The Southern Highland Reader

STATEWIDE–Newly-elected Asheville city council member Cecil Bothwell defines himself as an atheist, and conservatives say that means that under North Carolina law he may not serve in a public office.

Here’s a blog post from the C-T’s Jordan Schrader that outlines the history of state laws that suggest as much.

An excerpt:

… the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and bans religious tests for office, so a lawsuit against City Council would have little legal ground to stand on. But the clause remains in the state constitution, even after a major rewrite of the document in 1972.

Voters have to approve changes to the constitution, and that’s a fight few politicians would want to take on for little or no practical benefit.

Here’s a news story from the Asheville Citizen-Times.

STATEWIDE–Former NC state senator Cal Cunningham, a Democrat, has rejoined the race to unseat current senator Richard Burr in next year’s election.

From Congressional Quarterly:

In what appears to be a case of right news, wrong timing for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, word began to leak out Tuesday that Democratic former North Carolina state Sen. Cal Cunningham has decided to reverse an earlier decision and will challenge incumbent Republican Richard M. Burr in 2010.

The decision is a victory for the DSCC, which has been working to get Cunningham to reconsider the contest after he passed on the race in mid-November. The only problem is that the news leaked out on the same day that North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, who is also competing in the Democratic primary, was holding a funeral for her husband, who died last week at age 77.

Read the piece here.

REGIONAL–It’s a familiar complaint in the mountains: tax money, like water, runs downhill to Raleigh and never comes back.

The Asheville Citizen-Times‘ Joel Burgess contributed a history yesterday of western North Carolina’s under-representation in high-power state politics, quoting WCU faculty member Richard Starnes along the way and naming Jackson County’s Lacy Thornburg as an exception to the rule.

Here’s an excerpt:

With a few notable exceptions, including former House Speaker Liston Ramsey and Govs. Jim Holshouser and Dan Moore, modern mountain politicians have struggled to make a dent in Raleigh’s power structure. Reasons trace back centuries, scholars say, and range from geography to old grudges.“It has to do with the low population and also that WNC has often charted its own political path,” said Richard Starnes, head of the history department at Western Carolina University.

-and-

The list of western politicians who have held great sway in the Tar Heel State largely begins and ends with one man — former House Speaker [Liston] Ramsey.

Read the story here.

REGIONAL–Dave Tabler’s Appalachian History blog touches on an interview with herbalist Tommie Bass (1908-1996), and Bass’s take on giving money to politicians. Here’s Bass:

I figured . . . the fact of the business is a fellow running for office, a man or a woman, I’m like the little boy was about the peckerwood.

Peckerwood pecked a hole in a hollow tree and he went in there, and the little boy he drove a peg in behind it. Somebody said to him, “Son,” said, “you shouldn’t of done the little bird that way.” [And the boy said], “Well the son-of-a-gun pecked in, now let him peck out”.

And so I’m that way about a politician. If he wants to get into office, let him get in there (chuckles), but I ain’t gonna try to help him. Course, if he’s a good guy, I’d talk for him, but as far as paying him in there, I don’t go along with that.

Read the post here.

Tommis Bass. Photo by Tom Rankin, 1983

NATIONAL–Eric Fingerhut’s blog CapitalJ blog provides this anecdote about Rahm Emmanuel’s aggressive encouragement of 11th District Rep. Heath Shuler, when Shuler was mulling over a run for congress (this was while Emmanuel was still a congressman himself).

Emmanuel doesn’t easily take no for an answer.

Here’s an excerpt:

The most amusing part of the [documentary about Emmanuel] — the D.C. premiere of which I attended recently — was when Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) describes how he hesitated when Emanuel first recruited him to run, wondering if he would still have enough time to spend with his family. Emanuel tells him it’s really not that bad, and Shuler then starts receiving regular calls from the then-congressman.

“Heath, I’m just calling to say I’m on my way to school to take my kids. Health, I’m on my way now back to school, I think I’m going to eat lunch with the kids today. … Heath, we’re going to soccer practice …”

Incidentally, the film, “Housequake“, is directed by NC Rep. David Price’s daughter Karen.

More on the film, Emmanuel and Shuler here, from the New York Times.

CULLOWHEE–Western Carolina University political science professors Gibbs Knotts and Christopher Cooper took a close look at the state of political awareness and participation on NC campuses in this Saturday column for the Charlotte Observer.

Here’s the lead:

It is well-established that young people vote at lower levels than others in the electorate. For example, approximately 40 percent of 20-year-olds voted in the 2004 presidential election, compared to a turnout rate of more than 70 percent for those in their 70s.

Fortunately, there are some indications that the times may be changing. Youth turnout during the 2008 primaries was significantly higher than it has been in the past. Young people also are getting involved with campaigns at higher rates than ever before, and early voting data provides some indication that youth turnout in 2008 will be at its highest level in recent memory.

Read the whole piece here.

REGIONAL–It’s no secret that in North Carolina, with its appointed and influential Department of Transportation Board, road construction is heavily politicized. That’s a foregone conclusion in the “good roads state“.

And one of the crown jewels of politicized road-building is I-40 west, which, just under half a century ago, was routed through particularly inhospitable country at the behest of well-connected state and regional leaders.  A series of enormous rock slides has been the legacy.

The Asheville Citizen-Times’s John Boyle pulled the timeline together for Saturday’s paper.

Here’s an excerpt:

When the slide-prone gorge route was first proposed, leaders from Madison County and the Asheville area had pushed for another route, one that would have sent I-40 through the French Broad River Valley in Madison, close to where U.S. 25/70 runs now.

“Lots of people these days will say highway decisions are all politics — well, hell yes, they are,” said Jody Kuhne, a state engineering geologist with the N.C. Department of Transportation.

“Back at that time, Haywood County had a large paper mill, major railroad access and other industry, and Madison County just didn’t have that, except some in Hot Springs. So, sure, they out-politicked Madison. The road went where the action was.”

The Smoky Mountain News, meanwhile, took a look last week at the likely economic impact of the closure in Haywood County.

ROBBINSVILLE–Former Madison County state legislator Herbert Hyde once said he got into politics for the same reason he mows his grass: to protect children from snakes.

Well, sadly, times are a’changin’ — at least according to some Robbinsvillians, who say the government is to blame for this year’s upward trend in timber rattler sightings and bites. The feds, they say (President Obama himself, no doubt), have been releasing extra snakes into the woods to protect them from extinction.

Snake (l), Feds.

Graham Star editor James Budd wrote about it last month. Here’s an excerpt:

“It’s a lie,” [State biologist Mike] Carraway said. “It’s an absolute lie.”

Carraway used to be stationed in Andrews and served Graham County in the early ‘80s.

He heard the same rumors back then.

“Some people even say we used a helicopter to drop them,” Carraway said.

Shot down by the wildlife folks, I then focused on the U.S. Forest Service …

Read Budd’s piece here, which he wraps up by noting that rattlesnakes are nowhere near endangered.

STATEWIDE–The Raleigh News and Observer reports today that Governor Perdue’s budget, to be released Tuesday, includes massive cuts.

An excerpt:

Her budget office has suggested scenarios that call for cutting from $1.3 billion to $2 billion from the state’s $21 billion budget – from 10 percent to 15 percent at most agencies. On the chopping block: the state’s apprenticeship program and its drug treatment courts, as well as three small prisons. Cuts for the public schools, higher education and health wouldn’t be as deep.

STATEWIDE/NATIONAL–McClatchy newspapers reports that support is rising in congress for a automobile mileage tax to help support the country’s highway infrastructure. The current federal gas tax is not indexed to inflation, hasn’t been raised in 15 years and is decreasingly profitable as people drive less.

The new program would tax motorists based on the number of miles they drive each year.
Here’s an excerpt from McClatchy (you can read the whole piece here):

… the proposal is raising privacy concerns — particularly if GPS devices were to monitor mileage — and opponents say that the last thing people need is a new tax, particularly in a recession. Some critics, moreover, fear that it would have a disproportionate impact in states such as California, which has longer-than-average commutes.

This type of usage tax has long been popular with environmentalists, and their arguments aren’t bad ones.

Still, there’s an element of cynicism here. After World War II the federal government went to bat in a major way for automakers, tire makers and the oil industry. Among the results was the interstate highway system, the systematic elimination of various forms of public transportation, and a generation of urban planning that catered strictly to the automobile.

The result is an environment in which its often difficult not to drive, and in which to live a “walkable” lifestyle is often an expensive prospect. In broadly general terms, town centers that offer opportunities for public transportation aren’t cheap places to live.

As is too often the case, the folks who are left with few options but to drive a long way to work would be most burdened by this tax, and they’ll be the ones least able to afford it.

STATEWIDE–Dana Cope, executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina for the last nine years, is a firebrand.

Although he’s criticized by some lawmakers in Raleigh as a “bomb-thrower”, state employees defend Cope in equally strident terms, saying he’s the main line of defense between themselves and a good screwing.

Quoted in a feature in today’s Raleigh News and Observer, Cope says his aggressively pro-labor tactics are “bigger than the State Employees Association of North Carolina.”

Cope told the N&O’s Mark Johnson:

“It’s bigger than SEANC. Southern states are pro-business and anti-worker. We’re trying to break that tradition and history.”

In a sidebar to the piece, Cope lays out what he calls four major misunderstandings about state employees:

1. State employees are overpaid – Cope points to figures showing that employees in the private sector and in the public sector in other states do better.
2. State employees are inefficient – Particularly in a recession, Cope says, demand for state services goes up but the staff stays the same.
3. They’re only concerned about themselves – Cope says state employees see their work as for the public good.
4. Their benefits are good – State retirees expect a 1 percent cost of living adjustment this year.

RALEIGH–Governor-elect Beverly Perdue on Tuesday named Asheville Republican Lanier Cansler to head up the state Department of Health and Human Services — widely perceived as one of the most challenging jobs in her administration. The choice of the former four-term state house representative and former deputy secretary of the state health department is being widely hailed “across party lines.”

Lift quote from the N&O:

Cansler was deputy during the early years of mental health reform, when the state began discouraging public mental health services in favor of having private providers do the work. The result was more short-term stays in state mental hospitals, patients who could not find care, and a proliferation of low-end mental health services that wasted millions.

“I believe the concept of community capacity was good,” Cansler said Tuesday. “Implementation was a real problem, and we want to focus on addressing that.”

Cansler has wide support among advocates who say he is not responsible for the system’s failings.
“He’s been in the legislature, he has a financial background, he understands the system pretty well,” said Frank Edwards, a co-president of the Wake County chapter of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

A new management team would be “very, very, very positive,” Edwards said.

Story from the Raleigh News and Observer.

RALEIGH/STATEWIDE–The Raleigh News and Observer’s “Under the Dome” blog reports that two progressive groups have tried to claim the high ground in the coming state budget battles.

A report from the N.C. Budget and Tax Center, written by Meg Gray Wiehe, makes the case that state spending per resident has actually dropped in the past nine years. Rob Schofield, of  N.C. Policy Watch, urges work toward comprehensive reforms, “such as broadening the sales tax to include services, rather than simply across the board spending cuts.”

Read the piece here.