Financial literacy, GA Police Powers, Racin', and seeing dead people
I got an e-mail this morning that our Legislative Briefs column didn't run in today's paper. So here it is (the last two items courtesy of our friends at AP):
FINANCIAL LITERACY
Schools would be required to teach financial literacy classes under a bill that cleared the Senate 48-0 Thursday. The measure now goes to the House.
Sponsored by Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, the proposed law would require the State Board of Education to develop a personal financial literacy curriculum within the next two years.
"You have to understand debt and money issues in order to get by in the world today," Hagan told her colleagues on the floor Thursday.
Howard Lee, chairman of the state board, told legislators earlier this week that he and the other board members supported the bill.
"I think it's critical that every student have access to this information," Lee told the Senate's Education Committee.
Hagan said the curriculum the state board will develop would not a be a full-year or even a full-semester course, but be part of the curriculum of an existing course.
House OKs bill to expand legislative police powers
Members of the special police force that protects members of the General Assembly would be able to use their powers throughout much of Raleigh and, in certain cases, across the state under a bill the House approved Thursday.
As the law stands now, the 17-member General Assembly special police can only make arrests and exercise other police powers in the capitol building, legislative office building and surrounding grounds in downtown Raleigh.
The proposal to expand their powers will now go to the Senate.
As it is written, the General Assembly Police's powers would extend to the inner borders of Interstate 440 , called the inner beltline, which circles downtown Raleigh.
And those powers would extend to other places in the state where the General Assembly is conducting official business, such as the House session in Chowan County earlier this week.
"Say we had to evacuate the building and take the members across the street," said Jeff Weaver, chief of the General Assembly's police force. "Right now, we'd be out of our jurisdiction."
Weaver said the expanded powers were not meant to give his force the latitude to escort individual members as they traveled throughout the state.
"We don't really need statewide jurisdiction," Weaver said.
General Assembly officers are armed, but the force does not own any marked cars or cars with lights, Weaver said.
Bill would help Charlotte pay for NASCAR museum
The General Assembly approved a bill to allow the Charlotte area to raise its hotel room tax to help pay for a possible NASCAR hall of fame. The House voted 92-18 to give Mecklenburg County the right to raise the local occupancy tax from 6 percent to 8 percent.
The Senate already approved that authority to tax. The tax would generate about half the money needed for a proposed $137.5 million bid by North Carolina to bring the hall to Charlotte.
Atlanta, Daytona Beach, Fla., Kansas City, Kan., and Richmond, Va., also are in the running for the hall. NASCAR's bid deadline is Tuesday.
House committee moves to close autopsy findings
A House judiciary panel debated a bill that would exempt photographs and recordings of official autopsy reports from the definition of a public record.
The measure would generally bar a person off the street from receiving copies of photos or recordings from death investigations.
People could still review the findings at reasonable times. Written autopsies could still be copied.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Karen Ray, R-Iredell, said she's not aware of any North Carolina newspapers or Web sites that have published or posted these photos.
The N .C. Press Association opposes the bill. A newspaper editor says the obstacles placed in the bill to review the photos will make it difficult for an average person with few resources to examine them. No vote was taken.