The budget debate rolls on in the General Assembly, with the House moving ever closer to putting its spending proposal together to respond to the Senate plan and begin negotiations to reach a final budget agreement before the fiscal year ends June 30th.
The passage of the budget signals the end of the two-year biennial session, so special interests are feverishly working behind the scenes, knowing this is their last chance to get legislation passed before 2011, when a new General Assembly is sworn in and everything starts over from zero.
A group of homeowners from Figure Eight Island and local government officials from coastal communities is among them, desperately trying to convince the House to consider ending the state's longstanding ban on seawalls and other hardened structures on the oceanfront.
North Carolina bans the structures, called terminal groins, because they increase erosion further down the coast and could encourage more development in fragile areas.
The Senate passed legislation last year to repeal the ban, but it never came up in the House, primarily because of the opposition Speaker Joe Hackney and other influential House leaders.
The General Assembly did order the Coastal Resources Commission to study the issue to inform the debate, but the study didn't help much, failing to come up with conclusive findings and prompting the Commission to say only that if lawmakers did decide to allow the hardened structures, they should make sure they meet specific financial and environmental conditions.
Now the coalition of local governments and development interests is making one last push, urging its members to contact Hackney directly and circulating misleading talking points to support their case. One claims that "the Coastal Resources Commission has studied terminal groins, stated that they are effective and made recommendations on their use."
Not exactly. The clever wording leads you to believe that the commission recommended the terminal groins but the report explicitly did not, only urging precautions if the ban were lifted.
The talking points don't mention that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has opposed the bill overturning the ban or that more than 40 scientists have signed a letter opposing it, citing the damage it would do to the coast.
The first attempt to weaken the ban came a few years ago and was spearheaded by a political action committee funded by residents of Figure Eight Island, the gated-community where many of the state's wealthy elite and major political donors have vacation homes. The PAC hired lobbyists, including former Lieutenant Governor Dennis Wicker and Peter Hans, a member of the UNC Board of Governors to take their case to lawmakers.
They tried both to carve out a special exemption from the ban for Figure Eight and to overturn the ban altogether. They were joined last year by group calling itself the Inlet Committee that hired more contract lobbyists and was funded by cities on the coast, meaning that taxpayer money was paying to influence state officials to ruin the coastline for all of us.
The plan and misleading claims worked fine in the Senate, which approved the bill to lift the ban with only ten dissenting votes. But the Senate has never been the problem. The majority there has been more than willing to sacrifice the future of the coast to protect Figure Eight and cater to development interests.
The House has been a different matter and still is, refusing to cave in to the demands of the privileged few on Figure Eight and the schemes of a handful of local governments to turn over the coastline to developers.
Let's hope that resistance continues and halts this last minute rush to ruin our coast.
