The Southern Highland Reader

STATEWIDE–Some four dozen new North Carolina laws become active on December 1, including the tightening of probation regulations, new rules about license plate readability and harsher rules for sex offenders.

The state is also shortening some prison sentences to alleviate prison overcrowding.

The tightening of probation regulations came about after the murder of UNC student body president Eve Carson last year, writes Barry Smith for enctoday.com. One of the suspects arrested in her killing was on probation, but because his probation officer did not have access to his juvenile records, his restrictions were light. New regulations give the state’s 2,000 probation officers greater access to such records.

Other new laws require greater control and labeling of venomous reptile pets, restrict fancy decorations on license plates that render them unreadable and make Salvia divinorum, an herbaceous perennial in the mint family sometimes known as “Seer’s Sage”, a controlled substance.

Read a rundown on the new laws from enctoday.com here.

ASHEVILLE–11th District Rep. Heath Shuler said mildly nice things about Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a speech yesterday in Asheville, and the result was a comical fit of pique by a Republican National Committee spokesman.

In general, Shuler suggested that the criticism of Pelosi might be, oh, shall we say, exaggerated.

In response, RNC spokesman Andy Seré said:

“Heath Shuler is the one who’s ‘misunderstood’. He may call himself a Blue Dog, but Shuler’s lavish Pelosi-praise has revealed him to be little more than a lap dog for the most liberal speaker in U.S. history. She may have let him off the leash this weekend in a vain attempt to salvage his re-election bid, but his political affair with Nancy Pelosi is destined to land him in the doghouse with Western North Carolinians.”

Story from the Asheville Citizen-Times
Story from the Raleigh News and Observer

STATEWIDE–County officials across the western region are taking pains to mention a new NC law that require the recycling of plastic bottles, and, according to a story in the Weekly Independent of Raleigh, that’s just the point.

An excerpt:

On Oct. 1, House Bill 1465 went into effect. The state law requires recycling of plastic bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The bottles are identified by the recycle symbol with the numeral 1 inside and are typically used for water and soft drinks.

Even though it’s illegal to toss plastic soda bottles into landfills, don’t expect a visit from the bottle police—unless you’re a deliberate violator. Blair Pollock, Orange County solid waste planner, said the ban will help the county raise consciousness on recycling. “It saves energy, creates wealth from waste and reduces use of our scarce and valuable landfill space,” Pollock said.

Read the whole piece here.

STATEWIDE–The Triangle Business Journal wrote last week that a new study from Raleigh-based advocacy group Environment North Carolina notes a marked increase in solar power generating capacity in the state.

The lead:

North Carolina’s installed solar energy generating capacity grew more than six-fold in 2008, to 4.7 megawatts from 0.7 megawatts, according to a new study by Raleigh-based Environment North Carolina

Another excerpt:

If the growth contunes, the group also says, the North Carolina “can install enough solar power over the next two decades to supply 2 percent of the state’s electricity by 2020 and 14 percent by 2030.”

Read the piece in the Business Journal here.

Learn about Environment North Carolina here.

RALEIGH–The union that represents North Carolina state employees and the North Carolina legislative black caucus will announce today a new and apparently invigorated effort to legalize video poker in North Carolina.

Their argument is threefold:

1. • It’s going to happen anyway, so we may as well regulate it and make money off of it, particularly in these lean times
2. • No fair that the Cherokee can do it and no one else can
3. • No fair that the state can run a gambling operation in the form of a lottery, but regulate competition

More from Mark Binker at the Greensboro News and Record here.

Links to our other posts on the subject below.

STATEWIDE–When lawmakers in Raleigh yesterday tried to end a long impasse between the senate and house with a cobbled together budget proposal, Governor Bev Perdue said no.

The governor didn’t use the word “veto”, but it was implied, and lawmakers are now knocked back a notch or two in their efforts to solve North Carolina’s budget gap and to begin the state’s overdue fiscal year.

The Raleigh News and Observer’s lead:

RALEIGH — A plan to increase the income tax of all North Carolina taxpayers is apparently dead.

After Gov. Beverly Perdue upended budget deliberations by fellow Democrats in the legislature, however, virtually everything else about a solution to the budget deficit is back up for grabs.

Perdue, hinting at a veto, said she told legislative leaders Thursday that she would not support an income tax increase that hit anyone other than the wealthy. “Who in the world thinks, in these trying times for families, you can raise income tax for working families and middle class families?” Perdue said at a hastily called news conference outside the Capitol on Thursday evening.

The move sends lawmakers back to the drawing board, first to give themselves more time to come up with a budget, then to try to find common ground that the governor will accept. The process could take many weeks, and it further vexes state employees–especially educators, who are trying to begin a school year with no real idea how much money they have to work with.

RALEIGH/STATEWIDE–UNC President Erskine Bowles recently praised the state House for recommending tax hikes — which they call revenue packages — to help out the university system.

If the House plan were approved as is, he said, the net funding cut for the UNC system would fall from 11.2 percent to 8.7 percent.

Bowles:

Across our 17 campuses, this partial restoration of funding would save 600 jobs and enable us to teach 1,300 more class sections, helping our students get the courses they need to graduate on time. This vital funding would be applied directly to the University’s academic core.

At Appalachian State University, for example, these additional dollars would save about 40 jobs—more than half of them faculty—and restore 175 class sections. Western Carolina would save another 30 jobs in an economically distressed region of the state. Elsewhere, NC Central University would save more than 20 faculty and staff jobs and 75 class sections; East Carolina University would save 75 jobs, including nursing faculty; and UNC Wilmington would save another 50 jobs and 120 course sections. Restored funds would also help soften the impact of budget cuts on critical academic and counseling services and campus safety.

RALEIGH/STATEWIDE–Lawmakers in Raleigh will get down to the nitty-gritty of finalizing a budget this week, after months of bouncing proposals and ideas to-and-fro.

Dire economic straits have drastically reduced state tax income, and have pushed costs up, creating a budget situation worse than any in decades. This truth seems to be lost on many, including some supporters of education, who argue, simply, “cut someplace else”. Fact is, there is no someplace else. North Carolina, by law, must balance its budget, and trimming here and there won’t come close to doing the trick.

From the Raleigh News and Observer:

Reality is that teacher layoffs, higher tuition and less spending on health are in the cards. Reality is that for all the teapot museum grants everyone decries, only cuts to the biggest, most sensitive budget categories produce enough savings. That’s why the House budget, as passed, includes tax increases to ease the cuts’ sting. The specifics here are sobering – and not just the small hike in the liquor tax.

A quarter-percentage-point increase in the state sales tax (to 4.75 percent) hits folks in the wallet every time they shop. And while the House widens the sales tax’s scope, extending it to some services, this is hardly the long-sought, comprehensive sales tax reform that would lower the rate in return for broadening the tax’s reach. It’s just a tax hike, necessary but regrettable. A boost in income tax rates for earnings over $200,000 also produces big money, but does nothing to keep our tax burden in line with surrounding states’.

Lawmakers are dancing fast to figure out which tax hikes will offend fewer people less, but can draw some consolation from a recent poll that shows 60 percent of Tarheels are OK with tax rate increases.

RALEIGH–Raleigh television WRAL is reporting that the NC State Board of Trustees meets Thursday and Friday, and is expected to vote to approve the hiring of WCU women’s basketball coach Kellie Harper to head up the Wolfpack women’s program.

The station cites an unidentified source close to the search, and reports that the source is “99% sure”.

Our previous post on this subject:

North Carolina State University’s apparent disinclination to promote longtime Kay Yow assistant Stephanie Glance to head women’s basketball coach will prove unpopular among the Wolfpack faithful. It might be unpopular among the Catamount faithful, too, because WCU women’s coach Kellie Harper’s name is bouncing around like a ping-pong ball as a possible replacement.

The website basketballscoop.com has reported that the Wolfpack will hire Harper.

Here’s what that site wrote:

BasketballScoop has learned that NC State plans to hire Kellie Harper as their new head coach.  We expect an announcement early this week.  Harper has been the head coach at Western Carolina for the past 5 seasons, accumulating a 97-65 record over that time.  Harper was the point guard at Tennessee during their unprecetented run of three consecutive national championships in 96-98 (known then as Kellie Jolly).  During her tenure at Western Carolina, her teams have shown constant improvement and have made the NCAA tournament twice.  This past season they won their conference tournament for the second time in school history (both under her watch).

John Altavilla, who covers the national champion UConn Huskies women for the Hartford Courant, weighs in.

Here are pieces from Knoxville and Raleigh.

STATEWIDE–The N.C. Institute of Medicine and the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC-Chapel Hill has released a study that shows North Carolinians losing health insurance coverage at a rate that is tops in the country.

Roughly 322,000 North Carolinians became uninsured between 2007 and 2009.

Read more about the report and download a copy here.
Read a story in the Raleigh News and Observer here.

STATEWIDE–Governor Beverly Perdue’s first budget, made one of the most challenging in state history by the current economic downturn and by a state budget gap, was released today.

North Carolina’s budget, by state law, must be balanced, and Perdue started work on this budget facing a shortfall of over $2 billion.

She made it clear from the outset that many program cuts would be made, and that none would be protected. She also stressed that education and job creation would be her priorities. A first glance at her budget shows that to be true, particularly in terms of education.

Included in her budget were these education proposals, according to the Raleigh News and Observer:

• $350 million increase for education, from kindergarten through college.
• No new bond projects.
• Cuts at the state Department of Public Instruction and local school administrative staff.
• $3 million added for low-income schools.
• 12 additional early-college high schools spread across the state but concentrated in rural areas.
• A “founder’s tax credit” that will encourage entrepreneurship at universities.

Another excerpt:

Spending would be slashed across every single category of the state budget. The state Department of Correction would be hit particularly hard with a loss of 527 jobs and a budget reduced by $68 million. Universities will lose $167 million and 73 jobs.

Earlier posts from us here.

More coverage from the N&O here.

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–State air regulators on Friday granted Duke Energy’s request to treat the new 800-megawatt Cliffside 6 power generating unit it is building west of Charlotte as a “minor source” of pollution.

The designation could allow Duke to sidestep the public process of analyzing and installing the most stringent controls to reduce hazardous pollutants such as mercury. That issue is still before the federal court, and the Division of Air Quality’s decision will allow Duke lawyers to argue that federal courts no longer have jurisdiction in the matter.

Environmentalists reacted angrily to the decision.

“Today’s permitting decision … puts the health of North Carolina citizens at risk and puts North Carolina out of step with the national trend away from coal,” said Elyse Jung, of the N.C. Sierra Club.

Avram Friedman, of Sylva, Director of the Canary Coalition, wrote this, in an open letter to Governor Perdue: “Plans for building new coal burning power plants are being abandoned throughout the rest of the country. There is no reason for you to allow Duke Energy to give North Carolina the stigma of being one of the last bastions of dirty coal.”

Duke Energy framed the decision as proof that it is becoming a more responsible corporate citizen, and that the decision was appropriate given the current economic climate.

Here’s an excerpt from a story in Saturday’s Raleigh News and Observer:

A coalition of environmental groups sued last year, challenging Duke’s construction of a major pollution source without an analysis of the maximum pollution controls needed. In December, U.S. District Judge Lacy Thornburg sided with the environmental groups and ruled that Duke was “simply refusing to comply with the controlling law.”

Read the N&O’s coverage from Wade Rawlins here.

Release from the Southern Environmental Law Center

Earlier release from Canary Coalition vowing non-violent protest

RALEIGH/STATEWIDE–North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue announced Wednesday afternoon that “… in connection with North Carolina’s increasing unemployment rate and declining national economic climate that she has seized the corpus of North Carolina’s Rainy Day Fund as a precautionary measure …”

North Carolina Public Radio’s Laura Leslie has reaction at her blog Isaac Hunter’s Tavern, under the header “Oh,no, she DIDN’T … (Oh, yes, she DID).

An excerpt:

Can she do that?  I don’t know, but she did.  Her legal staff says the governor has a constitutional mandate to do whatever’s necessary in the case of a budget emergency, which she’s already proclaimed.

The rainy day fund is a budget item created and controlled by the legislature, where reactions among her fellow Democrats were mixed, to put it mildly.

Read the rest of the post here.

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-North Carolina lawmakers returned to Raleigh after the holidays yesterday to face an extraordinary chore – a “grinder” of a session one newspaper called it – as they seek to combat an enormous budget shortfall with array of programs cuts.

North Carolina faces a shortfall of about $2 billion.

The mood was unsettled. Governor Beverly Perdue has asked for at least 2% more cuts on top of the 5% requested by previous Governor Mike Easley last fall. Perdue was presented with a list of possible cuts yesterday, but she was unsatisfied with that list and sent it back for more work, complaining that some cuts were implausibly harsh and others were not deep enough.

The cuts on the list would be enacted only if included in the Governor’s budget.

Adding to the general uncertainty was news from Washington, where President Obama’s team released a list of general priorities to be included in it’s stimulus plan — a plan that was ultimately passed as the day wore on. The plan includes $150 billion to improve education nationwide, a significant amount of which would be aimed at universities. Another significant amount is earmarked for transportation infrastructure, which would help North Carolina’s Department of Transportation deal with a 14% income shortfall, caused by the downturn in automobile sales and gas tax revenue. North Carolina could expect help with Medicaid costs, which are skyrocketing, and which burden state coffers in good times.

Still, leaders cautioned that hand-me-downs from Washington should be taken with a grain of salt. The down economy is liable to last far longer than the funds from the stimulus.

Among some of the larger cuts that would impact the southern mountains, if enacted:

• $14,673,598 reduction in Smart Start funding.
• $ 2,394,744 reduction from the Home and Community Care Block Grant for the Division of Aging and Adult Services
• $13,689,289 cut from a broad range of Health and Human Services programs, including many health programs for the needy
• $16,889,076 cut from a range of Division of Social Services programs, including over $9 million in state assistance to individual counties
• $224,172,808 cut from the Division of Medical Assistance
• Almost $50 million from the Division of Mental Health, more than half of which would come from cutting community services.
• Almost $91 million from the Department of Corrections, damaging many programs and closing the North Carolina minimum security prison in Waynesville.
• Almost $110 million from the Department of Transportation, which would impact road maintenance and law enforcement, among other things. The DOT has already cut back on winter event road clearing, and has made noise for some time now about shifting responsibility for some road building and maintenance back to individual counties.

RALEIGH–New North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue said earlier this month that “we haven’t done enough to protect air quality in the mountains …”, and has positioned herself as an air quality advocate.

She’ll be immediately challenged, though, as Duke Energy lobbies to have its controversial, new, and enormous Cliffside Plant labeled a “minor pollution source” by state regulators.
From Wade Rawlins at the Raleigh News and Observer:

Designating the new unit as a minor pollution source would allow Duke to avoid the public process of analyzing and installing the most modern controls to reduce hazardous pollution to the maximum extent possible.

At this point, the state seems ready to agree, which is alarming to environmental activists for this reason: in December, U.S. District Court Judge Lacy Thornburg ruled that Duke was “simply refusing to comply with the controlling law.”

Writes Rawlins:

Thornburg said the new Cliffside unit 6 is a major source of hazardous air pollutants because it can emit pollutants above the legal threshold. He ordered the utility to analyze the technology needed for maximum control of pollutants.
If Duke receives a favorable ruling from the state, it is likely to argue that the federal court no longer has jurisdiction.

Rawlins’ story is here.

STATEWIDE–Facing a state budget shortfall of as much as $3 billion, as well as the need to make “draconian” cuts to state programs if no federal help materializes, Governor Beverly Perdue Thursday asked all state agencies to immediately tighten their budgets by 7% – 2% more than has already been requested by former Governor Mike Easley.

“As Governor, I have a constitutional requirement to balance North Carolina’s budget,” she said earlier this week, “and I intend to do so responsibly.”

In addition to the additional 2% budget cuts, Perdue asked state agencies to cut funds using the following methods:

• Stop any purchases of goods or services unless specifically approved by a department head. This does not apply to equipment or materials needed for classrooms.
• Suspend travel and training except for public safety, public health, job requirements, economic development  or emergency situations. Exceptions must be approved by department heads.
• Put on hold any pay-as-you-go appropriations for capital improvement and repair and renovation projects.
• Do not fill any vacant positions unless a prior commitment has been made. Department heads can approve filling vacancies as an “extraordinary exception.”

Meanwhile, Perdue traveled to Washington Wednesday to lobby North Carolina’s for emergency funding. Wrote Barbara Barrett in the Raleigh News and Observer:

Perdue asked Congress for two separate pots of money: One, at about $18 billion, would pay for new infrastructure. The projects include work on airports, highways, schools, clean water systems and public and private colleges. The projects on this list were presented as “shovel-ready.”

The second pot of money, an unspecified amount, would be used to fill North Carolina’s budget shortfall for next fiscal year.

Perdue has said the state is about $2 billion in the hole, and that while she can find some savings, she can’t find enough. And a day after declaring a budget emergency in Raleigh, Perdue also disputed the idea that any shortfall is the fault of the state.

“It is a crisis caused not by bad stewardship on the part of North Carolinians, but because of a global meltdown,” she said.

“I don’t believe it’s a handout,” Perdue said of her request. “It’s not just coming up here and saying, ‘Bail me out.’ “

Perdue’s request received mixed reviews, with N.C. Sen. Richard Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican, the sharpest critic.

“Only if they’re in the form of a loan,” Burr told Barrett. “But I’m not interested in substituting the usual appropriations process and fulfilling states’ shortfalls with emergency money just because the states aren’t making tough decisions they need to make.”

“They didn’t wake up six days ago and realize they have a … deficit,” he said.

Perdue otherwise hopes for relief through the federal stimulus bill now before congress, and hopes that the federal government will take on a higher percentage of medicaid costs.

More from the News and Observer here.

RALEIGH/STATEWIDE–The North Carolina Council of State today approved an expedited schedule to sell $742M worth of bonds to finance 28 major construction projects across the state, with a goal of “easing the pain of a sagging economy.”

All of the projects are state and university buildings. The westernmost project, though, is at the WNC Agricultural Center in Asheville, which will upgrade to the tune of over $8M.

More here.

STATEWIDE–In December we mentioned Sen. Richard Burr’s much-more-likely challenge in the 2010 mid-term elections, after Libby Dole’s defeat at the hands of Kay Hagan.

11th District congressman Heath Shuler was mentioned as a likely challenger, and that possibility seems to have solidified.

Shuler and Attorney General Roy Cooper are mentioned as leading contenders in this post at the Raleigh News and Observer’s “Under the Dome” blog. On the face of it, Cooper vs. Shuler is an interesting matchup; Cooper has been aggressive in protecting the interests of North Carolinians with regards to air pollution and other progressive issues. Shuler, on the other hand, has positioned himself as a blue-dog Democrat, relatively right-of-center, as Democrats go.