A school voucher lobbying group flew N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis and 10 other lawmakers to Miami in March despite a state law banning lobbyist gifts to lawmakers. Within a month of what was billed as an educational trip by Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, the group’s political action [Continue Reading...]
A proposed virtual charter school with ties to a Wall Street-traded education company wants to open this fall, and filed a legal grievance to try and force the N.C. State Board of Education to review the school’s application. N.C. Learns, a newly-formed non-profit organization that’s partnered with the online education company K12, [Continue Reading...]
Lottery tickets and scratch-off instant games continue to be the most popular in North Carolina counties saddled with some of the state’s highest poverty rates. Statewide, North Carolinian adults spent $212 per capita on the lottery in 2011, according to an N.C. Policy Watch analysis of lottery sales information as well as adult [Continue Reading...]
In the midst of last year’s contentious state budget negotiations, a prominent state lawmaker quietly secured $62,000 in state-approved economic development grants to expand his private law practice. N.C. Rep. Tim Moore, a five-term Cleveland County Republican, received a $30,000 grant of federal community development money last spring from the N.C. Department of [Continue Reading...]
When Kenneth Moore moved back to this Halifax County town a year ago, he hoped to trade in the street violence of Philadelphia for the peace and safety he remembered from growing up in this Eastern North Carolina. But Moore hasn’t been able to find that since arriving back in the rural town [Continue Reading...]
The federal agriculture department has opened an ongoing investigation into state Rep. Stephen LaRoque’s two economic development non-profits, a spokeswoman for the agency confirmed. The Kinston-based non-profits – the East Carolina Development Company and Piedmont Development Company – have taken in $8 million in federal funding since 1997, as part of [Continue Reading...]
The nation’s largest for-profit virtual education company quietly took steps this week to open up an online charter school in North Carolina that would subsist off of public funds and siphon off profits to Wall Street investors. The move comes as the company, K12, Inc., faces mounting questions in others states [Continue Reading...]
Attempts by the state legislature to pass local bills requiring voters in some, but not all, counties to produce photo identification at the polls would fail to meet the constitutional guarantee of equal protection, according to a recent analysis by the N.C. Attorney General’s Office. The state Department of Justice, in a Nov. [Continue Reading...]
Lawmakers should conduct a bipartisan ethics investigation into the business dealings of state Rep. Stephen LaRoque, a top Democrat in the legislature said today. House Minority Leader Joe Hackney, the Democratic leader in the Republican-controlled N.C. House of Representatives, wants a bipartisan committee to look into Stephen LaRoque, an embattled Kinston Republican lawmaker [Continue Reading...]
State Rep. Stephen LaRoque’s federally-funded non-profit will pay thousands in contempt of court fines as part of the state lawmaker’s agreement to dismiss a defamation lawsuit against a political opponent. LaRoque, a Kinston Republican, dismissed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday that he filed a year ago against the state Democratic Party and Van Braxton, [Continue Reading...]
Behind the golf resorts, upscale retirement villages and equestrian farms that dot Moore County is a worsening economic reality for thousands barely making it in one of the state’s most affluent counties. The county in North Carolina’s Sandhills has a skyrocketing poverty rate growing at a clip that’s been surpassed by only four other counties [Continue Reading...]
A federal tax return for Stephen LaRoque’s nonprofit didn’t disclose a loan given to the lawmaker’s private company last year, despite the IRS asking if the nonprofit’s leaders benefitted from the charity. The loan’s omission on the tax forms could put LaRoque, a Kinston Republican serving as a co-chair of the state legislature’s [Continue Reading...]
Failure is not an option. Christy Zemcik used to hang that quote in her middle-school classroom, to inspire her students. Now, she uses it as a daily mantra to get her through her grim reality of being jobless, homeless and broke. Zemcik, of Charlotte, has been out of work since being laid off [Continue Reading...]
With a gun strapped to his hip and a hat emblazoned with “ICE,” Tommie Rand Pierce told hundreds of immigrants in North Carolina that, for a fee, he could get them the legal status they wanted. But federal authorities, notified of Pierce’s dealing by an attorney with the N.C. Justice Center, now [Continue Reading...]
N.C. State Rep. Stephen LaRoque tapped a federally-funded non-profit he ran to loan his own company money, according to documents filed in the Lenoir County Courthouse this week. LaRoque Management Group, the for-profit company LaRoque owns, received a $200,000 loan at zero-percent interest in July 2010 from East Carolina Development Company, according to [Continue Reading...]
