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.

UPDATE: The post below details a schedule for a decision on whether to seek criminal charges against former NC Governor Mike Easley. Since it was written the prosecutor has changed his tune, saying he is consulting with federal investigators and his decision could take many additional months. Story here.

STATEWIDE–The lead from Associated Press writer Gary Robertson:

STATEWIDE–Elaine Mejia at NC Policy Watch reports today on state Senate majority leader Tony Rand’s remarks yesterday at the Budget & Tax Center’s legislative briefing in Fayetteville.

An excerpt:

… state tax revenues are behind projections by $90 million through the end of October. In the grand scheme of things that is not too much money. What is troubling about this is that the state’s revenue forecast assumes that the worst months would be at the beginning of the fiscal year and after that things would begin to head slowly upward. Moreover, the budget for fiscal year 2010-11 assumes that revenues will grow at a rate of 2.8%. If revenues continue to fall behind the forecast the Governor will be forced to take painful mid-year actions to address this year’s gap and the General Assembly will be forced to make another round of budget cuts sooner rather than later.

Read her post here.

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–Earlier this year, when North Carolina launched a new system for managing state payroll, there were some problems. We linked to coverage from Lynn Bonner at the Raleigh News and Observer at that time.

Well, the system is still acting up, apparently, and Bonner again writes about it.

Here’s her lede, along with a couple more paragraphs:

A new state payroll system continues to frustrate employees, who don’t know from month to month whether they will be paid for all the hours they worked.

Workers have been complaining about the payroll system called BEACON since spring, soon after all state agencies were required to start using it.

After news reports in mid-August about underpaid employees not being able to pay their bills, Gov. Mike Easley ordered that all employees who were owed money be paid by the end of August, when then-State Controller Robert Powell was to retire. Powell’s office oversaw the payroll system’s installation.

Alvin W. Keller, Jr. (Raleigh News and Observer photo)

Far be it from us to judge a judge by his cover, but we’re concerned that governor-elect Perdue’s choice as the new correction secretary simply might not look the part. How is this guy gonna intimidate anybody?

Soft background, too: retired Marine colonel and military judge. They’ll run roughshod over him.