insane bets, bets of millions of dollars, immediately before an action takes place and then the action takes place. And it's corrupting."
