Defending Democracy

1. DEQ orders Duke Energy to excavate remaining coal ash impoundments

Duke Energy must excavate its final nine coal ash impoundments at six plants, state environmental regulators announced today, overruling the utility’s concerns that the method would be too expensive and environmentally risky.

“DEQ rigorously reviewed the proposals, and the science points us clearly to excavation as the only way to protect public health and the environment,” said DEQ Secretary Michael Regan in a prepared statement.

“Today’s action sends another clear message that protecting public health and natural resources is a top priority of the Cooper administration.”

Duke had proposed to either cap the material in place — in leaking, unlined landfills — or to develop a “hybrid” of excavation and cap-in-place. At public meetings across the state, residents demanded that DEQ force the utility to fully excavate all of the material and place it in a lined landfill.[Read more…]

Bonus read: The big Duke coal ash clean-up: Where things stand and what to expect next

2. A $400 win for teachers could cost North Carolina school districts $40 million

Superintendent Mark Johnson can’t seem to win for losing.

Johnson was part of big press conference Wednesday at the state Legislative Building during which he and State Sen. Andy Wells, (R-Catawba) partnered to announce their proposal of a new program to give the state’s 94,000 licensed teachers $400 a year each to buy classrooms supplies.

The announcement could have been a celebratory occasion.

But there was one missing element: Lisa Godwin.

Godwin, the 2017 North Carolina Teacher of the Year, was listed as a press conference participant but decided not to attend because of concern about how the program would be funded.[Read more…]

Bonus read: Superintendent Mark Johnson takes issue with critics who say SB 580 robs ‘Peter to pay Paul’

3. Four initial takeaways from the Robin Hayes corruption case

This has been another remarkable week in North Carolina. Once again, a dark cloud of corruption has descended upon and enveloped the state’s politics as federal prosecutors unsealed an extraordinary grand jury indictment of one of the state’s best known politicians and a trio of well-heeled businessmen.

Among other things, the indictment accuses Robin Hayes – a scion of the Cannon textile dynasty, as well as a former congressman, state representative, Republican gubernatorial nominee and, until this week, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party* – of participating in a brazen scheme to bribe the state’s Republican Insurance Commissioner with illegal campaign contributions. Also indicted were the state’s largest individual political donor – Durham businessman Greg Lindberg – and two of his employees, John Palermo and John Gray.

What’s more, there could be more indictments on the way. Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey, who cooperated with federal officials and apparently wore a wire that captured some of the most incriminating statements described in the indictment, told the Charlotte Observer yesterday that “There could be more indictments to come. We don’t know what may happen. And with a case this complex and complicated, it may take months and months and months or years to get everything sorted out.” [Read more…]

4. After sweeping order, an end to coal ash in NC? All bets are off.

North Carolina’s coal ash problem didn’t begin in February 2014, when a corrugated pipe at a Rockingham County Duke Energy facility vomited 39,000 tons of coal ash and about 27 million gallons of contaminated water into the Dan River.

The documented dangers of the coal byproduct predated even a one billion gallon spill in Kingston, Tennessee, six years prior, a spill large enough to fill thousands of Olympic swimming pools.

And North Carolina’s coal ash problem didn’t end hours later, when the billion-dollar, energy juggernaut assured North Carolina officials, incorrectly, that the river – about 70 miles of which was coated in a blue-gray, toxic plume – was no drinking water supply.[Read more…]

5. NC lawmakers push Medicaid work requirements as patients, advocates and courts push back

Emily Henderson was kicked off of Medicaid last year when she went from making $8 per hour at her job to $10 per hour. The raise put her over the income limit. Her son, who is diabetic, remains covered, but she has to choose more often than not between paying to take care of her own health without insurance coverage and paying her bills.

Her story of losing coverage is one that could become a reality for many more people if Republican lawmakers in the North Carolina General Assembly pass a bill to implement work reporting requirements for “able-bodied” adults who receive Medicaid health benefits.

The current income limits are “already making it difficult,” Henderson said. “They’re handcuffing people to poverty to maintain healthcare,” she continued.[Read more…]

6. House Speaker needs to take action regarding lawmaker accused of domestic violence

By many of the usual political metrics, State Rep. Cody Henson ought to be an up and comer.

Henson, a young (he was graduated from high school in 2010) Republican from western North Carolina is an ex-Marine with a winning smile. His biography on the website VoteSmart.org reports that he was an infantry machine gun team leader in the Marine Corps Reserve who then found work as a call center supervisor with a global marketing company. He is described as a member of Midway Baptist Church whose favorite quote (“I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.”) is attributed to Ronald Reagan.

Meanwhile, the list of contributors to his campaigns reads like a “who’s who” of the modern North Carolina political establishment:[Read more…]

7. Facing ACLU deadline, N.C. officials balk on transferring transgender inmate from men’s prison

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, but to the smaller Warren Correctional Institution for men in Warren County, near the Virginia border.

“At Warren, Zayre-Brown is housed in a single cell as opposed to an open dormitory, which has been deemed the most appropriate placement at this time,” said DPS spokesman John Bull in a statement Monday. “Prisons has been and will continue diligently conducting research on legal precedent and best practices across the country with an eventual goal of moving Zayre-Brown to a female facility.”[Read more…]

8. Weekly Editorial Cartoon:

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