The Playing Field Isn’t Level Yet
By Rob Schofield
Last year’s lobbying and ethics reform legislation touched on a number of important subjects – gifts to public officials; campaign contributions from lobbyists; registration, reporting and disclosure laws; the lawmaker-to-lobbyist revolving door, and many…
By Rob Schofield
Now that the House of Representatives has taken its first pass at the budget, members of the General Assembly have been devoting more time to substantive bills in recent days. Longstanding issues like mental health and chemical dependency…
The Realtors Association Throws Its Weight Around
By Rob Schofield
One of the great myths of modern American politics and policymaking concerns the role and nature of “special interest groups.” Too often, the term has come to be associated with those…
By Rob Schofield
As the North Carolina General Assembly begins to kick into high gear, lawmakers are confronting two important issues involving public health that could set the tone for the remainder of the session on a fundamental matter of…
Study Cited by Death Penalty Proponents Found Lacking
By Rob Schofield
On Tuesday of this week, the House and Senate Minority leaders, Rep. Paul Stam of Wake County and Sen. Phil Berger of Rockingham County held a joint press conference at…
By Rob Schofield
A hot topic of debate in North Carolina policy circles these days is the question of whether to adopt a state earned income tax credit (EITC). Analysts at the N.C. Budget and Tax Center (and its parent organization,…
More on “Taxpayer Protection Acts”
By Rob Schofield
Although it was directed at the concept generally and not a bill that he recently introduced in particular, State Senator Fred Smith of Clayton has apparently taken a recent edition of the Weekly Briefing (“Running Government Like a Business…That’s Going Bankrupt: Why Taxpayers’ Protection Acts are a Wacky Idea”) somewhat personally. This Tuesday, Smith took the time to distribute an opinion piece in which he alleged that the Briefing amounted to “an angry tirade” against his legislation that “does little to advance the discussion North Carolina must have about its spending problems.” He also alleged that “Schofield’s mind is so made up that he refused to analyze the substance of the legislation I submitted….”
By Rob Schofield
Here’s a new idea for raising some badly needed revenue to support North Carolina’s under-funded human services, public education and environmental protection infrastructures: the “Politician/Commentator Myth Tax.”
Each time a self-righteous, blowhard talk show host or pontificating…
One of the most destructive and maddening phenomena in modern public policy debates is the “urban policy myth.” Whether it results from twisting an isolated anecdote (say, one wealthy person’s decision to move to another state) into the grounds for…
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