Tag: N.C. General Assembly

N.C. lawmakers quietly work on plan for N.C. unemployment insurance

November 29, 2012 at 2:16 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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A group of state lawmakers has been meeting behind closed doors to find a fix for North Carolina’s $2.4-billion unemployment insurance problem, money the state borrowed from the federal government in the height of the economic crisis.

A trio of Republican lawmakers – state Reps. Julia Howard, Edgar Starnes and Harry Warren – have been meeting weekly with legislative staff for the past 10 weeks to roll out a plan, Howard said. They plan on bringing their proposal to light on Wednesday at the N.C. Revenue Laws Committee which has the option of voting immediately on the mystery plan without holding any public discussion.

The result could be a massive overhaul of the state’s unemployment system, with a very real possibility that lawmakers side with business interests looking to cut back on how much and for how long the unemployed can collect. Advocates for the poor (like the N.C. Justice Center) say that option would cause further harm for families in crisis.

The money was borrowed at the height of the economic crisis, and went to pay for the first 26 weeks of unemployment for thousands of North Carolinians who lost their jobs as the state grappled with the fall-out from the collapse of the housing industry.  A series of tax breaks businesses received on unemployment insurance in the 1990s had left the state without enough money to weather the drastic increase of jobless workers during the Great Recession.

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School voucher group already reaping the benefits of Florida trip

May 23, 2012 at 8:37 amCategory:Uncategorized

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In case anyone had any doubts, pay-to-play politics are alive and well in the North Carolina General Assembly. As Policy Watch investigative reporter Sarah Ovaska reported here yesterday afternoon, a conservative House leader announced yesterday that he would introduce legislation this week that would establish a new tax break for corporations that fund slots in private schools.

The plan is modeled on a Florida program (now, there’s a highly successful state everyone wants to copy!) that was pitched to a group of 11 state lawmakers, including House Speaker Thom Tillis, at an all-expense paid trip to the Miami area that the pro-voucher group funded in March.

And, of course, the trip — which certainly appears to violate the state’s prohibition on gifts from lobby groups to lawmakers — had absolutely no impact whatsoever on the group’s friendly reception from House leadership or its success in winning introduction of the bill.  

To learn more about what the voucher group and its friends in the corporate world and the General Assembly appear to be up to, check out this excellent article in yesterday’s New York Times  - “Public money finds back door to private schools.”

Fracking coming to Triangle subdivisions?

April 10, 2012 at 1:33 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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Most homeowners assume they own the soil and everything else that’s under their lawn.

But that may not be the case for homeowners in subdivisions built by the giant homebuilder D.R. Horton, which lists more than two dozen neighborhoods in the Raleigh and Greensboro area on its website.

As The Independent’s Lisa Sorg reported here, homeowners in several Triangle-area D.R. Horton subdivisions are finding out from a basic search at county Register of Deeds offices that the mineral rights to the house were split off at the time of purchase from the general deed.

Owning the mineral rights is a Colorado company that’s turns out to be—surpise! — a subsidiary of the homebuilder.

The mineral rights appear to give the energy company, in some cases, the right to drill and extract gas or other substances from below a home’s surface.

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Mystery meeting on reforming N.C.’s education system (with update)

March 7, 2012 at 10:41 amCategory:Uncategorized

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The N.C. House Select Committee on Education Reform will meet at 1 p.m. this afternoon, moving their meeting away from the N.C. General Assembly building to the campus of Wake Technical Community College.

But just what they’ll be talking about is still a bit of a mystery this morning, just a few hours before the meeting is scheduled to begin.

No agendas have been released to the public, according to the office of N.C. Rep. Hugh Blackwell, the co-chair of the House committee.

Update: Since we put up this post at 10:30 a.m. this morning, the agenda to the meeting has been posted. Click here to see for yourself.  A hat tip to Terry Stoops at the conservative John Locke Foundation for pointing out that the agenda items were released a couple of hours before the public meeting. 

On the agenda are discussion about a deaf student’s Bill of Rights, a Florida Advanced Placement initiative, articulation issues in higher education, school air quality improvements and higher education tuition comparisons.

And that means no clues to the public about what this group of legislators will be discussing, and who they’ll be hearing from.

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