News-Record.com

Gov. Mike Easley has appointed:

The honorables have high-tailed it out of town for the most part, now that they've given themselves until July 20 to get a budget done.

There were skeleton sessions in both the House and Senate today (Friday)but no votes taken. Those sparsely-staffed sessions were held so the honorables don't have to hold their usual Monday night session on July 4 but can come back to town on Tuesday.

Everybody have a good Fourth of July and we'll see you back here next week.

Update: In case you were wondering, this sort of nonsense is what the continuing resolution avoids.

Good Tuesday morning. The honorables are all back at work this morning. While they try to sort out the state budget, some other work is getting done as well.

Case in point, the Pop the Cap bill passed out of the Senate Commerce today. (Click here for a prior story on this topic.)

North Carolina's current law now only allows 6 percent alcohol in malt beverages. The bill would raise that cap to 15 percent. It has already passed the House and is now headed to vote on the Senate floor.

The bill is being pushed by craft brewers, who say they want the freedom to brew specialty beers that need more than 6 percent alcohol to turn out right.

Among the Commerce Committee members voting for the bill this morning was Sen. Katie Dorsett, a Greensboro Democrat.

"I'm not a beer drinker at all," Dorsett said. Dorsett said she only has heard one person opposed to it.

That person is Rev. Mark Creech, the executive director of the Christian Action League.

Creech argues against the bill on several grounds. He says it will undermine the state's ABC system, lead to underage drinking and drunk driving and catch uninformed drinkers unaware. He also said that higher-proof beers might run counter to the wishes of some communities that voted to allow beer sales under the lower proof standards.

One of his more potent arguments, I think, is that it will open the state up to Malt Liquors, which are generally marketed in low income neighborhoods as a quick and cheep way to get drunk. That argument, though, doesn't seem to gaining any traction. The counter to the malt liquor argument, by the way, is that people who would be inclined to drink just to get drunk are already finding ways to do that so this bill has not effect. I'll let you folks sort out which one might be right.

Expect to see this bill on the Senate floor later this week.

The bill that would allow Greensboro to determine how much, if any, smoking to allow in the Coliseum passed the House Health Committee today. That means it's onto a floor vote, probably later this week.

The bill only affects Greensboro, since Charlotte is already able to ban smoking from their buildings.

City Attorney Linda Miles, who spoke for Greensboro before the committee, told the honorables that the city didn't plan to ban smoking entirely. But for big events, she said, they would establish an outside smoking area.

From this morning's paper: the bill that would allow City Council to set smoking rules in the coliseum passes a committee. It's not on today's calendar, so I'm guessing it will show up Thursday or Monday on the House floor.

Marc Basnight, the Senate President Pro Tempore, says he wants to get a budget done . . . fast. And to put the peddle to the metal, on Wednesday he cancelled all future committee meetings that don't have anything to do with the budget.

His stated reason is that the clear schedule will give the folks working on the finance and spending package time to concentrate on their work. He said other committees could start back up once an agreement on the budget was brokered.

It also puts a lot of different bills that have come over from the House in jeopardy. Committees are where the heavy lifting gets done as far as rewriting and vetting legislation. If a bill has opposition, you'd rather work it out in committee than have a shoot-out on the Senate floors.

Some commentators speculated this morning that this was a ploy by Basnight to put pressure on the House, a way to prod them to hurry up and maybe move closer to the Senate position on some items. Basnight probably fueled that school of thought yesterday when he told reporters that after the budget is done, only "very important" bills would get heard before the session ends.

But immediately after he made the decision yesterday, Basnight told reporters "this has nothing to do with the House." The skeptic in me says it has a little something to do with the House, but we'll take the man at his word for now.

Of course, it was a little unclear yesterday how optimistic the Senate's top dog was about getting a budget done by July 20, the General Assembly’s self-imposed deadline for brokering a deal.

Basnight called such speculation "a fools guess." He also said:

"My best guess is that we'll get it before the summer is over, maybe the early fall."

Um . . . that doesn't sound too confident, does it?

He then followed up by saying he was "hopeful" that a deal could get done next week.

So will this move by the Senate actually speed things to a conclusion? Stay tuned.

Those rooting for North Carolina to raise the limit on alcohol in beer might be feeling a bit flat today.

The bill passed the House with relatively little opposition. It passed the Senate Commerce Committee, with only one member of the public speaking against it. But on the Senate floor, despite being backed by Democratic leader Tony Rand, it ran into trouble.

Sen. Jim Jacumin, a Connelly Springs Republican and Sen. John Kerr, of Goldsboro, and Sen. Larry Shaw, of Fayetteville, both Democrats, lead the effort to derail the bill.

It was Kerr who used a parliamentary motion to dislodge it from the calendar, over Rand's objections. Therefore there was no vote on the bill.

In theory, it has just been sent back to the Finance Committee and to staff to evaluate its fiscal impact. But with some many bills left to do, and Senate committees temporarily suspended until the budget is done, it's unclear if there will be enough time to bring it back this summer.

Even if General Assembly ends its work this year without passing the bill, they could still work on it during the 2006 short session. Still, for a bill that had an awful lot of momentum, this was an unexpected blow.

Update: A few more things, since there seems to be some interest in this:

From our friends at the Associated Press, this update on the continuing effort to piece together a state budget:

Just a few notes to get you through your Friday:

My colleague Lex Alexander announces "we will be launching our redesigned site sometime Monday morning." That's Monday, July 11. There's a couple reasons I'm telling you this:

Happy Monday morning everyone. The new N&R web site has rolled out and the world hasn't ended. (Yeah, yeah, this looks like the same dumpy ol' blog, but there's only so much virtual ink to go around.)

This weekend I wrote about the honorables honoring two state dances. Click here for that story. You'll notice that our new web page format lets us carry some pictures that ran in the paper and has a spot for our handy-dandy fastfax information.

The honorables in both chambers meet at 7 p.m. tonight. There's a good chance that the Senate will give the final legislative send off to S 532, a bill written by Sen. Phil Berger that increases penalties for those who swipe stuff from construction sites.

House Bill 85, which creates special license plates for a host of special causes, has been approved by the House and Senate. It will head to the governor's desk soon.

That bill includes a plate that will benefit the Guilford Battleground Company. The company helps buy and preserve land for the Guilford Courthouse park in northern Greensboro.

Gov. Easley says the state will shell out a $200,000 grant from the One North Carolina Fund to Kayser-Roth to help the Alamance County sock maker expand.

Click here to read the release.

Rep. Earl Jones' bill that requires public bodies to set aside time at least once a month for public comments became law today. The governor allowed it to become law without signing it.

Update: I had e-mailed the governor's office asking why he didn't bother to sign this bill. This is the reply I got from Easley press secretary Sherri Johnson:

"To answer your question about H635, this is more in the nature of a local bill -- and local bills are not ordinarily presented to the Governor to sign."

You may remember last week that Senate President Pro Tempore Marc Basnight cancelled all non-budget-relate committee meetings in his chamber to let budget negotiators focus on, well, the budget.

So I was curious when, on Tuesday's and Wednesday's Senate calendars, committee meetings that had nothing to do with the budget. They include a Mental Health & Youth Services committee meeting on the definition of child care and Commerce Committee meeting on a passel of different bills.

I was planning on writing something for the Tuesday's print edition on this, but power problems at the home office have prompted us to rely on our friends at AP for coverage from Monday's General Assembly sessions.

Actually, the sessions themselves were pretty tame. But afterward, we scrubby reporter types were trolling around for news of the budget from the honchos in each chamber: House Speaker Jim Black and Senate President Pro Tempore Marc Basnight.

If you listen to Black, the legislature could very well have a budget done by July 20, which is currently the government's self-imposed deadline. Basnight doesn't sound nearly so optimistic. Should it worry me that the two guys who are supposed to be in charge don't really sound like they're dealing with the same set of facts?

Power problems kept us from getting our usual round-up of goodies from the legislature into the paper. Here are some tid-bits from our friends at the AP you may have missed:

. . . "continuing resolution." Good.

That's right folks, time is just about up for the General Assembly to pass a budget by its deadline on July 1, er, July 20 so its almost time for them to set themselves a new deadline. I'm hearing it may be sometime in the first week of August. Until then, the continuing resolution will "keep the lights on and the prisoners locked up" and many of the folks around here are fond of saying.

And yes, updates here have been sparse this week. I've been working on a few things for the weekend papers. But there'll be plenty of time for more bloggy legislative goodness here in Cap City, the honorables aren't going anywhere for a while.

Update: This confirmation from our friends at the Associate Press:

"The second stopgap measure would expire Aug. 5 and provide more than $205 million to meet projected enrollment growth this fall in the public schools, universities and community colleges. The bill will be on the House floor Monday night."

This isn't exactly a state item, but:

Jim Cain, President Bush's pick for U.S. Ambassador to Denmark, is scheduled to go before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington on Monday.

Cain is an attorney and partner with the Kilpatrick and Stockton law firm, but chances re you know his name for one of two reasons:

This story from the AP Wire caught my attention this afternoon:

MARYVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A teenager accused of burning an American flag on the Fourth of July was released on his own recognizance after spending nine days in jail.

Blount County General Sessions Judge Hugh DeLozier on Thursday ordered Andrew Elisha Staley, 18, freed pending an Aug. 2 trial on six counts, including desecrating a venerated object.

The case could test Tennessee's statute against flag-burning, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled is protected speech under the First Amendment.

It got me to wondering if North Carolina had a flag burning statute. As it turns out, we do:

GS 14-381. Desecration of State and United States flag.

It shall be unlawful for any person willfully and knowingly to cast contempt upon any flag of the United States or upon any flag of North Carolina by public acts of physical contact including, but not limited to, mutilation, defiling, defacing or trampling. Any person violating this section shall be deemed guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor.

The flag of the United States, as used in this section, shall be the same as defined in 4 U.S.C.A. 1 and 4 U.S.C.A. 2. The flag of North Carolina, as used in this section, shall be the same as defined in G.S. 144-1. (1917, c. 271; C.S., s. 4500; 1971, c. 295; 1993, c. 539, s. 253; 1994, Ex. Sess., c. 24, s. 14(c).)

In fact, according to the the First Amendment Center, there are 47 states with flag burning prohibitions.

I haven't found any cases of this law actually being enforced, but there has been some local discussion of the federal flag burning issue.

If you remember from last week, the governor came out of his office for a bill signing ceremony and saw his shadow. According to local superstition up Cap City way, that means at least two more weeks of budget negotiations.

If you're burned out on prognostications from the oracles of Jones Street, here are some stories from this weekend:

Update, from Monday:

Update: This next had been coming Monday, but apparently you get it Tuesday:

...you can do that in the legislative building, you know. But today on the House calendar (link is a PDF) you'll find the measure that would let Greensboro ban smoking from the coliseum. Consideration was delayed last week.

From Tuesday's paper:

Remember all that stuff you learned in civics class about how the legislature appropriates money for certain things and the governor executes that plan?

Forget about it.

Gov. Mike Easley announced this morning that he was getting a $75 million head start on next year's budget. (press release here)

Okay, now for that context stuff:

Schools across the state begin in August and North Carolina is under court order to fix disparities between poor schools and wealthier schools. Meanwhile, as loyal readers know, the General Assembly still hasn't passed a budget for the year. They should have had it done by June 30.

Easley's executive order to spend $75 million extra on certain education programs appears to satisfy much of that court order in advance of an August hearing in the case. And in the context of the over-all budget, $75 million won't break the bank.

And, yeah, sure, this is a pretty good way for Easley to show everyone he's working hard while the folks in the legislative branch are having a hard time getting things done.

Of course, Easley might find himself scrambling if the honorables don't include the $75 million in the final draft of the $17.1 billion budget. And, as I alluded to up above, there might be some folks who take exception to the governor shuffling around money that hasn't been appropriated.

If you don't mind some lower-than-usual quality audio, you can listen to the press conference by clicking here. (It's a 20 minute MP3 file.)

Those following S223, which would establish state standards for voting machines, should know that it cleared the Senate Judiciary I committee Thursday morning.

This is the bill referenced in this story. Pretty much everything that folks on either side of the voter-verified paper ballot debate found objectionable is still in there.

It now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee and then, if it passes there, on to the Senate floor. Then the House would get a shot.

There is some muscle behind getting this thing done. The Judiciary Committee got special dispensation to hear the bill from the Senate leadership, which has shut down committee hearings on anything that don't deal directly with the delayed state budget.

Sen. Daniel Clodfelter was careful to say this was a one-time deal.

"This is not a resumption of a regular committee schedule," he said. So anyone getting their hopes up that this committee meeting was a sign that a budget deal was close, stop holding your breath.

My colleagues in the paper's Rockingham bureau are covering this, but Gov. Easley announced today Alcan Inc. will open a tobacco packaging facility in Reidsville, creating 170 jobs.

Click here for the release.

Not state government related, but:

If you're interested in the nomination of Judge John Roberts to be the next Supreme Court justice you might want to check out the Washington Post blog on the subject.

Democracy North Carolina published today the results of a survey on youth voting. The survey asked 18-24 year olds a variety of questions about registering to vote.

I'm struck by this finding:

"More than 1 out of 3 respondents, 34%, agreed that the process of registering to vote is inconvenient."

Really? I have to wonder about this finding based solely on my own experience.

It might have taken me all of five minutes to fill out my voter registration form the last time I changed address, and two of those minutes spent trying to find my new zip code. By contrast, when I moved to North Carolina I stood in line for more than four hours to get a driver's license that apparently isn't all that secure anyway.

In my pantheon of cumbersome, bureaucratic government processes registering to vote really never ranked. (Try getting a database out of a city that uses 40-year-old technology to store its data.)

So am I off base here?

It's Friday afternoon and the weekly deluge of announcements about who got appointed to what from Gov. Easley's office has begun. Only one Triad name on the list so far, but the day is young:

So does the title of this post refer weather or the debate over the state budget?

Take your pick.

Actually, I'm somewhat amazed by the variety of answers I get when I ask different folks who supposedly should know about progress on the budget. Every sentiment on the rainbow of human emotion seems to be represented.

But in general, the collective mood toward the end of this week has pointed more toward mostly cloudy rather than partly sunny.

Here's the latest on this mess from our friends at the Associated Press:

RALEIGH (AP) - Senate leader Marc Basnight said budget negotiations are "pretty lousy" and attributed the problems in part to a self-imposed spending cap by Gov. Mike Easley. The governor wants the spending increase in the final budget he signed less than 5.6 percent higher than last year's spending. The House budget proposal approved last month is about $100 million higher than would be allowed under the cap.

House Speaker Jim Black, D-Mecklenburg, said falling under the cap is a moving target in negotiations. He said House and Senate negotiators and Easley's office are debating which spending items should count toward the cap. Black said those items include the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, money for the Job Development Investment Grant program and payments to make up for $130 million that Gov. Mike Easley withheld earlier this decade from the state employee retirement system to balance the budget.

The latest stopgap spending measure approved this weeks gives the Legislature until Aug. 5 to come up with a final spending plan for the next two years.

So, anyone want to start placing bets on Continuing Resolution Number 3? Man alive, I hate sequels.

Now that I have those Madonna lyrics stuck in your head...

I was going to put up a short post on the upcoming sales tax holiday in this space.

But my colleague Mike Fuchs had beaten me to it over at his
Bargain Blog.

Couple of quick links for you this morning:

The House has once again put off voting on a death penalty bill. This is the second time in under a week.

This bill wouldn't create the blanket moratorium that many had advocated. Instead, it would create a study commission and allow Superior Court judges to make decisions on a case-by-case basis whether to delay.

House members re-calendared the measure for Monday, August 1, but schedules being what they are around this place . . . don't hold your breath.

Oh, you laughed a little bit when I told you earlier this month that the effort to raise the minimum wage would be back. And I admit, the idea of bring back a bill that had already been gunned down by the full House sounds a bit goofy.

Well let me draw your attention to House Bill 20, which creates a tax credit for small businesses that offer their employees health care.

How's that related to a state law that dictates the minimum amount per hour a business can pay its workers?

Folks who know about the negotiations say that a hike in the minimum wage will be tacked onto to that tax credit bill. The idea is to make the tax credit more palatable to liberal dems who are inclined against giving businesses tax breaks. And it makes the minimum wage hike more palatable to conservative dems who are inclined against anything the business lobbyists say is objectionable.

Rep. Alma Adams, a Greensboro Democrat, confirmed Wednesday that HB 20 was the vehicle chosen to resurrect the minimum wage hike, which the House has already rejected once this year.

When asked how much of a minimum wage hike she was gunning for, Adams said, "It won't be more than what it was before." The last version of the bill would have raised the state's minimum wage from $5.15 and hour to $6.15 an hour. When asked if mean the minimum wage hike would take it over $6.15 an hour, Adams said, "Yes, that's right."

The bill was scheduled for a hearing Thursday (7/28) morning, but Adams said that it will have to wait until at least next week for a hearing.

The Senate Thursday passed SB 223, the bill that would require paper records for all votes cast in elections. It now goes to the House.

Prior coverage here and here.

I'm heading out on a long-planned vacation starting July 29 and coming back the week of Aug. 8.

And yes, I have really bad timing.

The honorables were supposed to have a state budget done by July 1. They've taken their sweet time and now are a month over-due.

However, chances appear about even that the General Assembly could actually get a budget done during the week of Aug. 1, just in time for me to miss all the fun.

The honorables desperately want to finish the state's tax and spending bills by Aug. 5, which is when the current continuing resolution runs out. If they don't have a deal, they'll need to pass a third continuing resolution, something that most agree will make constituents cranky.

Now don't get me wrong. There's still enough money, hubris and special interests in play to derail the budget train. But assuming the last big questions can be answered by early next week - how much to raise the cigarette tax, how much to pay state workers and how to go about passing a state lottery - then a deal could get done.

If a budget does get done by the first week in August, there's pretty robust speculation around these parts that the General Assembly will end their session before Labor Day, perhaps well before.

While I'm gone, the paper is going to largely be relying on the Associate Press to follow the budget process. When I get back, we'll clean up any budget details specific to the Triad that others miss.

As for this here blog, I will attempt to update a few times while I'm away, but my net access will be somewhat limited. Feel free to use this or any other comment thread to kvetch in my absence.