The Winston-Salem Journal editorial board points to several initiatives North Carolina’s Republican legislators are pushing, and dubs the “legislative meddling in local issues … hypocritical.”
The WSJ board cites Henderson County Sen. Tom Apodaca as telling the Charlotte Observer: “Cities are getting too big and powerful. We have to look after the counties.”
“Local control” has been the mantra of Republican political philosophy for generations, but now that GOP legislators control the General Assembly they are violating their own principles and making key local decisions from Raleigh.
Legislators are trying to take control of Charlotte Douglas International Airport from the city and give it to a regional board, to negate a lease that the Perdue administration made with the city of Raleigh for state-owned Dix Hospital land and to transfer control of Asheville’s water system to a regional authority.
In addition, legislators are considering legislation to meddle in the operations of the Wake and Guilford school systems; and in the case of Wake’s system, to gerrymander districts to help Republican candidates and to shorten the elected terms of Democratic and independent school-board members.
Sen. Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson County, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, told The Charlotte Observer that the impetus for the legislature’s actions is, “Cities are getting too big and too powerful. We have to look after the counties.”
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