Press Releases and Newsletters
Red-Light Cameras (WILMINGTON STAR-NEWS)
Wilmington’s red-light cameras will likely survive in next year’s city budget. But they still face possible elimination at the state level. City council members have said they support the program, which was included as a possible cutback in a March budget presentation. The SafeLight program, which operates red-light cameras at 13 locations in Wilmington, costs the city around $250,000 a year, said Don Bennett, the city traffic engineer. That includes in-kind costs of staff time, Bennett said. The city pays a vendor, American Traffic Solutions Inc. of Arizona, which manages the camera data and mails the tickets. Drivers whose license plates are captured on the cameras are mailed a $50 citation. In 2011, the city issued 21,631 citations based on the program. While the cameras cost the city money, they are a boon to the New Hanover County Schools. The school system got about $700,000 from the program last year, said Mary Hazel Small, the district’s chief finance officer. Still, the cameras are under attack by some members of the N.C. General Assembly. A bill that would outlaw the cameras has passed the Senate but has not yet made it onto the floor of the House. Sen. Don East, a Pilot Mountain Republican, is the bill’s primary sponsor. The bill, which was passed by the Senate in April 2011, has sat in a House committee since June, where it is “resting quietly,” East said.
by
Julian March & Pressley Baird,
(WILMINGTON STAR-NEWS)
( 4/25/12)
Air Quality (THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER)
Metro Charlotte’s improving smog problem placed it 18th-worst among U.S. cities, the American Lung Association says in annual rankings, down from 10th-worst the past two years. The ranking is for ozone, or smog, an invisible gas that in the Charlotte area comes mostly from vehicle tailpipes, power plants and industrial emissions. Mecklenburg County has been unable to meet federal ozone standards for years. Most U.S. cities have the cleanest air since the ratings began 13 years ago, the Lung Association said. Eighteen of the 25 cities most polluted by ozone, for example, showed major improvements. The association credits federal emission standards for coal-fired power plants, diesel engines and SUVs. North Carolina’s legislation to reduce power-plant emissions over the past decade have played a large role in this state.
Still, 40 percent of Americans live in areas such as Charlotte, where bad air may hurt their health, the association says. Children, older people and those with respiratory ailments are most at risk. Los Angeles led the smoggiest-city rankings, followed by other cities in California and Texas. The Charlotte-Gastonia-Salisbury metro area ranked fourth-worst in the East, behind Washington, New York and Philadelphia. The report is based on air readings taken from 2008 through 2010.
by
Bruce Henderson
(THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER)
(4/25/12)
I-95 Tolls (THE FAYETTEVILLE OBSERVER)
If tolls are imposed along Interstate 95, Cumberland County Commissioners want the people and companies who live and work along the corridor to get a discount. The state Department of Transportation has said its plan to widen and resurface I-95 throughout the state will attract businesses to nearby communities and improve their economies. Commissioner Jimmy Keefe told the county’s delegation of state legislators that he couldn’t see how charging residents of other counties money to use I-95 to come to work here would help the economy. “If they’re local, they ought to be able to buy a card at a reduced rate,” he said. State lawmakers at the meeting agreed. “It makes inordinately good sense, for all kinds of reasons, that locals should get a discount,” Rep. Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland, said. Rep. Elmer Floyd, D-Cumberland, said costs could be cut by keeping I-95 six lanes throughout the state. Rep. William Brisson, D-Bladen, agreed. “We have other things that are more important to this state than putting eight lines on I-95,” he said.
by Gregory Phillips
(THE FAYETTEVILLE OBSERVER)
4/24/12
Population Patterns (WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL)
Avery and Mitchell are two North Carolina counties similar in many respects. New U.S. Census Bureau estimates show that between 2005 and 2009, for every one person who moved out of Avery County, two people moved in. But in Mitchell County, just to the south, five people moved out for every one who moved in. “Mitchell has suffered some big setbacks in the manufacturing economy, and they are still trying to recover from that,” said Rick Herndon, the executive director of the High Country Council of Governments, a regional planning agency. “Avery has predominantly had a tourism-based economy.”
The Census Bureau said its data on county-to-county moves within the U.S. from 2005 to 2009 were the first such statistics released since the 2000 census. Later this year, the Census Bureau plans to release information from the 2006-2010 American Community Survey that will include age, sex and ethnic information. It’s no surprise that the state’s larger urban counties led the way in raw migration numbers. While Avery County netted only around 1,100 people because of migration, Mecklenburg gained almost 16,000 and Wake gained 18,640 residents from other places. Guilford County had a net growth of about 2,400 people through migration, while Forsyth lagged, gaining only 202 people. But in neither Guilford nor Forsyth did the number of people moving in amount to more than 1.25 percent of the 2010 population.
Because of the lower population numbers in the smaller counties, the impact of migration can be greater there. In most of Northwest North Carolina, migration between 2005 and 2009 had a minimal effect on growth. Alleghany was an exception in the loss column, while Watauga was an exception in gains. The difference, Herndon said, is that counties that have traditionally relied on manufacturing have lost people, while gains occurred in counties where tourists flock and golf courses flourish. Nearly all the counties with net out-migration are classified by the N.C. Department of Commerce as Tier 1 counties, meaning they are the most economically distressed.
by
Wesley Young
(WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL)
4/24/12
Bubble U.: High Point University (Bloomberg Businessweek)
As our little electric train pulls away from the admissions building, it’s already clear that High Point University looks like no campus any of us has ever seen. Piped-in classical music drifts across freshly planted flower beds as a student guide, steering a golf-cart-style “engine,” tows our group of six parents and teens past statues of Aristotle, Galileo, and Jefferson. She parks in front of the Plato S. Wilson School of Commerce, and we clamber out to tour the building. Opened in 2009, it’s outfitted with marble floors, a full-size replica of a financial trading floor, and a classroom with row upon row of computer-assisted design consoles. The kids’ eyes pop as the tour continues, with visits to a first-run movie theater, a steakhouse, and dorms with plasma-screen TVs and outdoor hot tubs.
Nothing like this existed here seven years ago, when Nido Qubein, a motivational speaker and multimillionaire, became president of what was then a sleepy little Methodist college. It was Qubein who launched the effort to transform the 88-year-old school into a nationally recognized institution. Some $700 million has already been spent to refurbish and expand the campus. Enrollment is up 50 percent, to 3,700, even as tuition and room and board have soared 60 percent, to $37,800 annually. Students’ average SAT scores have ticked up almost 10 percent.
The High Point campus, $700 million later“The world is marveling at how High Point University has grown so successfully in the midst of the worst economic times in 54 years,” Qubein says. Since becoming president in January 2005, he’s raised about $159 million in gifts and pledges, and has promised to kick in $11 million of his own money. There’s more to come: new dorms, a health-sciences school, a college of pharmacy, a sports arena—all told, a planned $2.1 billion in improvements by 2020. All this in the middle of a depressed North Carolina mill town.
John Nelson, head of the higher education ratings group at Moody’s Investors Service (MCO), says that in 20 years as an analyst he’s never seen an institution like High Point. “It looks more like a growth company,” he says. Moody’s downgraded the university’s debt rating to junk status in 2009 as it ran up some $165 million in debt to become one of the most highly leveraged schools in the country. “The rate at which they borrowed and the aggressiveness of investment in facilities and marketing of the campus,” Nelson says, all set High Point apart.
Along with its improbable neoclassical campus, a Restoration Hardware version of Yale, High Point is marketing the story of Nido Qubein. Raised in Jordan, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1966 as a teenager with, as his official biography puts it, “little knowledge of English, no contacts, and only $50 in his pocket.” He graduated from High Point and got rich as a speaker, consultant, and investor.
Sitting in his office beneath an American flag and an oversize campus map, Qubein talks of creating a “paradigm shift” in higher education. The campus improvements are intended “to create an environment in which
Lacrosse practice at the new track and field facilityThere are about 1,600 private colleges and universities in the U.S. Fewer than 100 are considered “medallion” institutions, with rich endowments, highly selective admissions, and superstar faculties. Most of the rest—including High Point—lack many, if not all, of these attributes and struggle to distinguish themselves academically. Only a rare few break from the pack to achieve elite status, and the effort usually takes decades, says Kent Chabotar, president of Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., and an expert on higher education finance. “Reputations,” Chabotar says, “take forever to change.”
Qubein wants to push High Point to greatness in just a few years. The details of his plan resemble some of the high-risk behavior that blew up investment banks in 2008. He’s following an approach that is known in higher ed circles as the “residence hall” or “field of dreams” strategy. He’s borrowed tens of millions to build upscale dorms, used the new facilities to attract more students, and then used their fees to pay interest on the debt and underwrite more construction.
As debt ballooned, he got waivers to avoid breaching loan covenants, according to Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. He raided the school’s meager $46 million endowment to buy real estate; among other things, the university now owns a half-empty shopping mall and a former Methodist retirement community that’s been converted to student housing. He got the school into derivatives investing, running up $8 million in losses. The university’s former leadership “was hung up on money,” he says. “That’s not how it is in business. The money follows the idea.”
To make the numbers add up, High Point needs thousands of kids from affluent families who require minimal financial aid and can pay top dollar for the swanky accommodations. The make-or-break element of Qubein’s 21st century university, in other words, is cash flow.
Qubein is a compact, white-haired 63-year-old who favors dark suits and vividly colored silk ties. In front of an audience, he moves with a dancer’s grace, gliding across the stage, pivoting on the balls of his feet, lunging forward with palms outstretched. With the rise and fall of his lightly accented voice, the effect can be captivating.
On this late winter morning, he has the attention of an auditorium full of parents. To induce their kids to enroll, High Point is offering a chance to compete for scholarships ranging from $700 to $20,000 a year. To enter the competition, though, the kids and their parents had to come to High Point for a weekend.
Photograph by Mark Mahaney
A High Point (N.C.) highlight: The world’s largest dresserAs images of the campus flash on a screen behind him, Qubein explains that the luxurious facilities keep kids on campus and out of trouble. The campus is “an extension of your own home,” he says. Qubein himself teaches a required freshman seminar on “life skills” such as dressing for a job interview and writing a business letter. “Choosing a college for your child is not just a decision,” he says, clutching a fist to his chest. “It’s a commitment, and commitments are made with the heart and soul, not the brain.”
It’s more sermon than speech, which makes sense, since Qubein was introduced to public speaking in the Baptist churches of eastern North Carolina. In 1966 he enrolled in Mount Olive College, a two-year Baptist school a couple hours’ drive east of High Point. Former classmates recall that he spoke broken English and arrived with no possessions, since his luggage had been lost en route from Jordan. His Horatio Alger story has some holes in it, though. He comes from a prominent Jordanian Christian family—his uncle was the country’s Anglican bishop—and both of his older brothers graduated from Duke University in nearby Durham. One was in graduate school at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill when Qubein arrived at Mount Olive at age 17.
Mount Olive’s then-president, W. Burkette Raper, took a shine to Qubein and took him to hear sermons at local Baptist churches. He helped him earn money by giving talks about growing up in the Middle East. Raper also lined up an anonymous local donor to help pay his tuition, a gesture that Qubein says inspired him to become a philanthropist who has donated millions to civic organizations and scholarship funds. After finishing Mount Olive’s two-year program, Qubein moved to High Point, graduating in 1970.
He began traveling widely as a freelance speaker, delivering a talk called “America’s Youth: A Sleeping Giant” at civic clubs and trade group meetings. “I had one tuxedo. They would pay me $200,” he recalls. Corporate executives heard his talks and offered better-paid gigs at company events. His speeches now command $20,000 and up.
When he settled in High Point, Qubein bought real estate and invested in a bank being set up by local businessmen. It was absorbed in 1995 by BB&T (BBT) in Winston-Salem, one of the Southeast’s biggest banks, and Qubein was invited to join the board. “Nido stood out as a visionary person. He asks the right questions on strategic direction, and he is a world-class teacher,” says John Allison, BB&T’s former chairman. In addition to his director’s fee, Qubein got a contract to teach at BB&T’s in-house training program, earning about $400,000 annually since 1993. The bank says he continues to teach.
BB&T has become the university’s key source of financing, underwriting four bond issues since 2006 and providing tens of millions in loans and lines of credit. Christopher Henson, a High Point alumnus who is BB&T’s chief operating officer, serves on the university’s board of trustees. Qubein joined the High Point board of trustees in 1993. When the university’s longtime president announced plans to step down in 2004, an alumnus suggested Qubein as his replacement.
Even as he has raised High Point’s profile, Qubein and his family have benefited from the school’s rapid growth. His base pay of $598,000 puts him in the top 10 percent of 519 private institution presidents surveyed by the Chronicle of Higher Education last year. In 2010, according to High Point’s annual IRS filing, he received a deferred compensation package that boosted his pay to $1.38 million. IRS filings show the university pays almost $1 million annually to his family’s public-relations and consulting business, now headed by Qubein’s 28-year-old daughter, Deena Qubein Samuel. Qubein says the school maintains an arm’s-length relationship with the company, and that his salary reflects the “market price” for the improvements he is delivering.
High Point is hardly the first university to try to buy its way to greatness. A century ago, John D. Rockefeller vaulted his new University of Chicago to elite status by spending big to poach academic talent from competitors. In the 1980s and ’90s, Emory University significantly enhanced its profile by using a $105 million gift of Coca-Cola (KO) stock to pay for endowed professorships, scholarships, and research programs. Yet no school in history has made such a leap by spending so much only on dorms and classrooms, says Richard Staisloff, a Baltimore-based consultant in higher education management. “There has to be a package of academic quality,” he says.
Qubein’s plan for the university is as much about urban renewal as about academics. The city of High Point—once a center for furniture manufacturing and hosiery making—suffered an economic collapse in the mid-1990s when those industries decamped to Asia, leaving hollowed-out industrial parks and neighborhoods of bungalows and ranch houses sinking into disrepair. Qubein and High Point’s civic leaders are betting the university can become the anchor tenant of a revitalized local economy.
“We needed something in High Point to get this city up and kicking again,” says Mark Norcross, a former furniture company owner who has given the university $2 million and recently pledged $10 million more. Like most of the donors, he didn’t attend the university. Norcross says Qubein sat down with him in 2005 and sketched out his plans for the campus on a piece of paper. “He said, ‘This university needs a face-lift, or we’re not going to be able to get the right kind of client’”—”client,” meaning, student family.
The school’s new look—part corporate campus, part theme park—was inspired by Qubein’s travels as a consultant and speaker. “I have been exposed to some of the finest facilities in the world: corporate offices, convention centers, even airports,” he says.
The university has acquired about 700 homes, mainly shabby rental houses, in the surrounding neighborhood, and has demolished most of them, though there are no immediate plans to build on the property. “I call it urban cleansing,” Qubein says. Many of these homes used to rent to students; now the university encourages students to live in dorms by forbidding them to rent housing in surrounding neighborhoods.
The campus makeover includes the $20 million Nido R. Qubein School of Communication, which houses a television studio, a glass-walled suite for video-game design, and a sumptuously furnished reading room, its shelves stocked with multiple copies of the president’s books (he has written more than a dozen) and motivational tapes. Glass cases display trophies he’s won.
There’s still some wealth in High Point, and Qubein has been adept at finding it. Some mill owners reaped millions by selling out before the exodus began; others moved their factories abroad. High Point’s Bentley dealership—the only one between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta—is still in business.
Donors also have given some $12 million worth of property, ranging from abandoned warehouses to a 300-piece set of Villeroy & Boch china and Riedel crystal that the university said would be used “to ensure our students are exposed to high-end crockery.” One woman donated her country house; the university built a ropes course on the grounds.
Still, gifts have covered less than 15 percent of the $700 million spent so far, with the rest financed by borrowing and student fees. Tens of millions in promised donations are still outstanding, with some earmarked for future projects such as the graduate pharmacy school.
Economic hard times have given High Point University a marketing advantage. The pristine campus outshines those of schools that cut back on maintenance and improvements during the downturn. Many public institutions have jacked up tuition and limited admissions because of state budget cuts.
Qubein has seized the opportunity. He’s more than doubled the admissions staff, run a $500,000 print and TV ad campaign in North Carolina, and sent admissions officers to hundreds of high schools in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states, which now account for more than half of students.
High Point advertises a $37,800 flat fee for tuition and room and board, on a par with nearby private colleges. But most dorm rooms require surcharges that can push the total to almost $43,000, with room and board fees as much as 40 percent above the national average for private colleges.
Qubein and the university trustees agreed last year to cap debt at $165 million and to convert variable-rate loans to fixed-rate debt. Still, trustees say they were never concerned that the school was getting in over its head. “I’m a firm believer that you have to spend money to make money, and that’s what we did,” says Bob Stout, a retired local businessman who serves on the board. “As a provider of credit, we obviously feel comfortable,” says Henson, the BB&T COO and High Point trustee.
Nor have the payments to Qubein’s family business raised eyebrows. Former board chairwoman Marsha Slane says bids were sought from competitors, and the proposal from Qubein’s daughter “was the best offer.”
The family business consists of a consulting firm that Qubein founded in the 1990s and a public-relations company where he previously served as chairman. The two businesses have been combined and are now owned by his three adult children, with his eldest daughter serving as CEO. Qubein is still listed by the North Carolina Secretary of State as the registered agent for the business; a university spokesman says that is a “reporting error.”
Jack Siegel, a Chicago-based lawyer specializing in nonprofit governance, says he advises nonprofit clients against doing business with for-profit companies associated with their directors. While not illegal, he says, they can draw scrutiny from the IRS, which in some cases has determined that they amount to extra compensation for the officers of nonprofits. “Unless the services really are unique, you’d be better off not using family members,” Siegel says.
The interlocking directorships with BB&T are “problematic” as well, Siegel says. Should the university run into trouble on loan repayments, “you’ve got an incredible conflict of fiduciary duty,” with Qubein sitting on the bank’s board and Henson on the university’s.
Qubein and Henson say that BB&T’s lending to the university is handled by its North Carolina subsidiary. Neither Henson nor the corporate board on which Qubein serves is involved in the subsidiary’s dealings with clients, they claim.
How much the university’s revival has helped the city of High Point is unclear. While it’s added hundreds of employees, ranging from professor to groundskeeper, and the construction boom created additional temporary jobs, research suggests the local economic benefits of colleges and universities are often greatly exaggerated, in part because the institutions pay no taxes. The High Point Economic Development Corp., a local business promotion group, says the university pumps $418 million annually into the local economy—although the school’s annual operating budget is only $77 million.
City leaders don’t seem to entertain the notion that Qubein’s plan could fail. “He would never let that happen,” Mayor Rebecca Smothers says. “He might take risks, but he won’t take foolish risks.”
Inside the gorgeous new buildings, High Point seems to do pretty much what it did before: educate kids with generally middling academic records in small classes with teachers who are usually good and sometimes great.
The curriculum has expanded, including new majors in mathematical economics and international relations and courses in Russian and Arabic. Instructors can apply for grants to buy equipment or hire research assistants; no such funds were available before Qubein took over. “I came here because of the culture,” says Daniel Erb, who recently was recruited from Duke as dean of the new health sciences school. “There’s a can-do attitude.”
“My professors always take time to meet with students outside class,” says Alan Albergaria, a junior from Rhode Island, lounging in an outdoor hot tub at the $19 million Greek Village fraternity and sorority complex that opened last year. “With all the amenities, the school can’t be beat.”
Even so, High Point is slipping by some traditional academic measures. The percentage of faculty with a Ph.D. or other terminal degree is down three points, to 69 percent, while the student-to-faculty ratio has crept up from 15 to 1 to 16 to 1 since 2005. Faculty pay raises have not kept pace with those at top North Carolina schools. Administrators say the rush to hire new teachers for fast-growing enrollment accounts for some of the slippage.
What about those SAT scores, which jumped to an average 1,100 total for reading and math, up from 1,023 in 2005? One possible factor is a steep decline in black enrollment, from 24 percent in 2005 to only 5.8 percent in the current freshman class. Nationwide, blacks score an average 200 points lower than whites on the SAT. (A High Point spokesman says the decline in black enrollment “doesn’t explain the increase in our SAT scores,” which he said resulted from enrolling more students with higher scores, and fewer with low scores.)
The student body is not only whiter, it’s richer. Scholarship aid has been slashed and now covers only an average 15.9 percent of tuition—less than half the figure for private colleges nationwide. “Yes, we probably have more students than many schools who are not in need of financial aid,” Qubein says. “Should we apologize for that? No. The more learned the parent, the more financially astute, the more discerning they are.”
The university is popular with parents who favor its preppy decorum. Although not enforced, there is a tacit dress code. Students are well groomed, with no body piercings or weird hair colors in evidence. “If you went to class in sweatpants, you’d feel out of place,” says Alexa Crawford, a sophomore from California. High Point may be the only campus in America without a single piece of paper stuck on a wall anywhere announcing a protest or a movie or used books for sale. They’re forbidden.
Some of Qubein’s most ambitious projects may not materialize. With enrollment forecast to grow to 5,000 over the next three years, there’s likely to be ample cash flow to cover debt payments of about $77 million during the period. But there may not be enough left to pay for big-ticket items such as a previously announced $70 million building for the health sciences school. Instead, it could end up in renovated space in the shopping mall. Qubein says the “state-of-the-art, NBA-type athletic arena” once planned for 2014 has been postponed indefinitely.
Even if Qubein avoids financial calamity, he may be left selling High Point as it is today—a school with OK academics, packaged in a dazzling campus with pricey extras and clean-cut rich kids. Qubein tacitly acknowledges this as he wraps up his pitch to parents. Moving to the edge of the stage, he picks up a bag of Hershey’s (HSY) Kisses and a box of Godiva chocolates. The Hershey candy cost about $4, he informs the audience; the Godiva, $40. “Both are good,” he says, “but only one resides in the extraordinary. It presents itself in a way that people find compellingly good.” He leans toward the audience, the Godiva box in the palm of his right hand. “Isn’t that what you want for your child?”
By Carol Matlack
(Bloomberg Businessweek)
April 19, 2012
Hundreds greet wounded Marine returning from Afghanistan (WCNC)
MOORESVILLE, North Carolina (WCNC) – Thousands of people lined the streets of Mooresville, North Carolina Friday evening to welcome home a 22-year-old Marine who earlier this year lost parts of both of his legs in Afghanistan.
Family and friends surrounded the motorcycle where Corporal Garrett Carnes was, riding behind his father as it pulled to a stop in the center of town.
Hundreds of members of the Patriot Guard had provided the escort and the roar of all those engines echoed off the downtown buildings as a band played.
Carnes, who lost his legs in an IED explosion back in February said, “This is great and everything but I wish my brothers and sisters in Afghanistan, especially those in my unit, could be here for this special day.”
“This is unbelievable what this town has put together for me,” Carnes said. “It shows the true love they have for our service men.”
Carnes still has to spend almost a year in rehab back at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
After that is done he said he will be back home for good.
“I plan to stay in Mooresville and whatever job I do, as long as it is in Mooresville, that is where I will be,” he said.
Written by Krister Rollins
(WCNC)
April 23, 2012
Mayor’s bond proposal a no-go for 2012 (The Herald Sun)
DURHAM – Mayor Bill Bell’s proposal for a $300,000 minimum bond in gun-related criminal cases won’t fly in this year’s N.C. General Assembly session, the dean of Durham’s legislative delegation says.
State Rep. Mickey Michaux, D-Durham, told the mayor and City Attorney Patrick Baker on Wednesday that legislators would have to pitch the idea as a statewide bill, meaning there’s no chance for it to come up in this year’s “short session.”
The rules for election-year short sessions dictate that legislators will consider only the state budget, bills that cleared one of the assembly’s two chambers the year before, proposals from legislative study committees and “non-controversial” local bills.
Bell wanted legislators to try to get the $300,000 bond proposal through as a Durham-only local bill.
But Michaux told him that wouldn’t work.
At present, state statutes don’t mention any dollar figure for any type of case, he said.
“You start setting a figure in bonds, you’re going to have to do it for all of” the state’s 100 counties, he said. “You have an equal protection clause of the Constitution you have to follow.”
Michaux said local legislators are willing to lend a hand next year, when the rules allow the state House and Senate to take up new matters.
But when the time comes, they and city officials will craft a bill that doesn’t include the $300,000 figure, he said.
Instead, they’ll borrow from the approach the state’s already taken to gang and drug cases, adding more gun-related aggravating factors into the things judges and magistrates are supposed to weigh as they’re deciding pre-trial bonds.
Baker had already watered down the mayor’s proposal, which originally called for a $300,000 minimum pre-trial release bond in any case accusing someone of a crime involving the illegal discharge of a gun inside the city limits.
The city attorney changed that to apply the $300,000 standard only to cases where an alleged transgressor had been out on bond for unrelated charges and had been convicted of a firearms-related crime sometime in the past five years.
That again was modeled on existing laws for drug and gang cases.
Baker in March said he’d pushed the change to get “us in the door of having a discussion” with legislators, given likely opposition from judges and defense lawyers.
Bell’s original proposal had indeed sparked opposition from defense lawyers who said an across-the-board, $300,000 minimum would likely violate federal and state constitutional bans on “excessive bond.”
Durham judges were also skeptical.
In March, Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson noted that the bond guidelines he and Chief District Judge Marcia Morey have given local judges and magistrates already suggest a surcharge in firearms-related cases.
And that makes them stricter than any similar guidelines used in other metropolitan areas of North Carolina, Hudson said.
Bell took Michaux’s stance in stride.
“Mickey’s point was that he didn’t think we could go around setting bail-bond limits in the general statutes,” Bell said, adding that he believes city officials “can accomplish what we’re trying to do” via an aggravating-factors approach.
Michaux is one of three lawyers in Durham’s six-man General Assembly delegation. He is the county’s senior state legislator, having served continuously in the N.C. House since 1983 after a four-year stint in the same chamber in the 1970s.
By Ray Gronberg
(The Herald Sun)
April 23, 2012
Legislators from both parties face tough primaries (The Associated Press)
RALEIGH – New N.C. General Assembly district boundaries approved last year put North Carolina Republicans in the rare position of having the advantage over Democrats to preserve their new majorities in the legislature through the rest of the decade.
But the new district maps and the party that got to draw them for the first time in decades are giving both Democratic and Republican incumbents immediate headaches leading to the May 8 primary. Changing population patterns and voting records mean several sitting lawmakers have all they can handle to survive their primaries.
Well-funded rivals and former legislators are mounting challenges to current lawmakers they believe are vulnerable. That’s because swaths of voters have changed the electoral composition of districts or the legislators have made controversial decisions, such as voting for the Republican-penned budget. The maps also have required a few pairs of legislators to run against each other in the same districts.
The primaries appear more important than usual because more nominees won’t face a general election opponent compared to two years ago, according to election data, meaning the primary winner will serve in the Legislature. There are 21 House and 10 Senate seats that will be decided by the primary. In 2010, a Republican effort to have candidates run for nearly all 170 legislative districts increased the number of contested seats in the general election.
“The primaries are essentially the election in so many of the districts now, the Republican and the Democratic side,” said Jonathan Kappler, research director at the nonpartisan North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation, which tracks legislative races for business interests. “To some degree, it reflects what we’ve seen for a long time in the (state’s) congressional races.”
The incumbents facing the most difficult challenges include House Democrats who voted for the Republican budget and helped override Gov. Beverly Perdue’s veto of the state government spending plan, which made education and health cuts because a temporary sales tax was allowed to expire. Three of these five conservative Democrats decided to retire, but the other two are working to survive.
One of them is Rep. Bill Brisson, D-Bladen, who is being opposed by the North Carolina Association of Educators in part for his budget vote.
Matt Dixon, an Elizabethtown lawyer making his first run for elected office, said he began considering a run against Brisson after the budget vote. “It just bothered me that one of the ‘Gang of Five’ was in my district,” Dixon said, adding that for Brisson “to vote with Republicans on issues that are obviously drawn along party lines, it questions loyalty to the party.”
North Carolina Advocates for Justice, the state’s trial lawyers’ group, has been running a cable television commercial in Brisson’s district criticizing him for backing a bill that would have granted drug companies immunity from some lawsuits if federal regulators had approved the drug for sale. The provision didn’t become law. Brisson said the group has sent out several mailers.
“They’re bashing me pretty good,” said Brisson, who is now getting support from the North Carolina Chamber. The outcome likely will come down to which candidate performs best in Sampson County, which wasn’t in Brisson’s district in 2010 but now comprises 61 percent of the redrawn district. No Republican is running for the seat.
The other “Gang of Five” member, 14-term Rep. Jim Crawford of Granville County, is battling Rep. Winkie Wilkins of Person County. The Democratic pair was drawn into the same district. Crawford, who was named a top budget-writer several months ago, has become the subject of a state ethics complaint because legislative workers were extras in a campaign commercial. Crawford calls the complaint politically motivated — it was filed by a representative of a liberal advocacy group already critical of him. Jason Jenkins of Creedmoor is also on the primary ballot.
First-term Democratic Rep. Marcus Brandon of Guilford County didn’t vote for the budget bill, but he’s still being critiqued as being too close to Republicans by former Rep. Earl Jones, whom Brandon beat in the 2010 primary. Jones called Brandon a “Republican in Democrat’s clothing” for backing aggressively the elimination of the 100-school cap on charter school and voting for worker’s compensation reform that capped benefits for some injured workers.
“He’s been pretty consistent in supporting the Republican agenda,” said Jones, a former Greensboro city councilman. The primary winner in the majority-black district will clinch the general election.
Brandon was the lone House Democrat who voted for one version of the charter school expansion bill that ultimately was supported by nearly all of the Democrats in its final form. Brandon said he isn’t going to stick his head in the sand and refuse to work with Republicans simply because Democrats aren’t in charge. Instead, Brandon said, Jones spent too much time while in the House pushing longshot bills to legalize medical marijuana and regulate video poker.
“It’s not that I support Republican views,” Brandon said, adding that “I just think that you have abdicated your responsibility if you refuse to work with them simply because of ideological difference or because they have an ‘R’ beside their name.”
Republicans also are facing tough primary challenges partly due to redistricting. Rep. Larry Brown of Forsyth County is facing two well-connected challengers in county commissioner Debra Conrad as well as Glenn Cobb, who’s gotten fundraising help from two former governors and U.S. Sen. Richard Burr.
Rep. Julia Howard of Davie County, senior co-chairman of the House Finance Committee, is being challenged by Forsyth County Commissioner Bill Whiteheart, an outdoor advertising company owner. Howard’s district used to be evenly split between Davie and Iredell counties. Now it’s divided between Davie and Forsyth.
Rep. Stephen LaRoque of Lenoir County, co-chairman of the House Rules Committee, is running against Wayne County GOP leader John Bell. LaRoque is running in a reconfigured district and has been scrutiny for his business practices involving federal economic development grants.
Appointed House members Jason Saine of Lincoln County and Larry Pittman of Cabarrus County face noteworthy primary challenges. Reps. Efton Sager, R-Wayne, and Jimmy Dixon, R-Duplin, are going against each other because they were drawn into the same district. First-term Rep. Kelly Hastings of Gaston County has a rematch with former Rep. Pearl Burris Floyd, whom Hastings unseated in the 2010 GOP primary.
Current senators with significant primary challenges include Democratic Sen. Clark Jenkins of Edgecombe County; first-term Sen. Gladys Robinson, D-Guilford, and freshman Sen. Dan Soucek, R-Watauga, who is facing former House member George Robinson. Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, doesn’t appear to be taking any chances in his primary by running a television ad in a district that includes more of Guilford County than before.
Four current House members — Democrat Earline Parmon and Republicans Bill Cook, Norman Sanderson and Glen Bradley — are running in Senate primaries. Former Rep. Karen Ray is one of two challengers to recently appointed GOP Sen. Chris Carney.
Two men named Don Davis — one a former House Republican from Harnett County and the other an ex-senator from Greene County — are running in separate Senate primaries. Former Democratic Rep. Arthur Williams of Beaufort County has changed parties and is running in a House GOP primary.
(The Associated Press)
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Bill legalizing fracking in NC will be taken up in May session (Charlotte Observer)
Three energy bills will reach the General Assembly next month
RALEIGH-A state Senate committee on energy policy on Wednesday approved a proposal to legalize fracking in North Carolina in a little more than two years, and during that period establish a new regulations to ensure the environmentally sensitive process of natural gas extraction is done safely.
The unanimous vote by the five-member committee advanced a package of three bills dealing with fracking, criticizing federal energy policy while urging opening exploration off the coast in the Atlantic Ocean, and establishing a pilot program to grow fuel-producing grasses. The bills will be introduced in the General Assembly’s short session in May.
Fracking is slang for hydraulic fracturing, which extracts natural gas from deep underground by drilling down and then horizontally and shooting pressurized water, sand and chemicals into shale formations.
Committee chairman Sen. Bob Rucho, a Republican from Mecklenburg County, said the comprehensive legislation is an important step for the future economy of North Carolina. He said it would ensure that energy exploration and production is developed in an environmentally responsible manner.
But environmental groups were critical of the proposed fracking legislation. They favor the approach recommended last month by a bipartisan trio of House members who called for delaying fracking until more is known about the risks, at least several years down the road.
“It’s like driving a car 90 mph down the freeway with no brakes, no safety belts and a cliff looming ahead,” said Molly Diggins, executive director of the state’s Sierra Club chapter.
Diggins said she’s concerned that the proposal would invalidate local ordinances, prohibit public disclosure of industry records for two years, ease restrictions on groundwater contamination, weaken the regulatory powers of the state Department of Natural Resources and the state Environmental Management Commission, and create a new regulatory board that includes industry representatives.
Elizabeth Ouzts, state director of Environment North Carolina, said the emphasis on energy development should be on wind and solar resources. “It’s a shame and shows Sen. Rucho and his committee are out of touch with the rest of North Carolina.”
The Clean Energy and Economic Security Act would establish four new government entities: an energy jobs council, an interagency task force to develop compressed natural gas fueling facilities, a joint legislative commission to oversee energy policy, and – most importantly – an oil and gas board that would regulate the industry.
Rucho said he met with Gov. Bev Perdue on Tuesday and gave her an overview, and that others would be sitting down with her to discuss the package in more detail. Perdue has come out in favor of fracking, but vetoed an energy bill last year because it ordered her to enter into a compact with Virginia and South Carolina about offshore exploration and revenue sharing. This bill would soften that requirement:
Instead of a compact, the governor would have to develop a “strategy” with those neighboring governors, and report back to the General Assembly by the end of this year on how to develop a regional compact. The governor would also be “strongly encouraged” to join a coalition of coastal state governors that has called for a coordinated effort on energy issues.
A spokesman for the governor said Perdue continues to believe that fracking must be done in a way that protects health and safety.
Rucho said he and others have also been meeting with Rep. Mitch Gillespie, a Republican who called for the go-slow approach, and House Speaker Thom Tillis in hopes of getting similar legislation through the House. Rep. Mike Hager, a Republican from Rutherfordton and a fracking proponent, said after the meeting he thinks it stands a good chance in the House. He said he thinks the proposal allows plenty of time to ensure fracking is safe and regulated.
“We think two years is pretty slow,” Hager said. “If I’m not mistaken, this is a process that has been in existence since the late 1940s or early 1950s. How much longer do we need to take?”
Rucho praised the report DENR issued earlier this year concluding that fracking could be done safely as long as the proper regulations were in place. He said the legislation will continue to be revised and will likely end up with even more safeguards than DENR recommended.
The package of proposed laws came out of four meetings by the Legislative Research Commission’s Committee on Energy Policy Issues, and its work is now done. Besides Rucho, its members were Sen. Harris Blake, a Republican from Moore County; Sen. Thom Goolsby, a Republican from New Hanover; Sen. Bill Rabon, a Republican from Brunswick, and Sen. Michael Walters, a Democrat from Robeson.
By Craig Jarvis
(Charlotte Observer)
Posted: Wednesday, Apr. 18, 2012
Modified: Thursday, Apr. 19, 2012
Effort aims to unify state’s top cities (PlanCharlotte)
Piedmont Crescent coalition to link I-85 metro regions
North Carolina’s most populous areas sit along Interstate 85 like beads on a necklace, but business and civic leaders in that highway-defined arc from Gastonia to Raleigh don’t necessarily view it as a region with common interests and goals.
But consider: That crescent through the N.C. Piedmont holds three international airports, two intermodal terminals and two inland port terminals. It holds three of the state’s four largest universities, and the state’s five largest cities: Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Durham. Yet how often do Durham’s civic leaders, for example, work with those from Charlotte or Greensboro to influence state or federal policy, or even just share good ideas? The answer: Not as often as they might if they viewed themselves as a unified region.
A new, grant-funded initiative, the Piedmont Crescent Partnership, aims to bring together residents and officials from that broad Piedmont area to address shared issues and maybe help the region’s leaders more often speak with one voice on matters such as transportation, economic development and growth.
The effort is funded through a $50,000 grant from the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation and will be led by the N.C. Metropolitan Mayors Coalition. The coalition, affiliated with the N.C. League of Municipalities, is a group of mayors from N.C. municipalities of 30,000 or more. The Winston-Salem-based Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation is also providing support to the effort.
John Francis, a consultant to the project, said it’s not just an urban initiative. The territory covers the state’s three large urban areas – Charlotte, the Triad and the Triangle – as well as the more rural areas within the reach of the metro areas. “To some extent it’s an urban initiative,” he said. “But we do think it’s important that we have stakeholders from rural regions and towns.”
Francis said listening sessions will be scheduled this spring, probably in April, followed by a summit conference, likely in May. Transportation will be one key focus, he said. “How do we make sure that people and goods can move through this region easily?”
Another focal point, he said, will be discussing how regional cooperation can help in addressing economic development challenges and in dealing with rapid growth.
After all, the state’s future hinges on the health of its urban areas. “What’s good for the Piedmont Crescent is good for the state,” Francis said.
by Mary Newsom
(PlanCharlotte)
