Policy Watch Investigates

As lawmakers work to negotiate a final state budget by the end of the month, the ongoing conflict between Vidant Health and the UNC System continues to unfold through public jabs and in private mediation. In the balance: Tens of millions in medicaid reimbursements to one of Eastern North Carolina’s most vital hospital systems.

Serena Sebring and Kayla Hartsfield were arrested last month after chaining themselves to the gates outside the Durham County Detention Center. The two women, activists with Southerners On New Ground (SONG), were trying to bring attention to a cash bail system they say has utterly failed. Studies show the current system disproportionately jails minorities, the poor and those accused of non-violent crimes while failing to effectively assure defendants make their court dates in higher numbers than those who are offered alternatives to cash bail.

Hoping to hear some discussion of the future of the “Silent Sam” Confederate monument, Lindsay Ayling and a few other UNC-Chapel Hill students attempted to attend last week’s meeting of the UNC Board of Governors. Attempted, as it turns out, was the operative word.

More than 1,000 people descended on the capitol Wednesday to lobby for the Second Chance Act -- a bill they say will profoundly change the lives of those with criminal charges or convictions on their record. Senate Bill 562 would automatically expunge criminal charges that have been dismissed or disposed...

When a 19-year old Garrard Conley was sent to a “conversion therapy” program in 2004, it wasn’t something people discussed openly. “If you were to search for it on the Internet -- probably on Yahoo back then -- you would have gotten all these smiling pictures and testimonials from people saying how it worked for them, how they weren’t gay now and they were happy.”

Mitchell Gold, like many gay North Carolinians, cannot understand why there isn’t already a state law banning so-called “conversion” therapy. Sixteen states and Washington, D.C. now ban the practice, which aims to “cure” lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people. and polls show a law forbidding it in North Carolina enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support.

Kanautica Zayre-Brown, a transgender woman seeking transfer out of a men’s prison in Lillington, spent much of last month in solitary confinement. But last week, as the deadline to avoid a lawsuit from the ACLU approached, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety transferred Zayre-Brown from the Harnett County Correctional Institution. Not to a women’s prison, as she and the ACLU had requested...

On Thursday Democratic state lawmakers filed three bills designed to protect LGBTQ North Carolinians from discrimination, outlaw harmful “conversion” therapy that targets them and fully repeal HB2 -- the infamous law that cast an international spotlight on the state as a battleground for transgender rights.

In 2016 the battle over HB2 cast an international spotlight on the struggles of transgender people in North Carolina. Despite the law’s partial repeal and replacement with HB421 - which critics continue to challenge as “HB2.0” - transgender people in the state continue to face hardships and discrimination.

At the end of this month, Michael Bunting is leaving his job at UNC-Chapel Hill after nearly 30 years. It wasn’t an easy decision. It’s not that he doesn’t love his job as an assistant athletic director. It’s not that he’s ready to retire at 52...

This month marked the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The deadliest high school mass shooting in American history, the Parkland tragedy made more urgent the always contentious political issue of gun laws.

The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism has released its annual report on Murder and Extremism in the United States. The 2018 numbers show a sharp increase in murders by domestic extremists, especially right-wing groups.

At the corner of 4th and Liberty Streets in downtown Winston-Salem, the city is changing. A construction crew is working throughout the week, where a pile of demolition debris will soon become a Hotel Indigo - part of a chain of hip, modern boutique hotels.

1) Trove of emails provides a window into conflicts at UNC The University of North Carolina system has for several years struggled with the increasing politicization of the UNC Board of Governors, the members of which are appointed by the North Carolina General Assembly.

Voting rights advocates say GOP priorities drove Trump appointee to ignore allegations, focus resources elsewhere The State Board of Elections compiled evidence and interviews detailing a systematic ballot fraud operation in Bladen County two years ago...

On Friday the UNC Board of Governors rejected a proposal to return the Silent Sam Confederate monument to the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill. But the decision was not a rejection of the idea of the statue’s return to campus. Board of Governors Chairman Harry Smith said that such a return is still the only legal option.