Talk about bad timing. The folks pushing the latest version of a voucher scheme for private schools descended on the General Assembly Tuesday with a crowd of roughly a thousand, mostly students and officials at religious schools. The schools stand to gain the most from the plan that would allow corporations to receive [Continue Reading...]
The full House was originally scheduled to give final approval to its version of the state budget this Wednesday, at least according the budget schedule released by legislative leaders a few weeks ago. That was the plan as late as last week after weeks of secret budget meetings that were confirmed by a [Continue Reading...]
2—number of years until hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” will be allowed in North Carolina under legislation introduced in the General Assembly by Sen. Bob Rucho (“Fracking bill advances in N.C. legislature,” Raleigh News & Observer, May 17, 2012) 5—days since the State of Vermont banned fracking within its borders (“Vermont Fracking Ban: Green [Continue Reading...]
The embattled Speaker It is getting close to the time when many people who refer to House Speaker Thom Tillis will call him the “embattled Speaker of the House.” Tillis came under fire this week for giving severance pay to two staff members who resigned after their affairs with lobbyists came to light. [Continue Reading...]
In a perfect world, this would be the legislative session where the leaders of the Republican General Assembly would take a break from their extremist agenda of the last 16 months and focus on the state’s actual problems instead of their narrow ideological pursuits. They’d open up the budget process that has been [Continue Reading...]
A largely unreported decision made last Tuesday could have a dramatic impact on public education in North Carolina as soon as this fall, diverting millions of dollars from local school systems to a shady out-of-state corporation and opening the door to the next stage of dismantling traditional public schools. The ruling by Administrative [Continue Reading...]
255 million—amount in dollars of federal funding for education that will disappear after the current school year unless replaced by the General Assembly in the 2012-2013 budget (“Time to Step Up, With federal Recovery Funds Gone, State Lawmakers Just Recommit to Funding Public Education with General Fund Appropriations,” N.C. Budget & Tax Center) [Continue Reading...]
Frills we can’t afford You can tell a General Assembly session is coming up by the volume of nonsense wafting out from Right Wing Avenue these days. The folks at the Pope Civitas Institute are ever vigilant in case any Republican might remotely consider supporting raising revenues this year to restore some of [Continue Reading...]
Governor Bev Perdue released her budget proposal for the next fiscal year Thursday morning and there are many things to like about it, particularly that it raises new revenue to rehire teachers and restore some of the devastating cuts made to education in the last few years. There’s plenty more to do however, [Continue Reading...]
It’s hard not to be bewildered, sorrowful, ashamed, angry, disgusted and more the morning after the passage of the discrimination amendment to North Carolina’s constitution. It is not shocking that the majority voted to take rights away from a minority. That’s what fearful, manipulated, misinformed majorities may do if given the chance. Polls [Continue Reading...]
Voters are at the polls today, deciding the fate of a marriage discrimination amendment and selecting candidates for Congress, Council of State, and the General Assembly. Every election includes dozens of interesting stories. Here are few things to look for from Tuesday’s results. 1)Will the national hate group the Alliance Defense Fund succeed [Continue Reading...]
Normally in this space on Monday we tell a story about North Carolina in facts and figures with a Monday Numbers column. But this is not a normal Monday. It is the day before voters go the polls to decide the fate of an amendment that would write discrimination into the state constitution. [Continue Reading...]
Berger’s campaign for Berger Senate President Pro Tem Berger and his staff have been awfully busy lately. A couple of weeks ago Berger released a 15 minute video about his life, most likely the first such biopic produced by a Senate President Pro Tem. Not long after the video came a 30-second campaign [Continue Reading...]
The folks determined to write discrimination into the state constitution are pulling out all the stops to mislead voters about the amendment on the ballot in the May 8th primary. The pro-discrimination forces don’t want voters to consider the damage the amendment could do to children, families, and workers, gay and straight, across [Continue Reading...]
The General Assembly comes back to town in two weeks for the short session that is traditionally dominated by discussion and debate about the budget as lawmakers make adjustments the two-year spending plan they passed the year before. That is likely to be the case this year too but don’t look for much [Continue Reading...]
