Press Releases and Newsletters
It’s time for Basnight’s long Senate reign to end (Winston Salem Journal)
It’s time for Basnight’s long Senate reign to end (Winston Salem Journal)
Dare County legislator should allow new leadership to emerge.
During the days when legislators could legally enjoy Raleigh’s nightlife on lobbyists’ credit cards, Sen. Marc Basnight would rarely participate. More likely, Basnight and his entourage would eat at an out-of-the-way restaurant, usually rotating the tab among themselves.
Basnight told the Journal several years ago that he preferred to eat dinner less stressfully with his friends, most of them senators or folks from home. These were his buddies.
The Dare County Democrat and Senate president pro tem is losing those dinner buddies quickly these days. Sens. David Weinstein and Tony Rand are taking state jobs, thus leaving the Senate. Sen. David Hoyle won’t run for re-election. Sen. R.C. Soles is in legal trouble at home and may not run. Several of his other political allies also won’t be returning.
This would be a good time for Basnight to say goodbye, too.
He’s done much good, even pushing forward in the last few years after learning he has a rare degenerative nerve disease.
But Basnight has spent 25 years in the Senate, 17 of them running the chamber. That is enough time for any one person to control the legislature, especially in light of the pre-1980s North Carolina tradition of limiting the length and scope of any one legislator’s control over a chamber.
That tradition started because political leaders wanted the power of the top offices spread around the map. Typically, a speaker, lieutenant governor or governor from the east would be followed by one from the west or the Piedmont.
With Basnight controlling the Senate for so long, the coastal counties have had disproportionate political influence. Much pork has flowed to his district, and some necessary reforms stalled because of coastal opposition. For example, it took years to reform Beach Plan insurance simply because Basnight could stop it. After the plan was rewritten this year, some lobbyists calculated that Basnight took the best change he could get knowing his time in Raleigh was limited.
It is time for another part of the state to enjoy the benefits that derive from having a president pro tem. Should an urban senator get the job, for example, it might be easier to shift road-construction funding formulas to give cities and suburbs a more share proportional to their populations. (Give Basnight credit for one thing: He’s made it easier to drive to the beach.)
It is also time for another senator, with other ideas and priorities, to wield the pro tem’s powers. There’s plenty of talent in the chamber.
In this state’s legislative power structure, the Senate president pro tem has enjoyed enormous influence since 1989 when the Senate shifted to the office duties previously assigned to the lieutenant governor.
Many political observers felt that Basnight, elected in one district with almost no opposition for the past two decades, had more political sway than former Gov. Mike Easley, who was four times elected statewide. (Two of Easley’s four statewide wins came as attorney general.) Certainly, Gov. Bev Perdue, an old Basnight ally and friend, must pay close attention to his wishes before making any legislative moves. Only former Gov. Jim Hunt, from 1993 to 2001, surpassed Basnight’s influence.
That’s not right. Although the legislature must be a co-equal branch of government, one legislator should not accrue as much power as Basnight has during his prolonged tenure.
When Basnight is finally replaced, the Senate should develop a new tradition. Its presidents pro tem should serve for no more than two consecutive terms.
Basnight has been a good Senate leader. He has steered the state on a generally progressive path while maintaining the state’s strong business climate. The University of North Carolina system has probably never had a stronger and more powerful advocate in the General Assembly.
Basnight has also had his failings, however. Paramount among these is his penchant for secrecy in the budget process. During the Basnight years, too much substantive legislation simply got stuffed into the budget at the last moment. There, it did not get either full and fair debate or the up-or-down vote it deserved.
In his nine terms at the Senate helm, he has lost a number of political allies who have either run for other offices, retired or died. But never in his prolonged ascendancy has he suffered so many losses all at once. And never has he looked so vulnerable to his political challengers, both inside the Democratic caucus and out.
It’s time for Basnight to take his curtain call and return home. He deserves the gratitude of the people of North Carolina for his good works. But it’s time for new leadership in the Senate.
JOURNAL EDITORIAL STAFF Published: December 27, 2009
Advisers scour state for savings (Look to innovative road financings) (News and Observer)
Advisers scour state for savings (News and Observer)
RALEIGH — Gov. Bev Perdue, faced with the deepest budget crisis in decades when she took office, assembled a group of outside experts and asked them to put North Carolina state government under a microscope and to report back how it could be improved – and how money could be saved.
Those experts are expected to recommend millions of dollars of savings early next year. Among the many options they are considering are combining operations of the state air fleet, increased power-buying for common items such as toilet paper and outsourcing some state maintenance contracts.
“My gut instinct as a business guy tells me there are significant savings to be had,” said Norris Tolson, a retired DuPont executive who is now president and CEO of the N.C. Biotechnology Center.
Tolson is co-chairman of the Budget Reform and Accountability Commission, or BRAC, which Perdue appointed to advise her on overhauling state government.
Nearly every governor going back to Jim Holshouser in the early 1970s has created some form of efficiency commission to provide an outside look at state government, often with mixed results. Then-Gov. Mike Easley appointed the current one in 2002.
The efforts of Perdue’s panel are already being greeted with a measure of skepticism.
John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Raleigh, said the commission will likely find some useful savings around the edges. But he said it is unlikely to tackle major cost savings that are politically difficult to achieve.
“No one is against bulk buying or managing the motor fleet,” Hood said. “Everyone is against merging some departments or changing the mix of services that North Carolina delivers. The big savings are changes in Medicaid or changes in finances of the UNC system or in the management of the prisons.”
“There is a strong political constituency for protecting those agencies from change,” Hood said.
Perdue’s plans
Since taking office in January, Perdue has talked about the need to use the fiscal crisis to spur the state to innovate and think creatively about state government.
“You will continue to see me restructure government,” Perdue told reporters during a year end news conference last week.
She has cited as a role model North Carolina Gov. O. Max Gardner (1929-33), who used the Great Depression to reorganize government when the state took control of the roads, schools and prisons from the counties. Last week, Perdue said that tough times – whether the Great Depression of the 1930s or the Great Recession of 2009 – provide the perfect opportunity for the state to reevaluate how it does business.
The governor sees her innovation coming in different forms, such as a disputed financing plan for speeding up completion of Interstate 485 around Charlotte, forming public-private partnerships for road building and possibly modernizing the tax code.
One of her chief vehicles for making changes was BRAC, which she created shortly after taking office in January.
“What she charged the commission with is to scour the budget, line by line if you have to, program by program, major activity by major activity, and come back to me with a list of recommendations on things that the commission feels needs to be improved, done differently or eliminated,” Tolson said.
Tolson, who previously ran the state departments of Transportation, Commerce and Revenue, was chosen as co-chair along with Hilda Pinnix-Ragland, a Progress Energy executive. Other members of the 10-member commission bring a mixture of government and business experience.
The commission grew out of Perdue’s campaign for governor last year. The idea was patterned after Congress’ Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, better known as BRAC. Congress created BRAC to close unneeded military bases that remained open because they had powerful political protectors in Congress. The concept was that Congress would have to vote up or down on the BRAC recommendations as a total package.
Perdue, as lieutenant governor, was assigned by Easley to work with the BRAC process in North Carolina to make sure that North Carolina’s military bases made their strongest cases for staying open.
Her first year as governor was dominated by a $4.6 billion budget shortfall, which prompted her to back major cuts in state spending as well $1 billion in new taxes.
Her initial idea for the commission was to offer her recommendations to the legislature for a BRAC-like up-or-down vote. But it met with resistance from lawmakers reluctant to give up their budget-making authority, and Perdue seems to have cooled to the idea.
Instead, Perdue is likely to try to order some savings on her own and go to the legislature for changes in the law when necessary, according to Chrissy Pearson, the governor’s spokeswoman.
Getting scrutiny
The commission has been looking at a broad range of areas, including improving state computer operations and how state social programs are administered.
One area of particular interest is whether the state can better manage the 51 aircraft it operates – 31 airplanes, 16 helicopters and four bombers used for firefighting efforts. Ownership of the planes is spread among five state agencies and the University of North Carolina system.
“Do you need four sets of mechanics? Do you need four sets of pilots?” Tolson asked.
The commission is also looking at whether it can get into power-buying in a bigger way. If six state agencies are buying toilet paper, for example, the commission would like to know whether the state could get a better price by making one large bulk purchase.
Norma Houston, a commission member who is on the faculty of UNC Institute for Government and is a former chief of staff for Senate leader Marc Basnight, said the commission also wants to learn how other states and private corporations such as Lowe’s, McDonald’s or SAS handle their bulk buying. The commission also wants to find a better way of keeping track of what various state agencies are paying for items, so other departments can take advantage of low prices, she said.
The commission is examining outsourcing maintenance services in prisons and hospitals, making sure there are fewer idle state cars around, and studying whether certain Cabinet agencies are needed.
“Do we have too many Cabinet agencies?” Tolson asked. “Do we need to be combining some things? Do we need to be looking at how the Cabinet agencies operate?”
The commission is examining whether the state could save money by purchasing more buildings rather than renting, and whether more state offices can be consolidated in the same buildings, said Ron Penny, a former state personnel director and commission member now teaching at N.C. Central University in Durham.
Here for the long haul
Tolson said that beyond the initial recommendations that will likely be made in early March, the commission hopes to continue its work through the Perdue administration with more long-range recommendations. But as a veteran of state government, he is also realistic.
“We are under no illusion that we are going to turn our state government upside down,” Tolson said. “If we advance the ball a little bit more toward more efficient government, more efficient delivery of services, more cost efficient use of taxpayers dollars, we have been successful.”
BY ROB CHRISTENSEN – Staff Writer
[email protected] or 919-829-4532
N.C. builds a better rap sheet (News and Observer)
N.C. builds a better rap sheet (News and Observer)
RALEIGH — Wake County prosecutor Patrick Latour can search a defendant’s criminal history through either of two computer programs. The difference is like switching between Pong and a Wii.
The current system presents page after page of dizzying white letters and numbers on a black background requiring complicated, tedious commands. The state’s new system is as simple as ordering pizza online.
Latour, a drug prosecutor, is among a handful of Wake County law enforcement and court officials testing the new database. The system gives users quick access to criminal records across the state, probation information and state prison files; it soon will include county jail records. It even sends an e-mail alert to prosecutors if a defendant in a forthcoming case is arrested again, effectively a “You have jail” message.
Criminal Justice Law Enforcement Automated Data Services, as the system is called, is a direct response to the 2008 slaying of Eve Carson, student body president at UNC-Chapel Hill. Two men charged in the case were on probation. Their earlier offenses while on probation went unaddressed by probation officials partly because of the 1980s-technology computer system now in use that didn’t alert them.
“If anything positive can come out of Eve Carson’s death,” said Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby, “this is attributable to folks in the legislature saying, ‘What can we do?'”
What remains unsettling with the new system is that, though it will bring prosecutors light years forward in technology from where they are, it offers the sort of computer capability that online retailers such as Amazon.com deployed a decade ago.
A visit to Latour’s office offers a look at both systems. The old program is an antiquated labyrinth through which prosecutors must navigate each day. To enter the database, Latour flips through six computer screens with their DOS-style white letters on a black background. He enters login information twice and then can get detailed information – but only about Wake County. For other counties, he has to log out and then log in to a different area.
“All I can get is what they’re convicted of,” Latour said. “I don’t know if they’re on probation, if they’re in jail.”
For jail information, he has to log out and go into a database that includes only information from the Wake County jail. He types the defendant’s last name, a comma, first name and no spaces. If he accidentally puts in a space, he gets nothing. He uses a series of commands that sound like a computer programming class circa 1982: F2, put a slash next to the listing he wants, then F11 for the next listing. The computer freezes. He typed something wrong. Log out. Start over.
“If you use the mouse, you’re going to get screwed up, quite frankly,” he said. “I can get more information on my cell phone.”
Such obstacles are incomprehensible to a public accustomed to shopping, trading stocks and tracking down far-flung high school classmates in a matter of seconds.
“People watch ‘CSI’ and say, ‘Look at all that,’ and they would be amazed at what we don’t have in terms of automated computer systems,” said Kay Meyer, program manager for data integration at the state controller’s office, who is helping coordinate the new system.
Prosecutors handling major felonies such as homicide and rape must take the time to retrieve background information from the cumbersome system. They know the defendant’s full rap sheet when they go into Superior Court. But district court prosecutors, with 150 or more cases in a single morning, are retrieving as much data as possible on a laptop in the courtroom as they go. These are the cases that will most benefit from the new system.
In the aftermath of Carson’s killing, the legislature approved the data-sharing software as a means of giving law enforcement personnel statewide important details about warrants, arrests, prison conduct and more. A handful of Wake County officials are testing the program, built by software giant SAS of Cary. A countywide pilot program is expected to start by the end of June.
The cost business
The estimated cost over three years is $27 million, but the program has funding only for the $9.1 million that will carry it through June 30 and the end of this fiscal year.
For a glimpse of the new program, step back to Latour’s office. He launches Internet Explorer, uses a secure login and is greeted with the sort of Windows-based, type-information-in-the-box page that is familiar to most computer users. In the old system, Latour needed a defendant’s birth date. In the new one, age or an age range will do. Names are logically grouped together, and a red “VIO” marks defendants with a violent history. In one search, he sees 29 previous cases for a defendant, four pending charges and that the defendant was on probation and imprisoned in the past. Latour can retrieve details by clicking on any entry.
The prosecutor and, ultimately, a police officer on the street, can pop up a color-coded timeline of the defendant’s entanglements with the courts -orange and yellow bars mark months in prison, for example.
“It’s more intuitive and a quicker way to work,” Latour said.
A maze of data
The struggles now lie in compiling the data. Records are being drawn from different counties and different levels of government that use inconsistent pieces of identifying information. Older records lack data that is now routine. The system’s next step is to add all county jail information and, by June, driver’s license records, juvenile court files and the state sex offender registry. A later phase will include sources such as concealed handgun permits. Officials must carefully navigate restrictions, such as confidentiality of juvenile records, along the way.
“There are literally hundreds of regulations, departmental policy rules and statutes that affect how this information can be shared,” said Lorrin Freeman, Wake County clerk of courts, whose office is among those testing the program.
The accuracy and details are important because a mistake can put the wrong person in lockup or, conversely, set the wrong person free.
The system is being developed by state advisory teams on criminal justice information along with the steering committee overseeing BEACON, the state’s data integration effort, which made news in 2008 for producing a series of state payroll errors.
Once the system is operating countywide in Wake, Meyer and others will evaluate how it is working before rolling it out in other parts of the state.
BY MARK JOHNSON – Staff Writer
[email protected] or 919-829-4774
DOT: No inherent risk in parallel highway bridges (WRAL.com)
DOT: No inherent risk in parallel highway bridges (WRAL.com)
Raleigh, N.C. — The state Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that an investigation found no inherent safety risk in the design of the Interstate 440 bridge where a Raleigh man fell to his death last month.
Raleigh police said Carroll Lee Eames Jr., 33, of Willow Spring, stopped on the bridge between Glenwood Avenue and Six Forks Road to direct traffic after a collision. He jumped over a barrier between the eastbound and westbound lanes to avoid oncoming traffic.
The state plans to add a fence between the bridges at that location, at a cost of about $30,000, but does not plan sweeping changes statewide, State Highway Administrator Terry Gibson said.
“We don’t see a pattern statewide that would really make it viable for us to go out and do that,” he said. “We don’t see, for the money we would spend, that we would get that much protection. We just don’t see that many of that type of accident occurring.”
DOT found three similar deaths on other parallel bridges over the last 9 years statewide. Todd Fletcher, 26, died in a similar fall at the same I-440 bridge in October 2005.
The DOT investigation did note an alarming number of Good Samaritans killed or injured when stopping to help after car accidents. Because of that, the state plans a public education campaign about safety after a wreck.
State law requires that vehicles involved in a wreck be moved off the roadway, if possible. DOT advises that drivers stay inside their cars after a wreck and wait for emergency personnel.
The DOT also suggests:
Move to the right of the road, onto the shoulder or grass if you can do so safely.
Turn on hazard lights.
Never exit the car on the side of oncoming traffic.
Reporter: Mike Charbonneau
Web Editor: Jodi Leese Glusco
Posted: Dec. 22 4:03 p.m.
Updated: Dec. 22 6:35 p.m.
Tax money spent to advertise stimulus projects (WRAL.com)
Tax money spent to advertise stimulus projects (WRAL.com)
Fayetteville, N.C. — The state Department of Transportation has spent $135,000 in taxpayer funds to install signs touting road projects paid for with more than $800 million in federal stimulus money.
Signs like one on the Fayetteville loop highway construction project near Fort Bragg aren’t directional and don’t point drivers to any construction detours. They simply note that the particular project was “funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
“If we couldn’t laugh, we would be crying,” said Ronnie Tart, who owns a used car dealership down the road from the Fayetteville highway project.
Tart said he has waited for years for the project to start, but he said he can’t believe tax dollars are being used to remind him how his tax dollars are being used.
“That’s almost a slap in the face to say, ‘Here’s only a little bit of how badly we’ve spent your money, but we want to remind you,'” he said.
The federal money the DOT is using to erect 54 signs across the state – each costs about $2,500 – doesn’t come from the economic stimulus package. It’s discretionary money the state could have used on road construction or maintenance.
“It irritates me,” said Wes Lewis, who drives by one of the signs almost daily. “I think the money could be better spent somewhere else. They could use it on the road. If they want to let everybody know, they could put it in the paper what they’re using the money for instead of spending so much on signs.”
DOT Traffic Engineer Kevin Lacy argued that the stimulus projects are important investments, and educating people on where their money is going is a valid expense.
“I do understand their position. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I do understand it,” Lacy said of the sign critics.
The U.S. Department of Transportation encourages all states to install the signs, he said, adding that North Carolina will recycle its 54 signs once the stimulus projects they advertise are completed.
Lacy also pointed out that the company that made the signs benefited, which is what the stimulus projects are designed to do.
“We’re in unusual times, and (we’re) letting people know there is an effort going on that helps people get back to work,” he said. “It was important.”
Reporter: Cullen Browder
Photographer: Edward Wilson
Web Editor: Matthew Burns
Posted: Dec. 22 6:18 p.m.
Updated: Dec. 22 6:32 p.m.
Southern states do a U-turn on toll roads (USA Today)
Southern states do a U-turn on toll roads (USA Today)
ATLANTA — When the Florida Department of Transportation decided to add congestion-easing express toll lanes to Interstate 95 last year between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, public resistance was muted, partly because south Floridians are used to tolls.
That’s not the case in the Deep South, a region that has long resisted tolls as a “Yankee plague,” as South Carolina state Sen. Dave Thomas, a Greenville Republican, colorfully describes them.
“I don’t think of the South as having toll roads,” says William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. “The idea of a toll road, I don’t think of it as having any real history in the South.”
Not anymore. Toll roads — or at least plans for them — are becoming as common in Dixie as pecan pie, pickups and porch swings.
The newest twist: high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes that are free for multipassenger vehicles. Solo drivers using the exclusive lanes pay tolls that rise or fall depending on congestion and the time of day.
The nation’s primary source of revenue for transportation projects, the federal gas tax-supported Highway Trust Fund, is shrinking as many Americans drive less and operate more fuel-efficient vehicles. “We have a transportation funding crisis,” says Pat Jones, executive director of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association. “Governors and mayors … are saying, ‘Look, I’m not getting any help from the federal government. I’m going to bootstrap solving the problem myself. I’m going to go for tolling.’ ”
What Southern states are doing:
•Georgia is planning an extensive network of HOT lanes on expressways in metropolitan Atlanta, including Interstates 85, 75, 575, 285 and 20. The only one that’s “a certainty” is a 14-mile stretch of I-85, says Georgia Department of Transportation spokesman David Spears. That project, which will convert an existing high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane in each direction to a HOT lane with variable tolls, is expected to be operational in 2011 at a cost of about $147 million. Plans call for additional HOT lanes on 15 miles of I-75, 11 miles of I-575, 9.5 miles of I-285 and 6 miles of I-20.
•Alabama is planning its first state toll road, a $710 million project that will add four toll lanes on a 16-mile stretch of U.S. 280 in Birmingham. The highway, designed to carry 50,000 vehicles daily, serves 97,000, and that number is expected to rise to 140,000 in the next decade, says Tony Hill of the Alabama Department of Transportation. “This is the best option we’ve been able to come up with … to relieve congestion along that stretch of 280.”
•Mississippi is planning a toll road linking downtown Jackson with Jackson-Evers International Airport and the eastern suburbs. Progress on the 12-mile project — the state’s first toll road — has been temporarily delayed by the recession.
•South Carolina is studying adding toll or HOV lanes to some of its interstates.
•North Carolina’s first modern toll road, the Triangle Expressway, is an 18.8-mile system now under construction in Wake and Durham counties around Raleigh-Durham. The $1 billion project, portions of which open for traffic in 2011, will collect tolls electronically.
•Tennessee recently authorized limited tolling. No existing roads can be tolled, which would prevent the state from converting toll-free lanes reserved for high-occupancy vehicles into HOT lanes.
“Everyone’s looking for flexibility,” says Neil Gray, director of government affairs at the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association. “You have areas that never considered tolling now looking at it. The Southern states took great pride in not going to tolling. You’re seeing the same thing in parts of the West, like Nevada, where you didn’t see tolling before.”
Tim Lomax, a congestion expert at the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University, says tolling is catching on in the South for a simple reason: Sustained population growth means the region is running out of interstate capacity.
“If you have a bunch of free (interstate) capacity, you don’t need tolls,” he says. “Not until you get to the point where you have congestion, and your state DOT has difficulty building for that larger population. Until the 1980s and 1990s, in cities like Nashville, Knoxville (Tenn.) and Charlotte, you had pretty good capacity. There was congestion in certain corridors, but it wasn’t the all-encompassing Chicago- or Los Angeles-kind of problem.”
Even with all the proposals for toll roads in the region, legions of vociferous opponents to the concept still abound. Thomas, the South Carolina state senator, is one of them.
“The problem with tolls is that once you have them, rarely can you get rid of them,” he says. “With revenue sources dwindling all over the place, states are becoming desperate. But once (tolling becomes) a revenue source … it never goes away.”
By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY
N.C. unemployment rate dips slightly to 10.8% in November (WRAL.com)
N.C. unemployment rate dips slightly to 10.8% in November (WRAL.com)
Raleigh, N.C. — The jobless rate in North Carolina dipped again slightly in November to 10.8 percent, the state Employment Security Commission reported Friday.
The unemployment rate fell below 11 percent to 10.9 percent when the percentage was revised downward from previous reports.
Employment in the state grew by 12,453 people while unemployment dropped by 6,823, the ESC reported.
However, the ESC also noted that initial claims for unemployment benefits jumped by 14 percent, or more than 10,500, in November to 88,938 from October.
Of the new claims, some 53 percent were “attached,” which implies the companies laying off those workers expect to rehire them.
State Employment Security Commission Chairman Moses Carey Jr. stressed that more jobs are needed.
“Even though employment increased slightly over the month, we still need more job growth,” Carey said in a statement. “It’s another month where we haven’t experienced much change.
The unemployment rate a year ago stood at 7.5 percent.
Nationally, the jobless rate slipped slightly in November to 10 percent.
North Carolina did add 1,900 education and health services and 800 construction jobs last month but lost some 4,800 jobs in leisure and hospitality and another 3,900 in manufacturing.
The average hourly wage fell 13 cents to $15.78 in November, but the average number of hours worked grew to 39.5 from 39.1 the previous month.
Posted: Today at 10:32 a.m.
Updated: Today at 10:52 a.m.
House Approves $154 Billion Job Bill (The Wall Street Journal)
House Approves $154 Billion Job Bill (The Wall Street Journal)
The House approved a $154 billion package aimed at stimulating the labor market with a combination of infrastructure projects, aid to states and funding for several safety-net programs.
The bill passed late Wednesday on a 217-212 vote, with no Republicans voting for the plan. The hastily assembled legislation was completed late Tuesday night, leaving lawmakers little time to study it and prompting criticism from Republicans who said it was a waste of taxpayer money.
The Senate won’t take up jobs legislation until next year, but with the highest unemployment rate in decades, House Democrats didn’t want to return to their districts for the holiday recess without taking some action. As the 2010 midterm elections near, Democrats are framing their appeal to voters on job creation while Republicans seek to tap into voter unease about the rising federal deficit.
Democrats said that half the cost of the package would come from money repaid by financial firms who received cash infusions from the Treasury’s financial stabilization program. Republicans say the law establishing the Troubled Asset Relief Program requires repaid funds to be used to pay down the federal budget deficit, and that the jobs bill would add to deficit.
The package includes $27.5 billion for highway construction and repair projects. The bill would also designate funding for infrastructure-related projects, including transportation, school construction, rehabilitating Amtrak trains and wastewater-treatment modernization.
Under the bill, $79 billion would be designated to help prop up safety-net programs, including a $41 billion, six-month extension of federal jobless benefits; a $12.3 billion extension of subsidies for individuals who lost health-care coverage when they were laid off; and $23.5 billion for the federal government to assume a larger portion of state governments’ Medicaid costs.
The plan doesn’t include several proposals by the Obama administration, including a hiring tax credit and rebates for homeowners to weatherize their houses
—Siobhan Hughes contributed to this article.
Write to Corey Boles at [email protected]
Foxx signs mayors’ pact on climate (Charlotte Observer)
Foxx signs mayors’ pact on climate (Charlotte Observer)
Agreement first drafted by McCrory in ’05, but City Council approved alternate resolution.
New Mayor Anthony Foxx has added Charlotte to a long list of U.S. cities committed to taking action on climate change.
Foxx on Thursday signed a U.S. Conference of Mayors climate-protection agreement that his predecessor, Pat McCrory, helped draft in 2005 but himself refused to endorse. McCrory led the mayors’ committee that drafted the agreement, but faulted it for not including nuclear power among possible solutions.
The City Council instead approved an alternative resolution in 2007.
Foxx noted that signing the mayors’ agreement now is largely symbolic since Charlotte is already doing much of what the document requires. But, he added, “we cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.”
The Sierra Club’s Cool Cities Campaign has pushed Charlotte to join the 48 N.C. communities that have already signed the agreement. Josh Thomas, chair of the Central Piedmont group, called Foxx’s signing a “strong statement” to protect the city and its resources.
The agreement, already adopted by more than 1,000 U.S. cities and towns, commits Charlotte to curbing emissions of greenhouse gases. The overarching goal is a 7 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2012.
Charlotte’s recently completed inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, its light-rail system and new sustainable-facility policy are steps in that direction, said local Sierra Club members.
Charlotte is also applying for $6.5million in federal stimulus grants to pay for 18 energy-saving projects. Among them are retrofits of low-income housing and commercial buildings to make them more energy efficient and the purchase of several electric vehicles for city staff.
Read the agreement at www. usmayors.org/ climate pro tection/ agreement.htm .
By Bruce Henderson
[email protected]
Posted: Friday, Dec. 18, 2009
Metro Mayors Chairman Bell at White House Christmas Party (News and Observer)
Marshall at White House (News and Observer)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elaine Marshall attended a White House Christmas Party Tuesday night.
Marshall, who is North Carolina’s secretary of state, was among hundreds of state officials from across the country who were invited.
Other Democratic North Carolinians attending included state Rep. Verla Insko of Chapel Hill, state Rep. Pricey Harrison of Greensboro, Durham Mayor Bill Bell and state Treasurer Janet Cowell.
So that means on Tuesday, three North Carolina Senate candidates were having some sort of interaction with President Barack Obama: Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr was appearing at a rally to protest the president’s health care plan, Democratic candidate Cal Cunningham was taking a call fromObama in his hometown in Lexington, and Marshall was attending a White House party.
