“One suggestion would be for our legislature to stop handing out vouchers for private school attendance and focus on adequately funding public schools and universities.”

“One suggestion would be for our legislature to stop handing out vouchers for private school attendance and focus on adequately funding public schools and universities.”
“So where is the outrage and press coverage when the North Carolina legislature implements a plan to dilute the votes and essentially silence the voices of nearly half its population?”
Private schools likely will become more affordable for families of any income next school year at the expense of public schools. The N.C. General Assembly is set to pass what amounts to a veto-proof bill removing the income cap for the private school voucher program. Buncombe County’s two public school districts could be out a […]
“An officer’s failure to report a partner’s crimes should be a crime itself — to be criminally punished and require permanent forfeiture of an officer’s certification.”
“Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment is in sight, and this time, North Carolina should be part of history and not left behind.”
“However, in spite of added expense and bureaucracy, the Republican bill (NC Health Care for Working Families) has the best chance of achieving a bipartisan compromise — if Republican majorities in our state Senate and House will move it through the legislative process.”
“Certainly, the last thing that our N.C. farmers need is for a state agency like the SBI to be complaining that they are going to have a harder time arresting people for violating marijuana laws if farmers are allowed to harvest an otherwise legal crop.”
“The thuggish behavior of the North Carolina GOP has been a disaster, making us a national laughingstock, and there needs to be some kind of reckoning, and soon.”
“The NC We the People Campaign is procuring a ballot measure for the 2018 election that declares that the people of North Carolina support amending the USA Constitution to establish that corporations cannot buy elections and that human beings — not corporations — are “natural persons” entitled to constitutional rights.”
“In the coming election, the current failure of single-party rule must be reversed by a sensible vote to restore Democrat and Republican balance.
Let’s all get out and vote!”
“It’s the latest iteration of an eternal attempt to eviscerate existing civil rights laws and, yes, a death struggle between rural and urban North Carolina over the state’s future.”
“A state that sanctions discrimination and hate is not a place that I wish to call home.”
“Who wants to move to a state to live downstream from a coal-ash pond in an area where schools are underfunded and employees have no rights? “
A proposed compensation settlement of $57 million by the Metropolitan Sewerage District of Buncombe County for the proposed Asheville water system merger was officially endorsed on Friday by the MSD board’s planning committee, and moves to the full board on December 12.
While there was no formal action taken, the board of the Metropolitan Sewerage District has reviewed what were called “underlying assumptions” used by staff in studying the proposed merger of the Asheville water system with MSD’s operation. The option of leasing the approximately 20,000 acres of protected watershed, leaving ownership in the hands of the city, was one item on that list of eight.
Not surprisingly, jobs and the economy were premiere topics at the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce’s candidate forum on Thursday. But in no time at all, education and local government control — the Asheville water system being the prime example — also bobbed to the top.
Democrats controlled the N.C. Legislature for 140 years. Less than two years after Republicans took control of the North Carolina General Assembly, they skillfully managed to get a constitutional amendment passed, voiding all civil unions as well as guaranteeing [that] gay men and women in North Carolina have no equal protection under the law and […]
WNC representatives saw movement on a number of House bills carrying their names last week, but partisanship remains the general rule of sponsorship.
While budget and redistricting plans for the state are boiling in the Legislature, the back burners are currently full of legislation that has been neither enacted nor discarded this session. As a result, the rules were changed last week to stretch the crossover deadline.
The Joint Committee on Regulatory Reform, established by North Carolina legislators this year, is on the road. Its mission: Scrutinize “burdensome state rules and regulations on behalf of the private sector.” The 18-member team wants to hear from business and farm owners around the state concerning “outdated rules and regulations that should be eliminated.” The […]
The North Carolina General Assembly’s protest of the national health-care mandates is resting uneasily on the governor’s desk.