News-Record.com

For those who care: We're told that the video poker ban will come before the Senate Monday night, rather than today.

Update: (11:11 a.m.) – No, nothing nefarious is up with the video poker ban. Sen. Tony Rand, the Democratic leader, said that Senate President Pro Tempore Marc Basnight wasn’t able to make today’s session and wanted to vote on the bill. So the vote was held over until Monday at 7 p.m. No one I’ve talked to expects trouble passing it Monday night.

Here are some links to go along with today's (Sunday's) story on HIV drug funding and the state budget:

• Click here for the story itself.
• Click here for Triad Health Project, the local group that assists folks living with HIV and AIDS.
• Click here for a fact sheet on North Carolina's ADAP program.(It's a PDF)
• More links here, here, and here.

And as always, click the link below to offer your own comments.

Greetings on what was a very pleasant Sunday here in Raleigh. If you've already checked in with my prior post, then here are the dispatches from other scrubby media types around the state.

• The N+R's own Doug Clark opines about the vitriol or lack there of in two local Congressional races. I have my own thoughts on the 12th and 13th, but they're for another day.
• The N+O's Rob Christensen high tailed it down to New Bern for the GOP convention high tailed it down to New Bern for the GOP convention. Reports Christensen: "Everywhere one went during the three-day convention that ends this morning with a prayer breakfast, Republicans were praying that the controversies surrounding Black will help them survive and perhaps even prosper in difficult midterm elections in November." One hopes they're coming up with a platform to, although they may choose not to tell anyone about it. As Christensen reports: "Apparently concerned about party divisions, state GOP Chairman Ferrell Blount barred the news media from covering official convention business -- consideration of resolutions, platform and other matters -- where the 546 delegates had a chance to talk from the convention floor."
• The Charlotte paper's Mark Johnson writes about the same GOP convention. He writes: "A month after a controversial and divisive primary election, Republicans gathered in a riverside city Saturday to mend, to invigorate a potentially low-voltage election this fall and to get a sneak preview of the race for governor in 2008."
• Boy ain't it going to be fun when this goes in front of the state ethics board this week.(Reg. may be required.) Easley has appointed most, if not all, of the ethics board, including its chairman.
• Greensboro Rep. John Blust makes the social pages.(Reg. may be required.)

That's it for now. Coming later: this week's Raleigh Dispatch column...a bit too focused on the inside baseball stuff down here, but that's what caught my attention this week.

Oh, and Monday night, be looking for a final vote to ban video poker in the Senate.

Rumors. You got to love 'em.

The General Assembly is about as fertile of a petri dish for baloney as one is likely to find. And we scrubby media types that hang there spend a lot of time chasing down the latest "have you heard...."

Yes, sure, a lot of that turns out to be mindless fluff or the debris at the end of a big game of "telephone."

But sometimes the latest rumor to waft your way has at least a kernel of truth to it. Case in point: the legend of the pork budget - and no, we're not talking about buying hog farms.

Anyone who has read the political pages for a few years will remember stories about Congressional "fact finding" missions to places where the main facts seem to concern the yardage to the 16th green or the SPF one needs to apply.

Well, here's another one. It's a pretty comprehensive look by The Center for Public Integrity and some partner groups.

The summary:

In the summer of 2005, the Center for Public Integrity, Northwestern University's Medill News Service and American Public Media began examining disclosure documents for about 23,000 privately funded trips taken by members of Congress and staffers over a 5 1/2 -year period. While some of these trips no doubt were educational, others appeared to be thinly veiled attempts by special interests to influence lawmakers and their advisers.

The center's site didn't have too much info up regarding the honorables from NC, but Medill News Service does:

North Carolina lawmakers and their staffs took about 470 privately funded trips at a cost of nearly $1.2 million during a five-year period beginning in 2000.

All told, members of Congress and their staffs took about 23,000 trips paid for by private sponsors at a cost of $48.9 million from Jan. 1, 2000, through June 30, 2005, according to an analysis of official travel reports compiled by Medill News Service, the Center for Public Integrity and American Public Media. The data come from trip reports filed by lawmakers to congressional ethics committees.

Click here for the full story.

From the Medill piece, an info graphic:

Congressional travel, by NC Congressional office, 1/2000-8/2005:

HOUSE

• G.K. Butterfield (D-1st): 7 trips, $11,100
  
• Bob Etheridge (D-2nd): 23 trips, $90,000
  
• Walter Jones (D-3rd): 16 trips, $26,600
  
• David Price (D-4th): 31 trips. $128,300
  
• Richard Burr (R-5th) 31 trips, $75,000
  
• Virginia Fox (R-5th): 7 trips, $9,500
  
• Howard Coble (R-6th): 76 trips, $155,000
  
• Mike McIntyre (D-7th) 19 trips, $33,000
  
• Robin Hayes (R-8th) 37 trips, $66,000
  
• Sue Myrick (R-9th) 27 trips, $37,000
  
• Patrick McHenry (R-10th) 3 trips $3,500
  
• Charles Taylor (R-11th) 9 trips $32,700
  
• Melvin Watt (D-12th) 52 trips $150,000
  
• Brad Miller (D-13th) 11 trips, $21,300

SENATE

• Richard Burr: 1 trip, $1,000
  
• Elizabeth Dole: 12 trips, $20,700

By my reading, Reps. Coble and Watt are the champion trip-takers from NC, both of who represent Greensboro.

A word of caution before you get too crazy with all this: some of this travel is legit. The problem is, as the stories linked to above suggest, it's difficult to sort through which ones are actually serve the public interest and which ones are little more than legal bribes.

Why so difficult? Because Congress makes it that way. From the center's "How we did it" piece:

But when the same people or groups pay for a "fact-finding mission," that information is put on paper forms, then filed in three-ring binders or input into a computer system, and made available only in the office buildings where the records are stored.

The House of Representatives' forms are kept in a sub-basement of the Cannon House Office Building, where the public copies were often hard to read, torn and misfiled. Researchers were told it was against House rules to digitally scan the documents — they had to make photocopies instead.

The Senate travel disclosure documents are stored in a computer system in the Hart Senate Office Building, and can be searched by the name of the traveler or the senator approving the travel. But those records are not available online. So researchers went to the building and printed them out.

As always, the comment lines are open.

My colleague Kerra Bolton from Asheville writes comprehensively today about the pending demise of video poker in North Carolina. Some Triad-area background is here.

The Senate is set to vote tonight(PDF) on the bill that would outlaw video poker next July.

If history is a guide, it will pass by a wide margin. I’ll update here tonight once there is a vote.

Update (8:05 p.m.): The Senate vote was 44-1. That one was Sen. Hugh Webster of Alamance County.

The bill now goes to Gov. Mike Easley for his approval or veto.

I've been off showing my editor around the Raleigh beat and working on a weekend story for most of today. So I almost blew out of here without a post today, but then an e-mail came my way from N.C. Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Meek. The money lines:

Today, Rachel Lea Hunter compared Vernon Robinson to a slave in a mass email and on her website. In response, North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Jerry Meek made this statement:

“Vernon Robinson is an embarrassment to himself and to the many well-meaning people of both parties who hear the call to public service and run for office. Between now and November, he will run his campaign of sleaze and I am confident that voters will again reject him. However, today Rachel Lea Hunter crossed the line. Her characterization of Robinson as a ‘slave’ was reprehensible and I call on her to apologize. This racial epithet has no place in any political dialogue, even directed towards someone as contemptible as Vernon Robinson.”

“Consequently, I am announcing today that I will recommend that the State Democratic Party leadership withhold any endorsement in the Supreme Court seat that Rachel Lea Hunter is seeking.

Oh no, she didn’t...did she? Well, yes she did. From her website:

I was getting ready for work when I heard Vernon Robinson on the radio. I caught the tail end of the conversation with Vernon Robinson. I don't reside in the district and can't vote for or against him, but I offer the following comments.

As some of you recall, I supported Mr. Robinson in his bid to become chair of the NC GOP. I believed at the time that he presented the best opportunity to get the NC GOP from Art Pope's influence. However, it was not to be.

You may also recall that I attended the NC GOP convention and that I witnessed the debacle in which Vernon Robinson was defeated by an overwhelming majority. It was a real "ass-whupping." I would have stood my ground, accepted the results and would have immediately resigned from the party. I made my decision and eventually I did leave, as have many others who have become disgusted over what the national and local Republican Parties have become.

But not Vernon Robinson. Like a good slave, he has returned to the plantation. I am sorry to use that metaphor, but his actions are like that of a slave saying "I'll be good from now on, Massa." A real leader would have told the NC GOP to shove it and would have resigned from the party after how he was treated.

(Ed note: emphasis mine on that one sentence.)

Well, ain’t this high brow political debate?

So far, I haven’t seen a response from Robinson's campaign, but will post it or a link once I see it.

I didn’t attend this week’s Council of State meeting Tuesday – oddly, it just wasn’t the most important thing going on at the time.

However, there was one item on the agenda of uniquely local interest to Greensboro. Rather than rewrite it, form the agenda:

Sit-In Movement, Inc., a non-profit organization, has secured a grant from Save America’s Treasures in the amount of $148,152 to preserve the historic former F. W. Woolworth Store located at 134 South Elm Street, Greensboro in Guilford County. The store was constructed circa 1929 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A condition of the grant requires the conveyance of a preservation easement to the State or non-profit organization. The Department of Cultural Resources, State Historical Resources, has been asked to accept a fifty-year (50) Preservation Easement covering the property at no cost to the State. The State will review and approve all structural alterations prior to commencement. No visual or structural alterations will be made without the prior written consent of the State. Sit-In Movement, Inc., is responsible for all restoration and future maintenance costs. Therefore, authorization is requested to accept the Preservation Easement from Sit-In Movement, Inc., for a period of fifty years.

I’m told the item was approved.

More info on Save America’s Treasures here.
More info on the Sit in museum here.

I’ve been working on a trio of stories (one of which is two of which are REAAALY, really boring according to the editor who read it them) for the weekend dead tree editions, so blogging has taken a back seat for a couple days.

I know, I know. Where are my priorities?

To make amends and by way of updates:

• House budget writers sent their crack at how to spend $18.8 billion or so off to the printers at the end of the week. The sub-committees that vet the budget met for a last time Thursday afternoon to deal with last minute changes and give their official blessing.

  That means the full House will vet the budget next week, giving it their final blessing by Thursday or Friday. And then the real work begins.

  There will be substantial difference between the House and Senate plans, and all those will have to be ironed out before something can be sent along to the governor. There is a possibility the honorables could finish all this on time (by July 1) this year, but both chambers will have to give and take a little to make that happen. Otherwise, it could be a long hot summer, just like last year.

  Click here for an early look from the AP.

• I’m pretty sure there may have been more leaders from Greensboro and High Point wandering about Cap City last week than were actually back minding the store. In an hours span, along with a bunch of business types, I ran into Allen Purser of the Chamber of Commerce, former City Manager Ed Kitchen now works with the Bryan Foundation, High Point Library Director Kem Ellis and Greensboro Library Director Sandy Neerman. I also spied school board member Calvin Boykin and hear tell of some city council folks being around, but didn’t see any of them. I did catch former Greensboro council member Don Vaughan, but he’s down here quite a bit so I don’t know if it counts as a sighting.

  All were up here lobbying for various causes, including more library funding and more state aid for economic development for the Greensboro area.

I have three stories planned for this coming Sunday and Monday, including one regarding the state budget and the High Point Furniture Market, and another on the proposed change to the age at which children enter Kindergarten.

Until then, have a pleasant weekend.

Welcome to those of you finding your way here after reading today’s story on proposed changes to municipal solid waste laws at the state level and how they might affect Greensboro.

If you were to ask me to handicap the chances of either one of them passing, I’d say 50-50 right off the bat. But keep in mind, both are eligible for consideration as part of this year’s budget, which means their proponents have a couple different avenues to get them done. So call it 60-40, especially on the tipping fee.

Sometimes, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, or pitch it all and go off to find a beer and gripe about the downfall of democracy. (Full column after the jump.)

Two stories from me ran today:

• This one concerns the give and take of the state budget process and how it may affect funding for the High Point Furniture Market.
• Parents of young children, like me, will want to check out this one about a proposed change in the rules for kids entering kindergarten.

The comment link is open.

I've had a few questions about the online version of this story about the entry age for Kindergarten in North Carolina.

Three fast fact boxes that ran with the print edition (but not online) answer many of them.

HJR 2515
What: The bill would clear the way for legislators to consider whether to move the age for children entering kindergarten back to Aug. 31.
Status: The House passed the measure last week. Senators have yet to take up the measure.
Who's responsible: Two of the measure's sponsors are from Forsyth County - Rep. Dale Folwell, (919) 733-5787, and Rep. Earline Parmon, (919) 733-5829.

The state of things
Under North Carolina law, almost all children must turn 5 on or before Oct. 16 to enter kindergarten that year, according to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. The proposed change would move that date back to Aug. 31 starting in 2008. Elsewhere:

• North Carolina is one of only 12 states with kindergarten cutoff dates after Sept. 30.
  
• The cutoff for children in Tennessee and Virginia is Sept. 30.
  
• In South Carolina and Georgia, the cutoff date is Sept. 1.

The exceptions
According to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction policy, a child can be tested, and if they are determined to be gifted they may enter kindergarten even if they are born after the cutoff date. A spokeswoman for the department said that policy is not frequently used.

For those of you who didn’t rummage through the inside of today’s paper, the House did officially put out its full budget Monday . I’m told the dead trees edition got cut all to smithereens because of space issues – but y’all weren’t too worried about how the honorables want to spend $18.9 billion, right? (Click here for what’s left of the story.)The bullet points:

• The Civil Rights museum in downtown Greensboro got no funding in any current draft of the budget. So baring some change in the House budget before Thursday, it probably won’t get much of anything from the state this year. (Of course, local representatives say they’re not giving up on landing some funding for the program and wild things are known to have happen.)
• Over all, the House budget spends $88.7 million more than the Senate budget, is more generous with earmarks for state facilities, and takes some Medicaid costs off the county’s plate.
• Once the House finishes its budget this week, the House and Senate will have to negotiated a compromise budget.

Meanwhile, my colleague Michelle Jarboe writes about pending legislation that could affect how and what you pay fore cable television service. Michelle does a good job of distilling a complicated issued down to its essentials.

But can I still call it cable TV if it comes over a phone line?

So, the House has begun tweaking the budget they rolled out yesterday. They do that first in an appropriations committee that has been going on since about 8:30 a.m.

The process goes something like this: someone’s pet project has been left out. In the case of the discussion I’m listening to right now, Kids Voting was left out of the House budget. This is the program that lets children participate in a mock election as their parents go to the polls.

So, Rep. Maggie Jeffus, a Greensboro Democrat, is a backer of Kids Voting and wants to put the item up for discussion during the conference between the House and Senate. So she proposes adding $100,000 to the budget for Kids Voting. But she has to take it from somewhere else in the budget.

Jeffus made the mistake of taking it from the Kannapolis Research Campus, the new community college project centered around the Dole company’s big move into the state. That has prompted a bunch of business Democrats to attack her amendment. (Kannapolis lost a bunch of textile jobs, and this is a way to bolster employment in the area.)

As a result, Jeffus’ amendment almost got voted down. But her fellow honorables like Maggie and like Kids Voting.

So instead, her amendment is getting set aside for the moment. Apparently, Jeffus is going to get together with those attacking the amendment and find some other source of funding for the program.

In other words: Don’t gore our ox, we’ll find you another one to bleed.

This is going to go on for most of the afternoon it sounds like. The full bill will hit the floor tomorrow.

Update2: Jeffus got her Kids Voting money by raiding Learn and Earn funding, a pet project of Gov. Mike Easley.

Update1: Civil Rights Museum Rejected

Rep. Alma Adams made an attempt, backed by fellow Greensboro Democrats Jeffus and Pricey Harrison, to land funding for the Civil Rights Museum in downtown Greensboro in the budget. It is not in the governor’s budget and not in the Senate budget. If it doesn’t make it into the House budget somehow, getting state funding this year for the museum will be tough.

The move failed on a 25-29 appropriations committee vote.

Haven't heard about Kids Voting again yet.

I’m tuned in to other things today, but apparently the Rachel Hunter Vernon Robinson thing has taken another twist.

For those who want to hear a fraction of what an appropriations bill mark up is like here in Cap City, click right here to hear funding for Greensboro’s Sit In museum get rebuffed.

Yes, there’s a lot of dead air at the end as votes get counted.

Can blogger and reporter co-exist in the same body? Read on, after the jump.

Update: Click here to read the story online.

I’m writing a story for Wednesday’s paper about Senate Bill 1833, which would prohibit protests at military funerals.

The story is timely for a couple reasons. First, a related measure, which would authorize the General Assembly to hear the protest buffer bill, is on the Senate calendar for Wednesday.

As well, members of the group that prompted the bill are in Greensboro protesting at the Southern Baptist Convention.

If you don’t know about Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Topeka, Kansas, you could follow this link, but be prepared for some pretty hateful language.

If you’d rather spare yourself, the bullet is this: these folks think that the root of all that’s wrong with the world can be traced to gay people and what they see as the United State’s overly-tolerant attitude toward homosexuality. To make their point, they hold rather ugly protests at military funerals. (They’re protesting the Southern Baptist Convention because officials there are honoring the Rev. Billy Graham . Phelps says Graham is too lenient toward gay people.)

The U.S. Congress has already passed a law limiting such protests at national cemeteries. The state law follows the federal model pretty closely, except would apply to military funerals anywhere in the state.

Frankly, I would be surprised if the North Carolina law ran into much by way of opposition. There will be some folks who swallow hard at the notion of limiting what amounts to political protest. But others in the know (read: people with law degrees) have told me that the proposed law is pretty narrowly drawn, especially when compared with some other state laws that may have over-reached.

And there seems to be pretty broad agreement, at least among Senators here, that the sort of thing that Phelps does is reprehensible. The hope is that the new law addresses a singular case and won’t apply to many, if any, other advocates.

One of the charms and hazards of working around the General Assembly is the existence of smoke-filled back rooms…quite literally. Pretty much everywhere in the state capital complex, legislators, lobbyists, constituent visitors and even us scrubby media types can light up at will. The two exceptions are the floors of the House and Senate.

Smokers around these parts include at least one fellow who has a habit of lighting really nasty smelling cigars.

(Full disclosure: I’m not a smoker and don’t like the smell of it.)

Well, this morning the Senate’s Health Care committee passed a bill today that would ban smoking in the legislative complex. The vote was unanimous.

It’ll be interesting to see what the honorables do with this, since a number of them smoke and a few of them interpret any limitation on smoking as an attack on the tobacco industry.

"It's always wise to check with a health care professional before you buy anything that claims to replace a legitimate medicine," Attorney General Roy Cooper writes in a news release.

That's probably sound advice, particularly when considering something called Yam Cream. (Word Doc)

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off for my mashed potatoes therapy.

The boss is bragging on our new RSS Feeds page. And for those of you who don’t know about this stuff already, it’s worth a look.

RSS is a handy tool, feeding news readers that can keep up with stuff you like to monitor on a daily (or more frequent) basis. Click here and you can find feeds for all the paper’s blogs as well as news stories by content.

Click here for this blog’s feed.

It's Flag Day today, and the General Assembly is debating a resolution honoring the state’s veterans. (Click here for bill info and a link to a PDF of the measure.) Debate is the technical term, although there is really no controversy. Everyone speaking is offering a little tribute to soldiers past and present.

Click here to listen Rep. John Blust’s floor speech. Blust is a Greensboro Republican. It is an MP3 file and is about five minutes long.

The full House is debating their budget bill today. Remember, the Senate has already passed its version, so this is the House’s idea how to spend $18.8 billion or so. At the end of the week, the two chambers will start negotiating their differences.

Representatives came into session sometime after 10:30 a.m. this morning (maybe closer to 11 a.m.), took an hour for lunch. They came back and passed a Flag Day bill, and then went back to debating and amending the budget bill ever since.

So far, no huge substantive changes have passed. I’ve heard no tell of any plans to try and run an amendment to bolster furniture market money (The House currently provides $750,000 to market the furniture trade show, the Senate provided $1.75 million) but it’s possible.

Speaker Jim Black said at the beginning of the day that he would let House members debate late into the night and on into tomorrow if they really want.

“You can have it your way,” he said.

So far, he’s kept his word. I’ve not heard him make anything that really smacked of cutting off debate.

Update1: (5 p.m.) The first big change to the bill came by way of an amendment put forward by Rep. Hugh Holliman of Davidson County. His amendment sets aside a $1 million reserve to create and high risk insurance pool.

I hear you...what now?

The state is considering creating an insurance pool for folks who have health problems that make them uninsurable (or really expensive to insure) but private insurance standards. This money would provide an initial allocation to that account. My guess is that it is probably not all of what would be needed, but makes the item eligible for discussion during the conference committee.

Update 2:(6:15 p.m.) Well, the House passed its budget, finally, on a 92 - 26 vote. They'll vote again tomorrow and there may be even more debate or amendments, but you’re not going to see to many changes in that final vote total.

Most, if not all, of the "no" votes (I don't have a tally sheet yet) came from Republicans, who say that it sets the stage for future deficits.

"I don't think I've ever been here when I haven't heard it's the best education budget ever," said Rep. John Blust, a Guilford County Republican, launching into the problems he foresaw. Earlier in the day, Blust had tried to offer an amendment but was shot down on a technicality.

"Let's look at this as a marathon, let's look out for the schools in 2008 and 2009," Blust said toward the end of his speech, protesting the growth in the state budget.

If you can’t stand to watch the hockey game tonight and are just dying to sort through the gory details:

• Click here for a really big PDF of the budget bill itself.
  
• Click here for a really big PDF of what’s known as the money report on the budget. It lists most of the money changes in the budget from last year to this year.

G'night.

Because a few of you seemed interested in the audio from yesterday’s appropriations committee debate, I thought I’d offer up a taste of what debate on the House floor was like today.

Click here to down load the file. It’s an MP3 and about 12.5 minutes long.

You’ll hear Rep. John Blust (yeah, I know, two audio segments from the same guy on the same day…he was chatty) start off, spar with some Democrats, and then hear some more folks from the Democratic side of the ledger extol the budget’s virtues.

By the way, I don’t see any Democrats on the list as having voted against. In fact, a fair number of Republicans went for the plan as well. Blust, as you can tell from the audio, did not. Neither did Rep. Laura Wiley.

Randolph County Rep. Harold Brubaker, a Republican who was Speaker in the late 1990s, voted for the budget.

Click here for all the gory details on the vote.

Well, after yesterday’s marathon on the House budget, you might have expected more debate and amendments to come along today. At least some members of the loyal opposition might get up to make a last stand, you might think

You’d be wrong.

With Rep. Richard Morgan, the Republican Deputy Speaker, in the chair no one spoke up in time to debate the bill. I think I heard Rep. Alma Adams, a Guilford Democrat, try to speak up at the last minute, but she – or whoever it was – was too late.

Now the real fun begins. Senators and House members will now get together in a conference committee to resolve their differences.

Items not necessarily related to one another:

• Charlotte Observer Columnist Jack Betts is writing a blog. Betts, for those of you who don’t know, worked for the News & Record once upon a time. (There are a surprising number of folks wandering about Cap City who can say that.)

• Update:(3:35 p.m.) Click here for audio of House Speaker Jim Black saying his thank yous after the House budget passed Thursday.

• This shin dig should be a fascinating(PDF) way to start the week.

• TREBIC, the Greensboro-area builders lobby, will be down here lobbying the Guilford delegation on Wednesday afternoon as part of a wider lobby day on behalf of real estate interests.

• Legislative leaders are expected to appoint members to the budget conference committee Monday morning. What I’ll be watching: whether any of the Republicans who voted for the budget in either chamber get appointed to the conference group. Locally, that would include Rep. Harold Brubaker from Randolph County and Sen. Stan Bingham from Davidson County.

If none of that strikes your fancy, drop me a line at the comments link below and let me know what’s on your mind.

Good Sunday morning. A couple things from me are in this mornings’ dead tree edition:

• This story talks about a loop hole in North Carolina’s gun law. I had been keeping an eye on this bill because it was sponsored by local legislators, but didn’t know the story behind it until Mr. Houglan sent me an e-mail asking about its status.
  
• So state lawmakers thought they had done something good to prevent identity theft last year. Well, as it turns out, the feds want to undo their work.

For those of you finding your way here in order to discuss, the comments link is open.

And happy fathers' day.

In case you didn't catch the N+R's Opinion page today: Click here for a funny.

A sure sign that someone writing a column is either getting lazy or hasn’t had time to fully develop an idea that week comes when they present readers with of those Odds and Ends sort of dispatches that touches on a few subjects, none of them very in depth.

To wit:

Jim Phillips

"Greensboro lawyer" Jim Phillips was elected chairman of the UNC Board of Governors. I use quotes around Greensboro lawyer, because that’s how pretty much all of scrubby media types referred to him.

It wasn't until I got to reading one of the snarky inside-baseball pubs that circulate here in Cap City that it fully hit me that we could should have been a bit more descriptive. (More after the jump.)

Sen. Stan Bingham was one of four Republicans named to the House-Senate budget conference committee Monday night. That committee is the one that writes the final draft of the budget that eventually gets sent to the governor.

With Democrats in charge and sharply partisan budget votes in recent years, it has been rare for Republicans to find themselves on the conference group.

This will be Bingham’s first time in the six years he’s been in the General Assembly.

“I’ll finally have a say so,” Bingham said Monday night after the announcement. He added, “I feel good about this budget.”

Bingham represents Davidson County and the High Point area of Guilford County.

The folks here in Cap City are all a tizzy over some hockey thing... perhaps you heard something about a cup and a fellow named Stanley?

• Gov. Mike Easley proclaimed today as Carolina Hurricanes Day.

• The General Assembly fell over itself inviting the team down to address the General Assembly (probably Wednesday). Update: There will be a joint GA session Wednesday.

Good...maybe those hockey boys can help the honorables wrap up the budget, hip checking pork and what not.

Of course, there are some enthusiastic hockey fans in Greensboro who would like to see some news on an other hockey front. (The hurricanes played in Greensboro for two years while their spiffy new arena in Raleigh was under construction.)

Columns of note from other scrubby media types down here in Cap City:

• Insider Scott Mooneyham writes about the strange dealings in the legislature revolving around a tire retread contract. My friend and colleague Taft Wireback wrote about the same deal here. Commentary from Doug Clark here.
  
• Asheville’s Kera Bolton lives in a sports free world but may be changing her mind about a sports-friendly budget provision.
  
• What’s the meaning of is? How about “no gifts?” Charlotte’s Jack Betts explores things that one wouldn’t think would be a moral or semantic quandary. He has more on his blog.

As you may or may not know, Guilford and Rockingham counties are governed by provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. So its pending reauthorization, scheduled for this afternoon, was of interest enough for me to begin poking at a story for tomorrow's paper.

Well, call off the hounds for now. From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Republican leaders on Wednesday postponed a vote on renewing the 1965 Voting Rights Act after GOP lawmakers complained it unfairly singles out nine Southern states for federal oversight, according to their joint statement.

"We have time to address their concerns," Republican leaders said in a joint statement. "Therefore, the House Republican Leadership will offer members the time needed to evaluate the legislation."

It was unclear whether the legislation would come up this year. The temporary provisions don't expire until 2007, but leaders of both parties had hoped to pass the act and use it to further their prospects in the fall's midterm elections.

Congressman Mel Watt, a Democrat who represents a skinny little district that reaches from Charlotte to Greensboro and Winston-Salem, is a prime mover on the House re-authorization movement. I would imagine he's not pleased.

Update:(2:25 p.m.) Click here for audio (about 38 minutes) of the joint session.(MP3) I cut a lot of the preliminary stuff.

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Sure, there is an $18.8 billion budget to consider, a cable franchise bill to shove through over the objection of consumer advocates, various bits of ethics legislation to get done and countless other adjustments to state law to make.

But Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue has made an accurate diagnosis: “The Senate will come to order – we’ve got Caniac fever.”

You guessed it. The Carolina Hurricanes are being honored by a joint session of the General Assembly. The honorables might get back to normal long about 2:30 p.m. or there abouts.

Now I’m not a total curmudgeon. It is pretty neat to see the Stanley Cup propped up on the Speaker’s podium. That, and if the honorables are bloviating over hockey they can’t get up to anything evil, right?

The U.S. Senate today essentially killed the latest attempt to raise the federal minimum wage standard. N.C. Senators Dole and Burr voted against.

That vote in Washington should put the question of a minimum wage hike this year right back in the court of state legislators. The minimum wage is becomming an increasingly popular item in state legislatures, not a little bit due to the fact that it polls really well with voters of all stripes.

In case you’ve forgotten, the N.C. Senate passed a $1 hike in the minimum wage as part of the budget bill. That hike was not part of the House budget.

However, the House sent the Senate a state alone minimum wage hike bill that is awaiting Senate action. It has been referred to the Senate Commerce committee.

So what’s going to happen? I’ll let you discuss amongst yourselves while I go bug some people about it.

I’m late in getting around to posting this, but for those of you interested in this story about getting more school kids to say the “Pledge of Allegiance,” some linkage:

• Click here for info on the bill itself, including a link to the text that was not working as of Wednesday night at 8 p.m. You’ll want to look at version three. This is one of those jobs where the House took a Senate bill on a different subject, gutted it, and put in the pledge language. That's why the title of the bill is still "Customized Industry Training Program." Trust me, it has nothing to do with that any more.
• The language in this version of the pledge bill is softer than other bills that were filed or even looked at during the past year.
• If you’re wondering why the legislature is concerning itself with this, this Called2Action group based in Wake County is pushing it.

As legislators said dozens of times during the committee hearing, the law is "permissive," which means schools districts and classrooms have a big loophole to wander through if they don't (or can't) do it for some reason.

And if you’re thinking to yourself, “Gee, this all seems a little familiar,” well you’d be right. From the current state education law:

§ 115C 47 (29a) To Encourage the Display of the United States and North Carolina Flags, and to Encourage the Recitation of the Pledge or Oath of Allegiance. – Local boards of education are encouraged to adopt policies to (i) provide for the display of the United States and North Carolina flags in each classroom, (ii) provide the opportunity for students to recite the Pledge or Oath of Allegiance on a regular basis, and (iii) provide age appropriate instruction on the meaning and historical origins of the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance. These policies shall not compel any person to stand, salute the flag, or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. If flags are donated or are otherwise available, flags shall be displayed in each classroom.

So why are we going through all the bother (and paper) of fooling around with something that basically already on the books? That, my friends, is what the comments link right below this post is for.

You remember House Speaker Jim Black’s infamous eye exam provision in last year’s budget? Well the Senate just voted 46-0 for this bill which would repeal it.

The bill now goes to the House, where some are trying to salvage the idea.

It’s always a good day when I get to upload something other than politicians blithering away (oh, they say worse about me, don’t worry).

Click here to listen to what Joey Cheek had to say at a morning press conference before the state Senate and House got to honoring him.

I’ve never heard him talk before, but from what I’ve read of our prior coverage, this is pretty much vintage Cheek: a little funny, a bit self deprecating, using his limelight to draw attention to a cause he cares about.

The most interesting thing from the presser:

“I genuinely feel that I have a much improved world view because of my travels,” Cheek said. Although he wasn’t sure what form it would take, Cheek said that he hoped his next charitable endeavor might be helping folks from North Carolina who wouldn’t have had a chance to travel to go abroad.

Listen to the whole thing.

Oh, and today is Cheek’s 27th birthday.

More:

• Click here to read the resolution that honors Cheek.
• Funny moment, they began reading in the Cheek resolution without having Cheek in the Senate chamber.
• Oh, dear goodness, the Senate just sang happy birthday to Cheek.
• Cheek is in the House now. And we've just heard the over-enthusiastic statement of the day, from Rep. Laura Wiley, a High Point Republican, “We have proven the ice is hot in North Carolina.”
• Best line of the day, from Cheek himself, recognizing that an awful lot of time was being spent on him down here in Cap City: "I would like to appologize to the tax payers. I don't know how much I've cost them in shutting down the government today."

Now, if you really want, you can click here to listen to the HOUSE honor Cheek or you could click here to listen to the SENATE honor Cheek. I included audio of the clerk reading the resolution in the Senate audio, but not in the House - I figured once was enough.

No, not me...thank goodness.

Apparently the conservative group Americans for Prosperity’s North Carolina arm has been running this radio spot in some markets.

I’ve yet to hear it on an actual radio station myself. Anyone out there actually catch this on the air? If so, what station (and where) were you listening?

Even better...was anyone out there actually moved to contact their legislator as a result of the ad?

The state Democratic Convention is coming to High Point this weekend.

Click here for the schedule and more info.

I’m cleaning out the ol’ e-mail box here at the end of a busy week, and a few folks have passed along this story from the LA Times. (May be some registration required.)

It begins:

PHOENIX — After years of cost-cutting and staring down deficits, states suddenly find themselves awash in extra dollars that are funding tax cuts, teacher pay increases and roadwork across the country.

Only four states have had to deal with deficits as legislatures rush to finalize budgets before the end of the fiscal year on June 30. The rest are enjoying surpluses that have fueled a 4.2% growth in state government spending, the biggest surge since 1999.

So what’s the bad news? This:

But state financial officials aren't celebrating yet. Much of the new money comes not from higher wages of taxpayers, but from less sustainable sources, such as the super-heated housing market, skyrocketing corporate income taxes or taxes on investment gains earned by richer citizens.

(Read the whole thing.)

There’s certainly been a good deal of debate here in NC about what is actually surplus, what is one time money and what is mere accounting gimmickry.

Folk from NC are quoted in the Times piece, although I’m sort of surprised that the writers didn’t pick up on the fact that the budget would likely spend more AND make a few trims to taxes.

Speaking of the budget, the head honorables are still holed up in the legislative building hashing through various proposals. Last I heard, folks were hoping to read in a compromise budget (ie: officially introduce it) early next week and try to pass it Thursday, but that may be hog wash…or maybe I should say “blog wash.”

I was hanging out at the Democratic state convention in High Point today (Saturday). There will be a story in Sunday’s paper. For all of you finding you ways here to chat about that, welcome. The comment thread it yours.

Update - Linkage:

• Click here for my story on the convention.
  
• The N+O’s Rob Christensen was also skulking about in High Point Saturday. (Reg. required)
  
• At least one of the folks at Blue NC was there. Update: And there again.
  
• I spied Matt Hill there too (although I didn’t get a chance to say hello). Update: Here he is again.
  
• The Dems say they had a fine time.

You might be one who thinks the influence of moneyed interest in politics is pernicious. You may be among those who say candidates shouldn’t have to scrounge for dollars in order to win.

And yes, an argument can be made that money’s influence on our political system has been corrosive to the public trust.

All that said, the lifeblood of a modern era political campaign, especially one with the size and scope of a Congressional contest, is money.

As of his last Federal Election Commission report, Sixth District Republican incumbent Howard Coble had about $824,501 in the bank. When the next reports are filed in July, bet on Coble having amassed more, not less.

His Democratic challenger Rory Blake has not as of yet filed a campaign finance report. Either Blake is blatantly flouting the law, or has not raised enough to trip the $5,000 threshold that makes filing organization papers for a campaign committee mandatory.

I ran into Blake at the Democratic convention High Point Saturday and he said the answer was the latter.

Blake said that he has switched his plan from self-financing the campaign to raising money over the internet.

“So far, it hasn’t come in yet,” he said, greeting various well wishers who passed by in the hallway of the High Point Theatre.

And so I poised the question to him: If you’re facing a long-time incumbent with a mammoth war chest, what are his fellow Democrats to think of someone who hasn’t raised enough to broach the most minimum of legal filing requirements.

“I don’t know what to think,” he said. “It does look like a competitive race and on paper it’s not.” He then paused and said, “I’ve got 19 weeks.”

That time frame might be generous. While it is 19 weeks to Election Day, North Carolina’s voters wake from their traditional summer political slumber when students return to school. Things really heat up in September and politicians need to be ready to reach their constituents.

Blake is unbowed, and said he has been walking door to door to make up for the lack of campaign cash. And he said plans were in the works for a fall push.

“We have a good plan, and I think when the plan come to fruition we’re going to surprise a lot of people,” Blake said. “I’ve had a wonderful reception, I’ve been very encouraged.”
Really?

Really, says Blake.

In part, he is counting on a strong national trend against Republicans. The war in Iraq, the president’s falling poll numbers and what he sees as miscues on domestic issues will hurt Republican incumbents like Coble.

“I’ve been in races before where you know you’re going to loose,” he said. “This is not one of those.”

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Linkage:

• Click here for Rory Blake’s campaign web site.
• Click here for Howard Coble’s campaign web site.
• Click here for FEC reports on Howard Coble.

I wrote a week or so back about HB 1415, which would close a loop hole in North Carolina’s gun law. (Click here for bill info.)

At the time I wrote:

The bill has not stirred a lot of opposition from gun owners or advocates, mainly because it closes a loophole rather than creates a new restriction.

Well it turns out, at least one group that I didn’t know about (and hadn’t heard of until recently) does object: Grass Roots North Carolina bills itself as “a non-profit, all volunteer organization devoted to educating the public about trends which abridge the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, and engaging in grass roots activism to preserve those freedoms.” Their main focus is on gun ownership.

When the group’s president, Paul Valone, wrote me to say that there were indeed objections to the bill I wrote back to apologize and to offer to air his viewpoint here. I specifically asked the following:

Here are a couple questions you might be able to answer in that statement: Your concern of a permanent registry was mentioned to me but legislators had said it had been addressed. And, in fact, the way I read the current version of the bill (edition 3) it requires folks be taken off the registry after eight years. Does that not get at your point? Also, assuming there are folks who a sheriff thinks should not have a firearm because they're going to do harm to themselves or others, why is having a process of letting other sheriff's know about that bad?

He wrote back:

We do not object to the process of informing other sheriffs, which is why we did not oppose the original bill. Our objections center on two things:

First, unlike concealed handgun permits, a sheriff has broad latitude in denying a pistol purchase permit, including not finding the applicant to be of "good moral character." Any of these would subject the applicant to being registered into the database, as would issuance of an emergency "ex parte" restraining order under G.S. 50B--even if that order is rescinded as spurious. In either case, the applicant would be included in the database without having committed any type of offense.

Second, read the bill carefully: Although it requires the **SBI** to expunge the data within 8 years, it applies no restrictions whatsoever to where the registration information is sent. Nor does it require **other** agencies to expunge the data. Therefore, I anticipate the SBI will disseminate it to the FBI, BATFE and local law enforcement authorities, all of which are free to keep the data permanently.

Inevitably, a number of gun purchase applicants--who have been convicted of nothing--will be permanently stigmatized as having been denied purchases. Below are the talking points we have been distributing to the NC General Assembly. We have a team of volunteers who work the G.A. on a regular basis.

Valone and GRNC may be up a pretty big hurdle. The bill passed the House on a 104 to 12 vote, with some of the House’s most conservative members voting in favor – including Guilford County’s John Blust and Laura Wiley.

House Speaker Jim Black just told members to be ready to be in session on Friday (a day they’re usually not in town) and possibly Saturday (a day when hardly anybody is skulking about the legislative building).

What does this mean, other than ruining a bunch of weekends? All the happy talk we’ve heard about definitely getting a budget deal done today might be out the window. The only reason the honorables would need to stick around that long is if a deal doesn’t get cut until Wednesday or Thursday.

Although there aren’t a huge number of differences, the sticking points that remain are, well, sticky.

The main ones, as far as I can tell, revolve around planning and building new buildings (particularly for the university system), salary issues (the latest House offer would give state employees at 5.5 percent raise) and how much of the responsibility of paying for Medicaid to take off of counties and how to go about that.

If you’re a furniture market booster, the picture for the High Point furniture market funding is trending better. If you recall, the Senate had provided $1.75 million for marketing the trade show, the House had cut that to $750,000.

In the latest Senate offer to House budget writers, the marketing money would go up to a total of $1.75 million, although half of that would be a one-time grant. The other half would automatically pop up in future budgets.

And, of course, nothing is a done deal until the conference committee sends the thing to the printer.

Stay tuned.

Update (4:25 p.m.) The House Democrats just finished a caucus meeting. According to some of the chattier ones, the two sides are butting heads over some of the more contentious issues.

I should say three sides, since the governor has a hand in this through some proxies.

Among the specific sticking points not mentioned above: the proposed landfill moratorium and study is something the Senate wants in and the House wants out. The Senate also wants the minimum wage in the budget while House members want to see a stand alone bill.

Budget negotiators are supposed to meet again tonight.

The General Assembly will pass today a resolution honoring the late Hugh Morton.(PDF)

I didn’t record the whole thing, but click here to listen to what Rep. Maggie Jeffus, a Greensboro Democrat, had to say.

So Saturday is July 1, which for most normal folks means it’s three days before the Fourth of July and if you haven’t already come up with the reason you can’t be at work on Monday, your thinking of one right now.

But here in North Carolina, July 1 is the start of the fiscal year, the point in time when county and city governments have to have their budgets done or, well, bad things happen.

The honorables up here in Raleigh are supposed to pass the budget by July 1 too. In odd number years, they have to do so in order to keep the government running.

This being an even numbered year, nothing so dire happens. The state has a budget, the two-year plan passed last year. Of course, the honorables have some tweaks they want to make…if you can call a couple billion dollars in spending changes a “tweak.”

And while the wheels of government won’t grind to a halt, delaying passage of the budget too long would have some consequences.

First off, the honorables would stick around Raleigh longer, and the longer they stay here, the crankier they get. Also, having the session run into campaign season would begin to make running for re-election difficult on both a tactical and rhetorical level. (“My challenger is part of a legislature that can’t even pass their budget and adjourn. Send me to Raleigh and I’ll…)

Secondly, all those county and city budgets are contingent, in some respects, to what the state hands down. Starting the fiscal year in all flummoxed and waiting for a check from the state because no one is sure exactly how much to send you.

So what’s the state of budget negotiations? According to reports coming from either chamber, there are about three core issues (state worker salaries, university projects and Medicaid relief for the counties) as well as a passel (somewhere between a dozen and 25) other issues that may or may not be settled at any one point in time, depending on the latest offer on the table and what kind of snacks are in the offing.

In the latest Senate offers, the proposed landfill moratorium that had Greensboro city officials worried was taken out of the budget. If it stays out, that’s probably a dead issue for the year, since the House seems less friendly toward the idea.

What’s next?

Well, the conference report has to be “read” on three separate days. If an agreement is reached today, then this would be the first reading. Second reading would happen Friday. And then the honorables are bracing for a 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning vote. That would let them clear out of town in time for a long July 4 holiday.

If there’s no agreement, well, they may just head out of town anyway and try to fix things toward the end of next week. A lot of the honorables have plans this weekend (a lot of them involving the tall ships festival down east) and they DO NOT want to be here.

Of course, when the joint gets stuck in this kind of mode, the rumor mill gets cranked into high gear. The latest is that Senate negotiators are so frustrated with this whole process that they might throw in the towel and refuse to come back into session for weeks. Doing so seems counter productive for everyone’s agenda (House and Senate alike) and I haven’t heard from anyone who would really know that such a play is imminent.

Sort of like the Energizer bunny…they keep going and going and going…

The House is headed toward an Appropriations Committee meeting to discuss what it amounts to a continuing resolution, sort of, not really. Basically, there are bunch of technical things that need to be done in order to make things bureaucratically easier, but the wheels won’t fall off without that measure. (A lot of them have to do with federal grants.)

The sort-of-kind-of-not-really-a-CR lasts until July 14.

According to House Democratic leader Joe Hackney, “Progress has been made.”

Not enough progress to say there will definitely be a budget and avoid the need to construct a contingency CR.

Click here to listen to Hackney’s minute-long bit of optimism.

Right after 10 p.m. Thursday night, House and Senate negotiators stood down for the evening without a budget deal. Honorables leaving the late-night session said they would be back in the morning to try again.

What does this mean?

Well, it is now physically impossible to reach a budget deal by the beginning of the fiscal year, so expect to see what amounts to a continuing resolution taken up and passed by the Senate Friday.

The honorables could meet right on through the weekend, debating on Saturday and Sunday. But that would be very unpopular with the rank and file. And with the long July 4 weekend coming up, a few might abandon ship with or without permission.

At least one House leader said Thursday night that it may be more important for the budget writers to reach agreement by the end of the year than to have the actual debate and vote. With an agreement in place, cities, counties and school systems would know what to plan on as their fiscal years begin.

And with a deal in place, the honorables could give all the members until this coming Wednesday, July 5, to read the budget and have a debate after they’re rested and ready.

The sticking points, according to those emerging from closed door meetings, revolve around capital items for the universities and other state-related entities. A finance package hasn’t been settled yet, although I get the sense from honorables in the know that the tax package – tax cuts really – are less of sticking point than the spending items.

I’ll check back in with y’all Friday afternoon.

• Efforts to raise minimum wage stall The proposed $1 rise in the state's minimum wage doesn't look like a bill in trouble, having passed both the House and Senate this spring.

  But supporters are worried that the General Assembly could adjourn for the year before passing the long-sought increase in the lowest wage businesses can legally pay workers.

• Not posted, but the first line of my budget story: — If the road to a budget agreement winds 1,000 miles, negotiators for the House and Senate have been spending the past three days circling around the last five city blocks looking for a place to park.

(The whole thing after the jump.)

Yeah, yeah, I’ve been slacking on the blog today. Blame it on a quick trip to Greensboro and Denton.

So there’s a state budget deal, and the honorables will vote after July 4. As of right now (4:23 p.m.) the top budget negotiators are still holed up behind closed doors putting final touches on the budget, but various hangers on seem to thing the deal with stick.

Click here for the AP’s first story on the deal.

Pick up tomorrow’s paper to see what some portions of the thing will mean for Guilford County.