News-Record.com

H 541, which would allow Greensboro to raise its annual motor vehicle tax from $10 to $16, passed the House Finance Committee.

The committee was a bit confused because in the text of the bill, it looks like the city could raise the tax from $5 to $16. However, the city's current rate is, indeed, $10, as confirmed by city and state legislative staff.

There was no opposition in the Finance Committee.

The companion bill, S 539, is due to be heard in the Senate Finance Committee this afternoon. Only one of them can pass, so it'll be a race to see who can get their version across the hall first.

For those who needed more explanation on H 688: Jamestown/Satellite Annexations, my colleague E.A. Seagraves has you covered with this story:

The town currently can only have satellite properties that make up no more than 10 percent of the town’s corporate limits. Town manager Kathryn Billings explained that Jamestown Park — separated from the town’s corporate limits by High Point City Lake — takes up the town’s 10 percent allowance.

Removing the satellite annexation cap would allow the town to take in future voluntary satellite annexations for areas that have requested water and sewer service.

The House Finance Committee held one of their auction sessions this morning, clearing out a bunch of local bills with no real controversy attached to them. At the end, Rep. Pryor Gibson, one of the committee’s chairs, warned his members and anyone else who happened to be listening that a reckoning was coming with regard to license plates.

In particular, Gibson said he was concerned about the proliferation of special plates that honor particular causes. Usually, the extra fees paid for those plates help fund whatever the cause may be. (In Greensboro there's a special plate authorized to support Guilford Battleground. Bills have been filed this year to support the High Point Furniture Market, Girl Scouts and the Town of Oak Island.)

Dozens of such bills have been filed this session, he said, and more were coming. (My own rough count shows 51 such bills filed between the House and Senate, but I could be missing some.)

"It's getting a little out of hand," Gibson said.

Members who had plate bills in should expect to see e-mails tweaking the boiler-plate language of such measures or adding another layer of scrutiny. Bottom line: it'll get harder to get a special plate authorized by the General Assembly.

"That's fair warning," Gibson said. "I don't know when it will come but it will be very soon."

For those who need it, here's background on H2, the proposed North Carolina smoking ban. The House is due to start debating the bill within the five o'clock hour.

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Update: For those who don't want to wade through the live blog, here's the early AP summary of the vote on the smoking ban bill:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Lawmakers in the North Carolina House have tentatively passed a measure that would ban smoking from restaurants and other workplaces that admit children

Lawmakers voted 75-42 in favor of the ban on Wednesday after the measure was changed to allow smoking in businesses that don't employ or serve anyone under age 18.

Democratic Rep. Nelson Cole of Rockingham County succeeded in easing restrictions that would have outlawed smoking in any workplace.

Supporters of the stricter ban said the change negates their efforts to protect waiters and other workers from inhaling secondhand smoke.

It should be noted the House will have to give the measure a final vote tomorrow (Thursday) before the bill travels to the Senate. I'll have more on the blog later tonight and in the paper tomorrow.

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The window below will carry live tweets from my Twitter account giving updates on the bill's progress.

The vote tallies and amendment language for H2, the workplace smoking ban, have been attached to the bill's NCGA information page.

Background here and here.

And here's the AP story.

The bottom line: The House Wednesday gave tentative approval to a workplace smoking ban that will cover bars and restaurants.

Rep. Nelson Cole offered an amendment that would let some bars and restaurants opt out if they post signs warning that smoking was allowed and do not employ or serve anyone under 18.

Update: Click here for my story from Thursday's paper that explains why the change could be problematic.

For those who didn't listen live and want a flavor of the debate, the following are some audio clips. (You can hear a recording of the entire day's session here.)

• *Click here to listen to Rep. Hugh Holliman introduce the bill.

• *Click here to listen to Rep. Jeff Barnhart explain his support for the smoking bill. Barnhart's father died of lung cancer. He was a non-smoker but worked in an office full of smokers.

• *Rep. Alma Adams, who gave up smoking after 30 years, supports the smoking ban. Click here to listen to her comments.

• *Rep. Nelson Cole says that the original version of H2 was too strict. He offered an amendment that would let bars and restaurants opt out of the smoking ban if they posted signs and excluded minors from working or being served. Click here to listen to him give his rationale.

• *Rep. Johnathan Rhyne, Jr. supported Cole's amendment. His was one of the better offerings in support of Cole's amendment and against the main bill. Click here to listen.

• *Rep. David Lewis's comments prompted a lot of feed-back as I was live-blogging the vote. "Somehow we've become convinced in this chamber that people don't have enough sense to make decisions for themselves." Click here to listen.

• *Click here for the end of the debate. The clip picks up in the middle of Rep. Dale Folwell's remarks opposing the bill, moves into Rep. Hugh Holliman's closing statement and ends with the vote.

As expected after last night, the N.C. Restaurant and Lodging Association now opposes the smoking ban bill.

The association stayed on the sidelines when the bill applied to everyone equally. But an exemption added Wednesday would allow bars to ban people under 18 and post signs saying they allow smoking. That change, association officials said, broke the peace.

"It's clear now that there's no longer a level playing field," said Paul Stone, who heads the association.

Many family-friendly restaurants pick up an active bar scene after 9 p.m. If the bill passes in its current form, he said, those businesses would be at a disadvantage competing against bars that can allow smoking.

Rep. Hugh Holliman, the bill's chief proponent, said last night he would ask the Senate to return the bill to its original form.

But Stone said it is not a matter of fixing the bill.

"We're going to fight the bill," he said. "We're going to tell the senate we're opposed to House Bill 2."

That hard line is strategic. Even if the Senate returned the bill to a blanket ban, it would go to a conference committee to reconcile difference between the House and Senate.

Conference committees are black boxes and non-legislators who have an interest in bills aren't thrilled when their bills hit conferences. That's because just about anything can emerge from the black box of non-public conference committees.

Having the association in the fight is problematic for smoking ban supporters. They helped kill the 2007 version of the bill (for the same reasons) and their membership has a wide reach. (Think representatives from tourist areas as well as big cities with lots of hotels and restaurants.)

Sen. Linda Garrou, the Winston-Salem Democrat who is the chamber's senior budget writer, said this morning that the Senate would roll out its version of the budget next week.

The schedule, she said, would be subcommittees on Monday, full appropriations and finance committees on Tuesday and floor votes on Wednesday and Thursday.

She said that agencies would be given "negative reserves" to help balance the budget. That's basically like giving an agency a $1 million but only letting them spend $900,000 of it. It's also a different approach from that taken by the governor, whose "truth-in-budgeting" approach would have more tightly defined what agencies could and could not spend.

As far as what areas are spared from the most severe cuts (education and economic development) and those that aren't (everything else), Garrou said the Senate and the governor were largely simpatico.

"I think we're tracking with a lot of things the governor has," she said.

Rep. Beckey Carney, 64, collapsed in her legislative office and was taken to Wake Med hospital this afternoon, according to Rep. Bob England.

Carney, a Mecklenburg County Democrat, was treated by England, a doctor, and General Assembly police until EMS arrived.

"She was talking to Rep. Insko on the phone," England said. Carney collapsed around 4 p.m., he said.

After determining that Carney's heart had stopped, England said that he performed CPR and used one of the General Assembly's defibrillators to help revive Carney.

"She left here talking," England said. According to England, Carney was taken to WakeMed Raleigh.

Update: This came from an Associated Press update:

She was taken to Wake Med hospital in Raleigh, where she was in stable condition Thursday night, said Bill Holmes, a spokesman for House Speaker Joe Hackney. Carney had a heart arrhythmia, Holmes said, which can be a cause of cardiac arrest.

Here's hoping she makes a quick recovery.

In case you haven't heard: the smoking ban bill passed the House.It will now go the Senate where leader Marc Basnight said, "I hope we pass it."

More here and coming in tomorrow's paper.

From the Monday paper:

• * This story looks at a proposed law to more closely regulate mopeds. The thing I learned from this story is that scooters are legally mopeds in North Carolina because they fit this definition: "A vehicle that has two or three wheels, no external shifting device, and a motor that does not exceed 50 cubic centimeters piston displacement and cannot propel the vehicle at a speed greater than 30 miles per hour on a level surface." (S 135.)

• * This story looks at a tax break requested by Greensboro members of the General Assembly for the purchase and installation of aircraft simulators. (H 869 and S 1057.)

The folks in charge of the Senate budget say they'll have the full package online tonight sometime around 7 p.m. Some highlights from a 2 p.m. briefing with Sens. Linda Garrou, Charlie Albertson and A.B. Swindell:

• * Total size will be about $20.05 billion, or about $1.4 billion less than last year's budget and just under $1 billion less than what Gov. Bev Perdue proposed.

• * About $320 million of those cuts come by raising the average size of a classroom by 2 students. For K-3 classrooms, average size rises to 20 students. For 4-12 classrooms, average size rises to 22.

• * About 712 government workers could lose their jobs under the Senate proposal, with another 900 vacant jobs eliminated.

• * The process of merging Smart Start and More at Four, the state's two early childhood education programs, begins under the Senate budget, although both keep their names for now.

There was not much talk about what the finance package that pays for all this will look like, although we’re told they need to come up with another $580 million to make the budget work.

For those of you playing "Senate Budget, the home game," here are some resources:

• * News reports to help you understand the budget from the News & Record, News & Observer, AP, and the Winston-Salem Journal.

• * Click here for the money report. You will find the bulk of the dollars-and-cents numbers here. (PDF)

• * Click here for the budget provisions. This is the budget bill itself, complete with changes to state law made by the budget. You'll find some items in here not illustrated by the money report. (PDF)

• * Click here for the General Assembly's audio page. You can tune into the Senate Appropriations Committee meeting here today. (It will be held in room 643.)

• * Click here to listen to the first part of Linda Garrou's news conference from Monday explaining the Senate budget. (Sens. Charlie Albertson and A.B. Swindell were also there.)

• * Click here to listen to the question and answer part of the Garrou news conference.

Here’s how this plays out the rest of the week: The Appropriations (and maybe Finance) committee makes changes to the document as it’s presented today. Then the bill is heard by the full Senate on Wednesday. Amendments on the floor are possible. It will then have to be heard by the Senate a second time on Thursday. Typically, the debate is far more muted and number of amendments offered is far fewer on that second day of debate.

The budget next goes to the House, which will have to deal with the consequences of whatever numbers come in on April 15. In most years, the “April Surprise” is a good thing for budget writers. This year, well, maybe there’s a reason the Senate wants to pass the budget on before than news comes through.

After the House is done with its version, then the House, Senate and governor try to come up with a workable compromise.

The flagpole outside the General Assembly had some extra cargo this afternoon:

I am sure if Duke or some other institution of higher learning elsewhere in the state brings home a national championship they'll be accorded the same honor.

The Senate gave final approval to the budget, $500 million mystery tax increase and all.

From this morning's paper:

RALEIGH — It’s too soon to say the battle lines are being drawn for the 2010 U.S. Senate campaign, but troops are mustering.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican, is winding up his first term as a senator — he served five terms in the House — and preparing to defend his seat in a political landscape much changed from his previous statewide run.

In 2008, a Democrat won North Carolina’s electoral votes for the first time since 1976. And Democrats wrested the seat once held by Republican icon Jesse Helms from the hands of Elizabeth Dole, a GOP luminary in her own right.

“When you look at what happened here in 2008, it turned upside-down what everybody thought they knew about North Carolina politics,” said Steven Greene, a political science professor at N.C. State.

Click here for the whole story.

For a slightly different view of the same topic, check out the N+O's Rob Christensen's story. And yes, as my boss notes, it's weird that we're writing about the same thing at the same time.

Also from me this Sunday:

Sen. Phil Berger can find plenty to criticize about the Senate version of the budget passed last week. He says it spends too much money, hurts counties and paves the way for unwise tax increases.

But what irks the Eden Republican and the GOP leader in the Senate the most is this: He wasn’t really sure what he was voting against. The budget passed the Senate 30-16 Thursday and now goes to the House.

The budget, Berger said, was written mainly behind closed doors and Republicans had little say in its crafting.

“That is the way under the leadership of the Democrats that business is conducted in the Senate,” Berger said. “There’s a certain amount of arrogance to it.”

Click here for the whole story.

From elsewhere:

• * Winston-Salem's James Romoser profiles Sen. Linda Garrou. The Winston-Salem Democrat is in the spotlight this year as the Senate's lead budget writer.

• * Taft Wireback continues what is sure to be a long-running series: how stimulus money is being used in Greensboro. Today is the Greenway edition.

• * Also a continuing series: the N.C. tax man explaining why refunds are slow.

• * My colleague Ryan Seals reminds you that it is nearly tax day for those who might owe the government a little something.

This week's Washington Watch column talks about earmarks requested by local members of Congress being posted online. Those links include:

• * Rep. Howard Coble, who offers a simple text rendering of his requests.

• * Rep. Mel Watt, who has offered up a PDF of his requests.

• * Rep. Brad Miller, who broke down his requests by agency.

Worth noting for the purposes of this post: Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Winston-Salem Republican, does not put in for earmark funding.

Back last month, I wrote about the brewing battle over beer distribution laws. Short version: Guilford County's Red Oak is asking the General Assembly to raise to 60,000 barrels the amount of beer a brewer can distribute itself. Currently, if a brewer makes 20,000 barrels or more of beer, they have to sell through a distributor.

Beer distributors and even some alcohol control advocates have pushed back against that effort, saying that it would throw the three-tiered alcohol control system out of whack. Executives at Red Oak say they just want to be able to make sure their product gets to market in a proper manner.

Since that story ran, bills have been filed in the House and Senate to raise the self-distribution cap:

• * Greensboro Rep. Pricey Harrison is among the primary sponsors on H 1017. Rep. Maggie Jeffus of Greensboro has signed on as a co-sponsor. The bill has been assigned to the House ABC committee and then Commerce.

• * Sen. Katie Dorsett filed S 918, which has been referred to the Senate Commerce Committee.

As those bills were being filed (heck, as I was writing my story on the topic) Red Oak owner Bill Sherrill sent a letter to legislators advocating for his bill. In that letter, Sherrill took aim at the beer distributors, claiming that due to consolidation there were only two that served the Triad. And to support claims of big money in the beer distribution business, he said Greensboro-based R.H. Barringer paid $100 million to buy another distributor.

The Beer wholesalers fired back a letter of their own, asking Sherrill to retract his claims and, essentially, saying he was full of you-know-what.

You can download a PDF with that exchange by clicking right here. (It's a PDF. The packet was distributed by the wholesalers and is worth the read if only to appreciate the fine art of how lobbyists knock down legislation they don't like.)

When I had occasion to ask Sherrill about how he got the $100 million, he didn't produce any documents but said he had asked Barringer CEO Mark Craig about the purchase.

Did he get an answer? I asked.

Not really. "He just kind of smiled at me," Sherrill said.

So since the battle is joined down here at the legislature, it's fair to ask if the bills are going anywhere. My guess is the Senate Commerce Committee will have other fish to fry unless the bill crosses over from the House.

In the House, the ABC Committee will be a tough test. They'll hear from interests that they have seen fight some pretty fierce battles (brewers and distributors versus the Christian Action League and other control advocates) line up against the same bill. That sort of unified front usually gets a committee's attention and makes the job of the people pushing the bill that much harder.

Also worth noting: Greensboro Sen. Don Vaughan did not sign on to the bills, nor did Greensboro Reps. Earl Jones or Alma Adams. However, you will see some names from out in the western part of the state (where they have some pretty good microbrewers) as well as some Alamance County honorables. Although Red Oak started as a brew pub in Greensboro, its new factory is out toward the Guilford-Alamance line. I've had at least one member of the Guilford delegation express some parochial reserve about the brewery limit bill because Barringer is located in the city and Red Oak is almost in the next county over. (Essentially, they want to support the position of the business that still the home town business rather than one that could be drawing on Burlington's water supply.)

From today's paper:

Car dealers regularly shop loans for new and used cars to a variety of banks, said the center’s Chris Kukla, often getting loan offers that vary in interest rates. Consumers, Kukla said, often don’t know if they’re getting the best of those rates.

“That’s the really tricky part,” he said. “There’s no way for consumers to know. The dealer is under no obligation to tell them.”

Frequently, finance companies can offer a “dealer reserve,” an incentive to the deal to put the customer in a higher-priced loan, according to Kukla.

Such reserves would be outlawed under a bill filed by Rep. Dan Blue, a Raleigh Democrat, and backed by Greensboro Reps. Pricey Harrison and Earl Jones.

Click here for the full story.

The bill is H 1223.

It is supported by the Durham-based Center for Responsible Lending.

With apologies to Paul Harvey, from our "For What It's Worth" Department:

RALEIGH — Some North Carolina tax returns are arriving in Raleigh steeped with what has become the ad hoc symbol of protest: a tea bag.

Drawing on the imagery of the Boston Tea Party, a movement driven mainly by conservatives has been sending tea to government offices — including some in Congress — as a signal that they would like to see taxes and government spending lowered.

“There has been some of that,” said North Carolina Revenue Secretary Ken Lay, confirming the spread to his agency. But whatever signal the filers are hoping to send may not be getting through.

“I don’t read anything into it at all,” Lay said. “For me to try to guess what’s on someone’s mind when they do something like that is an exercise in futility.”

A spokesman for the federal IRS, by the way, declined to say whether his agency was seeing anything similar.

H 148 passed the House Finance Committee this morning.

It looks like the bill would help PART expand. Committee members talked a fair bit about regional rail service during their discussion this morning.

Here's the AP's first blush account:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - A North Carolina legislative committee has approved a plan allowing the state's second- and third-largest metro areas to expand mass transit systems if voters approve raising local sales taxes.

The House Finance Committee voted 19-6 on Wednesday to advance the bill to a House floor vote.

The bill would allow voters in Forsyth, Guilford, Wake, Durham and Orange counties to decide whether to increase local sales taxes by half a cent and car registration fees by up to $2, piggybacking onto Mecklenburg County's popular experiment with light rail. The state's 94 other counties could raise sales taxes by a quarter-cent for transit projects.

The committee added a provision allowing Research Triangle Park to increase property taxes on its tenant companies to pay for transit.

The bill faces opposition from Republican members, who seem to both oppose the potential for property tax increases and have a standing philosophical object to how transportation money is divided among the state's counties.

So earlier this week, Sen. Richard Burr gave a talk to the Henderson County Chamber of Commerce and his remarks were covered by the local paper. During part of his speech, Burr talked about events surrounding the bank bailouts last year:

The state of the financial system at that time had a profound impact on the senator.

“On Friday night, I called my wife and I said, ‘Brooke, I am not coming home this weekend. I will call you on Monday. Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take. And I want you to tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday.’ I was convinced on Friday night that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine the last thing you were going to get was cash.”

That kind of remark doesn’t go unnoticed and soon news organs like The Hill and our friends at Dome amplify the report.

In turn, liberal-leaning websites picked up the report and blasted Burr for making “a run on the bank” during the crisis. Click here for Huffington Post’s take, which includes a nod to the DSCC jumping on the pile.

There’s only one place to go from there: Being made fun of by a nation political humor site. On that note, here’s Wonkette’s take:

North Carolinians, did you know your only national senator besides godless Kay Hagan is some guy who wanted his wife to withdraw his family’s entire savings from his local bank one ATM transaction at a time? If everyone had done this back in September, maybe we really could have had a good old-fashioned Depressiony bank run like in olden times.

Probably not the attention one wants, especially heading into an election.

Update: Now here comes CNN to make sure nobody misses the story.

The House debated and tentatively passed H 88: Health Youth Act on a 64-53 vote today. There will need to be a vote on 3d reading before the bill kicks over to the Senate.

The bill essentially creates two sex education tracks in North Carolina. Both supposedly emphasize abstinence until marriage. But as described by backers of the bill, they differ this way:

• * The abstinence track is what most NC students get now. Although some birth control methods are covered in this course, proponents of H88 say its emphases is unrealistic.

• * The comprehensive track would say waiting to have sex until married is better, but goes on to talk about birth control and disease prevention from what advocates say is a broader perspective.

Click here for a story I wrote back in February outlining the bill.

And click here for Wednesday's story on the House debate.

I could try to recount this debate, but it may be more effective just to let you listen in:

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Update: Here's one more piece of audio I didn't have in the original post. Wake County Republican Rep. Marilyn Avila argued against the bill: "Until we take the same attitude towards our children learning the responsibilities that they owe their bodies with regards to sex that we want them to take with regards to smoking, we're not going to see much of an improvement."

As hard as the workplace smoking ban was to pass the House, I dare 'em to try a ban on sex.

Click here to listen to Avila's full clip.

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Click here to listen to the debate on the first amendment of the day, which would say that if a parent doesn't give their written consent the student could not take either sex education track. Rep. Earl Jones challenged this idea, saying that kids with less involved parents who might not bother signing forms are the very kids who need the comprehensive course.

"It seems to me that science should not be trumped by fiction or fairy tail," Jones said. Bill sponsors backed this amendment as a way to make the bill less controversial and more likely to pass.

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Rep. John Blust worried that parents wouldn't necessarily understand the choice between the two sex education curricula.

“I’m asking what information parents will be given as to the details of the proposed curriculum,” Blust said. “Reading these guidelines of what we’ve called euphemistically abstinence-based comprehensive — some of these particulars do not appear appropriate. We cannot even read them on the floor (of the House) probably without being gaveled down.”

Click here to listen to Blust's question and remarks.

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Another amendment offered to make the bill less controversial removed references to "long-term, committed relationships." From my story:

Conservative groups had railed against that language as opening the door to teaching about homosexuality or that having multiple spouses was acceptable. Backers of the bill said removing the language would make the measure less controversial.

“I’m a little curious about your amendment,” Rep. Jennifer Weiss of Wake County said. “Did you know your wife before you married her?”

Goforth paused, then said, “I think that’s a personal question and I don’t think —”

Weiss shot back, “I did not mean in the biblical sense,” as others on the House floor laughed.

“I did know my wife before I married her; I didn’t get her off the Internet or anything,” Goforth said.

Weiss argued that most people are involved in relationships with potential spouses before marriage. And she added that people in their 20s were waiting for years to marry while still involved with the same person.

Click here to listen to that debate.

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Rep. Paul Stam of Wake County argued against the bill pretty forcefully. Click here for his thoughts - all 13-plus minutes worth.

It includes the soon-to-be immortal line: "Big love is coming to North Carolina," a reference to plural marriages. Oh, and he had a couple of really oblique references to masturbation and anal sex.

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Rep. Alma Adams of Greensboro offered her thoughts in support of the bill.

“We’re teaching in most of our school systems abstinence, but abstinence is not what most students are doing,” Adams said.

An anonymous e-mailer asked me about a recently formed PAC connected to Sen. Kay Hagan. I had not seen anything about it, although apparently CQ Moneyline had a three-paragraph blurb earlier this year.

The original paperwork for the Longleaf Pine PAC was filed in February. According to FEC documents, it is a leadership PAC.

Leadership PACs are used by members of Congress to raise money that they typically give to the campaigns of other Congressional candidates. Essentially, it is away to amass money and, in turn, amass influence among one's colleagues.

According to the documents, the PAC's "Custodian of Records" is Art Winstead, a long-time Hagan supporter from Greensboro. The Treasurer is listed as Nancy Brenner, an active political donor who serves on the State Board of Community Colleges.

Records show the committee has so far raised a total of $14,000 from four PACs:

• * J. R. SIMPLOT COMPANY POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE 5000.00

  J.R. Simplot is an agribusiness company that supplies McDonalds among others.

• * K&L GATES LLP POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (DC) 2000.00

  K & L Gates is a Pittsburgh-based law firm.

• * PROGRESS ENERGY EMPLOYEES' FEDERAL PAC 2000.00

  Progress Energy is one of North Carolina's major power companies.

• * SAFEWAY INC. POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (SAFEWAY PAC) 5000.00

  Safeway is a California-based grocery store chain.

Those following the ongoing battle over whether to relicense Alcoa will remember that Gov. Bev Perdue moved to intervene in the federal regulatory case.

Alcoa filed this response this morning and says Gov. Perdue should not be able to weigh in. The company argues the N.C. Department of Environment of Natural Resources is already a party to the case. And, they say, the time for the state to take a real interest in the relicensing is over. From the filing:

The Motion cites as “good cause” for failing to file within the Rule 210(b) period the fact that “the opportunity to intervene through the normal channels predated the election of the current gubernatorial administration.”5 What the Motion overlooks, however, is the fact that the issues and positions in this proceeding are not new, and the State therefore has long been on notice as to the issues of this proceeding, regardless of the individual serving as governor. In her letter to the Commission of June 3, 2008, then-Lieutenant Governor (now current Governor) Perdue referred to the different circumstances that exist presently as compared to those present at the time the initial license was granted.6 Yet these circumstances to which the Governor referred (i.e., the closing of the Alcoa Inc. (“Alcoa”) smelting operations in Badin, North Carolina) did not develop after the Rule 210(b) deadline in February 2007. Rather, Alcoa curtailed its smelting operations in 2002.

Furthermore, the previous gubernatorial administration, of which the current Governor was an integral and senior member, was responsible for the successful intervention in this proceeding of two of its instrumentalities—NCDENR and NCWRC. If those two State entities had the opportunity to intervene in this proceeding on a timely basis, then so too did the Governor’s office, assuming arguendo that the Governor’s office has separate standing to appear as a party. The fact that the individual serving as Governor changed is irrelevant. The present Governor is of the same political party as her predecessor, but even if that were not the case, the fact that the occupant of the office changes would not of itself indicate a change in State policy.

I wrote a story last month (click here) about the N.C. Community College system's efforts to sort out questions about allowing undocumented students into classes. (Audio on the topic is at this post.)

At the time, consultants were giving an oral report to the community college board on their findings. Today, they handed over a written report detailing the history of the immigration question here and comparing North Carolina to other states.

You can click here to get that PDF.

I wasn't able to make the meeting down in Asheboro, but after a quick reading of the report it looks like the consultants offer up three different policy options: ban undocumented kids all together, allow them to come in a in-state rates, or a middle road that would end up charging them more for access to the community college system.

In my quick reading of the report, I didn't see a recommendation that the system go down any one of those three paths.

From Gov. Bev Perdue's office:

RALEIGH – Gov. Bev Perdue has reappointed Shirley T. Frye of Greensboro to the Guilford Technical Community College Board of Trustees.

Frye is retired. She is chair of the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation, a board member of the GlaxoSmithKline Foundation, vice-chair of The North Carolina Science and Math School and a board member of the Greensboro Partnership. She received the 2008 Distinguished Citizen Award from the Greensboro Partnership in 2009. Frye also received honorary doctorates from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2007 and from Bennett College in 2006. She received her bachelor’s degree in education and English from N.C. A&T State University and her master’s degree in education and psychology from Syracuse University in New York.

The board’s duties are to elect the president, employ personnel, purchase land necessary for the operation of the college, apply standards for admission and graduation, receive gifts and donations, provide for the administration of all educational and occupational services, and to establish or enter into public or private partnerships for the support of the institution. The board has 12 members, each serving a four-year term. The governor appoints four members.

Also from the governor's office:

RALEIGH – Gov. Bev Perdue has appointed Tom Scullion of Greensboro to the North Carolina State Social Services Commission. Scullion is a retired professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and former lieutenant in the United States Army. He is a member of the Adult Center for Enrichment Board of Directors, Friends of Residents in Long Term Care and UNC Institute on Aging Senior Leadership Initiative. Scullion received his master’s degree in social work from Fordham University in New York and his doctorate degree in social work from Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

The commission adopts rules and regulations for the conduct of the state’s social service programs and has the power to adopt, amend and rescind rules and regulations. The commission has 13 members, each serving a four-year term. The governor appoints all members.

Word just came down from the Feds that Gov. Bev Perdue and the State of North Carolina would be allowed to intervene in the Alcoa-Yadkin River case. For those new to the story, Perdue and some in the state legislature want to prevent Alcoa from being given another federal permit to operate electric generating facilities on the Yadkin River.

Here's the notice that just came from the FERC:

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION

Alcoa Power Generating, Inc. Project No. 2197-073

NOTICE GRANTING LATE INTERVENTION

(April 17, 2009)

On December 28, 2006, the Commission issued a Notice of Application Accepted for Filing and Soliciting Motions to Intervene and Protests for the relicensing of Alcoa Power Generating, Inc.’s Yadkin Hydroelectric Project No. 2197, located on the Yadkin River in Stanly, Davidson, Davie, Montgomery, and Rowan Counties, North Carolina.

On April 1, 2009, the State of North Carolina filed an untimely motion to intervene in this proceeding. On April 15, 2009, Alcoa Power Generating, Inc. filed a timely answer in opposition to North Carolina’s motion to intervene. On April 16, 2009, Stanly County filed a timely answer in support of North Carolina’s motion to intervene. Pursuant to Rule 214, the motion to intervene filed by the State of North Carolina is granted, subject to the Commission’s rules and regulations.

Kimberly D. Bose,
Secretary.

Sen. Vernon Malone of Wake County died Saturday, according to the N+O. He was 77.

Update: This statement came from Senate President Pro Tempore Marc Basnight:

“It is hard to put into words how much Vernon Malone meant to the North Carolina Senate, and to everyone who knew him. He had prepared himself for service early in life and he believed in a better opportunity for all. He was a man for all people and a man of integrity and he did not just seek to help those people with talents, he loved all people. He was such a big man in the way he lived his life – the concern, the love and compassion he had for people was special.

I can think of no one, nowhere in this state who meets the description of what Vernon was as a person. He was a wonderful friend to me and a real leader in the Senate, and I will miss him a great deal. What I knew of him as a person, not to mention the contributions he has made throughout his life, cannot be replaced. It is a huge loss, not just for the people of his Senate district, but for all the people of North Carolina.”

Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton has issued this statement:

“The Senate, the people of Wake County and the State have lost a great advocate for education and for the future of our State. Throughout his life, Senator Malone was committed to public service and to making our State a better place. I am honored and proud to have served alongside Vernon Malone in the Senate, and the prayers of the entire State are with his family during this time of great loss.”

I don't have any other details and hadn't heard that he was sick. In fact, Sen. Malone cast votes on the Senate floor Thursday.

Update: The following is from the Associated Press:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina State Sen. Vernon Malone has died of natural causes at his home in Raleigh. He was 77.

Malone's son Rod said his father died Saturday morning.

The Democrat served most recently as co-chairman of the education budget subcommittee and had represented District 14 in the General Assembly for four terms.

The Shaw University graduate held public offices in Wake County over three decades. As school board chairman, he presided over the merger of Raleigh city schools and Wake County public schools in 1976.

He served as a Wake County commissioner from 1984 until his election to the Senate in 2002.

Details for a memorial service are not yet set.

More from WRAL here.

Update: The following came from Gov. Bev Perdue:

“Vernon Malone was one of my closest personal friends and was a powerful voice for North Carolina’s future. He fundamentally believed that every kid should have a shot at success, regardless of their background and dedicated his life to making that belief a reality.”

From the Sunday paper:

Local government officials had hoped the massive economic stimulus bill Congress passed in February would be manna from heaven, or at least easy cash from the federal government.

Rather, tapping money coming to North Carolina from the American Investment and Recovery Act has turned into a strange Easter egg hunt, one in which nobody knows all the rules or exactly what the eggs look like.

“We are extremely frustrated about what’s going on,” said Reidsville City Manager Kelly Almond. “We don’t know who to ask or who to fault.”

The stimulus bill divided funding between tax breaks, infusions into entitlement programs such as Medicaid and unemployment benefits and capital projects such as building roads or schools.

It is that third chunk — at least $6.1 billion — that cities and counties hope to tap.

Click here to read the whole thing.

A Washington Post story today on the recession-enhanced health crisis in North Carolina features Greensboro:

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- It's right there on the wall, hectoring David Talbot as he races from one exam room to another.

"You want to see the recession? There it is," Talbot says, pointing to a row of multicolored graphs. "We began to spike in October 2008, and we're losing the battle now. We just can't keep up."

Recessions are tallied in numbers -- jobless claims, home foreclosures, plant closings and bailout dollars. Here at the HealthServe community clinic, Talbot, the medical director, tracks the recession in days -- the number of days that patients wait to see a doctor.

Just six months ago, the clinic delivered same-day care to most callers, the gold standard from a health perspective. But in October the delays crept to four days, then 19 in November and 25 in December. In January, HealthServe temporarily stopped accepting new patients, and almost immediately 380 people put their names on a waiting list for when the crunch eases.

In North Carolina, more than any other state, the recession has triggered a burgeoning medical crisis. A steep rise in unemployment has fueled a commensurate increase in the number of people who do not have health insurance, including many middle-income families.

Click here for the full story, which prominently features Greensboro's HealthServe clinic.

This story from today's paper looks at the ongoing fun and games over video poker in North Carolina:

RALEIGH — The bill was simple enough. It would have affirmed the legislature’s intent to outlaw video poker in all its forms without making changes to existing law.

In particular, backers of the measure are frustrated that a video poker variant based on a sweepstakes computer system continues to thrive in the state and wanted to send a message to law enforcement and the courts.

“We’re really displeased with the way this law is being circumvented,” said Rep. Ray Rapp, a Mars Hill Democrat and one of the bill’s sponsors.

But moments before the measure was to be heard Thursday, a clutch of legislators hurriedly conferred and pulled it from consideration by a House Judiciary committee.

“Some folks had some reservations,” said Rep. Ronnie Sutton, the committee’s chairman. Those reservations, he said, revolved around worry the state could be interfering in an ongoing court case.

Click here for the full story.

Also from today's paper, a chat with Rep. Mel Watt about his recent trip to Cuba:

When U.S. Rep. Mel Watt traveled to Cuba earlier this month, he was curious to meet President Raul Castro , the younger brother of the island’s long time leader, Fidel.

During his previous trip to Cuba in 2004, Watt said, one rarely heard about Raul , who ran the military but was not much of an up-front figure.

“I thought he would be a lot more restrained and a lot less outgoing” than his older brother, Watt said. “But, you know, Cubans like to talk. Raul is just as outgoing and loquacious as Fidel is.”

Watt, who represents parts of Guilford County, was part of a seven-member Congressional Black Caucus trip to the island.

The trip was a timely one, as Watt and other members of the delegation returned only days before President Barack Obama lifted some travel restrictions on Cuban Americans traveling to the island.

Click here for the full story.

As the story says, the CBC trip was a timely one because the whole area of Cuban-American relations appears to be ready to shift. More info on recent developments in U.S.-Cuba policy comes from the Miami Herald and N.Y. Times.

The North Carolina Potato Festival in Elizabeth City would become the "Official NC Potato Festival" under a bill (H588) filed by House Rules Chairman Bill Owens. A vote by the full House is scheduled for this evening.

I confess: I did not know there was a potato festival, nor did I know that the title of Little Miss Tatter Tot would be decided there.

File this under fun with GS 145, which has recently added the official state food festival and official state collard festival.

The Court of Appeals this afternoon will hear the N.C. Libertarian Party's appeal of their loss in a 2005 declaratory judgment action. In that suit, the Libertarians contend that their party and its members have been deprived of a fundamental right to have the state sanction the party of their choice.

The state argues no such right exists.

A lot has happened since the 2005 suit. In 2008, Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Mike Munger won enough votes to keep the party on the ballot until the next election.

But if the Libertarians were to win, it might open the official political marketplace of ideas to more purveyors, such as the Green Party.

Read the Libertarian's brief here.

Read the state's brief here.

Before heading over to the court house, this line from the Libertarian's appeal caught my attention:

All members of the General Assembly, which enacts the election laws, including those on recognition of political parties, are either Democrats or Republicans. There are no members of the General Assembly affiliated with any other political party nor, upon information and belief, have there been any in at least thirty-five years.

Oh, how soon we forget.

Rep. Steve Wood, who represented High Point in the 1990s and early part of this decade, was once a member of the Reform Party. This came about after his own party wouldn't have him in their caucus and now-Rep. John Blust ran against him and beat him in a Republican primary in 2000. (Wood switched to the Reform Party and ran against Blust in the General Election, losing that one too.)

In fact, Wood was for a short time the highest ranking elected official in the Reform Party, an outgrowth of Ross Perot's quixotic presidential campaign. It was also the party of Jesse Ventura, the wrestler turned Minnesota governor, until he switched to Independent in 2000.

Now, the larger point the brief was making is still valid and Wood was never ELECTED to the General Assembly as a member of the Reform Party, he switched after voters put him in as a Republican.

But for the record, there you go.

Fresh on the heels of Sunday's story about sorting out the stimulus comes this announcement from a pair of local legislators:

Sen. Katie Dorsett, Rep. Adams and Fellow Legislators to host Economic Recovery Summit April 27 at Guilford Tech

Senator Katie Dorsett (D-Guilford), along with Rep. Alma Adams (D-Guilford) and other members of the Guilford County legislative delegation, will host a summit entitled “Coping During Economic Difficulties: Stimulus Opportunities” on Monday, April 27th at Guilford Technical Community College. The meeting will bring together some of North Carolina’s top officials to discuss ways in which the federal recovery funds may be used to create jobs and grow the economy. They will also share information about how to apply for grants funded by the federal stimulus.

The summit will feature presentations by Dempsey Benton, Director of the North Carolina Office of Economic Recovery & Investment, who is know as our state’s “stimulus czar,” state Transportation Secretary Gene Conti, state Commerce Secretary Keith Crisco and others.

The public is invited to attend.

“The Economy Recovery funds are essential in helping us get out of the recession. It is also important to provide information for residents and organizations in Guilford County so that the stimulus can help us locally. I look forward to an exciting and informative event,” Senator Dorsett said.

Details after the jump.

Related to Sunday's stimulus story and the upcoming stimulus conference is something that I've neglected to mention thus far: Sen. Kay Hagan's big book of stimulus resources.

Okay, she actually called it a "Resource Guide" and you can find out more here or download the whole big PDF here.

The book is handy in that it pulls together information on a lot of the places where stimulus funding will go, and it includes links to relevant website and phone numbers.

Of course, in the case of programs that haven't yet been funded or where rules haven't been written, you'll still run into a lack of information.

Still, if you're trying to rattle the stimulus tree, it might be a good place to start.

Gov. Bev Perdue answers a question via video about unemployment benefits.

Submit your questions to the governor's office at her E-town hall page.

The Senate returned Monday for its first session since the death of Sen. Vernon Malone.

Sen. Marc Basnight remembered his friend and colleague this way:

"I thought over the weekend, as you have as well, what people like Vernon meant to all of us. We understood him. We fully realized what Vernon's purpose and mission in life was. But for those who did not spend time with Vernon, or did not follow in the area where he lead, they'll have no measure of discomfort as we have tonight. They'll have no reason to find the sadness that we unfortunately are experiencing.

Click here for the audio.

Malone will be buried Thursday. Click here for details.

As I noted earlier, North Carolina could soon designate an official potato festival.

The measure passed the House Monday 114-0 and will be sent to the Senate. You can click here to listen to the debate. Some highlights:

Rep. Jerry Dockham: “This doesn’t have anything to do with barbecue does it?"

Rep. Bill Owens: "No sir."

Dockham:"Just wanted to clear that up."

Last session, Dockham put forward a bill to designate the Lexington Barbecue Festival as the official state ‘cue festival. It was changed to become the official state “food” festival. The change was made to accommodate – apparently still raw – regional rivalries that exist between adherents of Lexington and eastern ‘cue styles, which came up during this debate over taters.

Rep. David Lewis: "Mr. Speaker?"

Speaker Hackney: "For what purpose does the gentleman from Harnett, Rep. Lewis, arise?"

Lewis:"Point of order."

Hackney:"The gentleman may state his point of order."

Lewis:"Rep. Dockham’s bill also had nothing to do with barbecue."

Earlier in the debate, Owens allowed as how most of the potatoes celebrated at the festival were white potatoes, which prompted this friendly exchange:

Rep. Mickey Michaux: “Did I hear you say all white potatoes?” (This prompted laughs. Michaux is a prominent member of the N.C. Legislative Black Caucus.)

Owens: “Actually, we have some red ones too, which Rep. Sutton likes." (Rep. Ronnie Sutton is the one Native American member of the House.)

Michaux:"I suggest you vote against the bill."

Rep. Earl Jones, a Greensboro Democrat, would like to return video poker to a place among the state's legal amusements. From a story in today's paper:

RALEIGH — Rep. Earl Jones said he plans to introduce a bill this week to legalize video poker, a form of gambling outlawed amid accusations of political corruption and operators skirting rules.

The Greensboro Democrat said it is “hypocritical” for the state to run a lottery but outlaw another form of gambling that some people enjoy.

“I think it’s very unfortunate that you have some folks who are very paternalistic,” Jones said Monday. “Some people can’t pay $200 or $300 to play golf or $100 to go to a Panthers game. This is their entertainment.”

Click here for the whole thing.

Update: When asked about Jones' bill, Rep. Paul "Skip" Stam, the Republican leader in the House, said: "That's the bad bill of the week."

Also in the paper today:

• The Washington Watch column update's the Alcoa fight and looks at some recent bill filings from the federal honorables.

• The Libertarian and Green parties had their day before the Court of Appeals, arguing that the state's ballot access laws are too strict.

Two bills of interest were in House Judiciary I this morning:

• * H 422, Parental Involvement in School Discipline, would allow parents to keep schools from administering corporal punishment in districts where spanking students is still allowed. Yes, there are districts in Guilford County that allow teachers/administrators to spank their students.

  Rep. John Blust, a Greensboro Republican, spoke in favor of the bill: "I think we ought to go the other way and make discipline stricter in the schools."

  It passed on a 9-6 show of hands vote. It next heads to the House floor.

• * H 193, Electronic Notice of Public Hearings, would allow some towns and cities to make notice of public hearings over the web rather than in newspapers.

  Rep. Paul "Skip" Stam pulled the bill from consideration when it became evident he would lose the vote. I talked to Stam afterward and he intends to bring it back if he can.

Note: Updates below w/ audio and a mention of the state health plan.

-=-=-=-=

Gov. Bev Perdue talked to NFIB this afternoon. Afterward, she was mobbed by a crowd of us scruffy media types.

Among the things on our minds: how's the current year budget crisis going. Perdue has been forced to cut funding for state agencies because tax collections have been below estimates.

April 15 is a big tax collection day and many are anticipating the news from this year's April surprise might be bad.

"I did meet this morning with Charlie Peruse," Perdue said. She asked how revenues were doing.

"Charlie looked at me and said, 'The sales tax revenue for this past quarter are fairly good.' I don't know what that means.

"I said, 'Charlie, how hopeful are you?' He said, 'I feel comfortable that we have a long, long way to go but it isn't as bad as it could have been.'"

Perdue said that personal and corporate income tax figures were still to be tallied and that it would be Friday or early next week before there were reliable numbers.

And, she added, that the state would send out another round of tax refunds this week.

More to come, including audio.

Update: Click here for the audio of Perdue's Q+A with us scruffy media types.

She covers taxes, the budget, how federal stimulus funds are handled and is asked about Gov. Mike Easley's problems with accounting for SUVs his family has been driving:

"I'm seeing the same reports that you're seeing and reading the same stories you're reading, and I look forward to the facts being put out there for everybody in the state to think about. That's what it's all about, giving everybody a chance.

On the stimulus, Perdue said she learned something new from Dempsey Benton, her office's stimulus czar.

"He tells me something that I didn't know until yesterday, that the rules are such that the money cannot be co-mingled ... with state funds...All 50 states will almost have to set up a shadow budget. So if I'm going to use federal recovery funds for daycare slots or for job training, then I'll have to have two separate accounts. I'll have to have a North Carolina account and an account that's unique to the recovery dollars. The strident and stringent requirements ... are as complex and convoluted as I've ever seen."

Asked about potential tax changes in the state - in particular, changes that would tax more things but lower the rate, Perdue was circumspect:

"If the Senate and the General Assembly plans to move forward, I will be a partner in the activity that they undertake, I will be critical when it's important to be critical. But all in all, we all understand that in North Carolina and in America, that the system of providing services just based on property tax for county government and personal and corporate income tax needs to be re-examined.

"It's time to re-examine the tax structure. I don't know if this is the perfect time of if you'll see anything come this session. But it is healthy to have this kind of conversation and I admire the General Assembly for doing that"

...

"I think it's a hard time to talk about any kind of broad-based taxes, just because of the economy. So I'll have to see what it is they have in store for us...It's early in the whole General Assembly session."

-=-=-=-=-

Update: During her speech to the NFIB members, Perdue also mentioned the state health plan. She noted some legislators were sitting in the room:

"I'm going to say this because we've got some House members sitting around here, not many senators. We need a state health plan, we need that bill brokered out. If you don't do it by Friday, we're going to see Blue Cross and our state health plan begin to cut off payments to providers, just when they need the money the most. And if by Monday or Tuesday there isn't a brokered bill, it's going to cost us $15 million out of North Carolina's very meager rainy day fund. I think we can come to a solution on that bill and I hope that you bill."

Also, she made mention of a trip to Charlotte tomorrow, that may be of interest for those in the banking sector:

“Tomorrow I’m going to Charlotte. I’m doing a special announcement. We’ve worked for weeks, months actually, on a kind of recovery plan to work with the folks in Charlotte in the financial services industry.”

I asked a Perdue staffer about the announcement. They said it would involve the banking industry but not be limited to that sector. They also added that the announcement would be "fairly specific to Charlotte."

The Obama administration's chief trade negotiator, Ron Kirk, said yesterday that there were problems with NAFTA but that the whole thing didn't need to be rewritten. In remarks reported by Reuters, CQ and the Dallas Morning News, Ross said:

"The president has said we will look at all options, but I think they can be addressed without having to reopen the agreement," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told reporters in a conference call on trade issues discussed at the Summit of Americas meeting this past weekend in Trinidad.

Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, went out of her way to take umbrage at the remark, sending reporters a news release Tuesday:

“While I understand the President’s desire to maintain a good relationship with our North American trading partners, I am disappointed US Trade Representative Ron Kirk has said it is not necessary to renegotiate the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),” said Hagan. “This country’s current trade policy is not working. The manufacturing economy in North Carolina has suffered and far too many North Carolinians have lost their jobs. It is only right we require our trading partners to enforce the labor and environmental standards that we ask of our manufacturing industry.”

Worth noting, a lot of textile jobs that used to be held by North Carolina workers have found their way to Central and South America.

Earl Jones effort now has some public support from a group calling itself "The Entertainment Group of North Carolina."

You can see the group's lobbying filings here. They recorded no expenses in the first quarter.

Update: The registered lobbyist for The Entertainment Group of North Carolina is Gardner Payne, who works at McGuire Woods. His company bio lists several interesting extra-curricular activities, including serving as finance director of the Bev Perdue committee.

Update: A blog commenter suggests (correctly) that I should clarify Payne served during Perdue's days as Lt. Governor, not her latest run. And an e-mailer notes Payne helped push for the lottery earlier in the decade.

Update 2: One more time: Another e-mail says while it's correct Payne didn't have a PAID role during Gov. Perdue's 2008 run, he did have a volunteer position with the campaign.

The point of all this being: Payne has more than a passing familiarity with the current governor. And, by the way, former Gov. Mike Easley officially signed on with his firm today.

From a news release sent by the group:

RALEIGH – The Entertainment Group of North Carolina, a coalition of business owners in the amusement industry, today announced their support for legislation sponsored by State Rep. Earl Jones, which would create a set of new, tough oversight regulations and taxation of video lottery terminals.

“We are dedicated to partnering with the State of North Carolina to regulate the video terminal industry and provide a new dedicated stream of money that will help offset some of the revenue shortfalls we are currently experiencing and to provide new jobs and opportunities for locally owned and operated businesses across the state,” said Chase Brooks, Public Affairs Chairman with the Entertainment Group of North Carolina.

“We will work with Rep. Jones to bring in a new era of laws, regulation and oversight to the amusement industry. We see this as a win-win solution for the State of North Carolina and our locally owned and operated businesses,” Brooks said.

[snip]

“We already have gaming in North Carolina and the state is the largest operator. This legislation will enable locally owned and operated businesses to offer their customers a video lottery terminal that will be monitored and regulated in real time by the Department of Revenue and will pay taxes to the state,” Brooks said. He said estimated revenues for the state alone will exceed $480 million based on $2.4 billion in estimated annual gross revenues.”

Today was a busy day on Jones Street and frankly, I don't have time to do justice to everything. So here's a little wrap of things I haven’t had a chance to blog yet.

• * The House Education Committee passed a bill that would let schools start as soon as Aug. 8.

  The measure, H 593, would reverse a change made only a few years ago that made Aug. 25 the earliest start date possible.

  It next goes to the House Commerce Committee.

  Click here for debate from the committee, including education lobbyists arguing for earlier starts and one student arguing against.

• * The House passed H120, a municipal campaign finance bill, on a 60-56 vote.

  I've written about this before (here and here)

  The measure was changed on the floor today to exclude towns with fewer than 50,000 people. Sponsors made the change to keep the heat off rural Democrats. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative anti-tax group, had targeted "about a dozen" members of the House, according to its leader, Dallas Woodhouse.

  According to Woodhouse, the group used robo-calls and member phone calls to convince some members who were on the fence to side against the bill.

  Click here to listen to the end of the debate from the House floor.

• * The House also passed H148, a bill to allow local governments to raise sales taxes to help fund transit systems on a 77-40 vote. The House must vote again Wednesday to confirm the vote.

  The bill would allow Guilford and Forsyth Counties to raise taxes to help fund PART.

  Part Director Brent McKinney said his agency would need more money by 2012 to sustain its planning and operational activities.

  "It gives the citizens the option to decide their future transportation choices and how they want to see their region developed," McKinney said.

The breaking news of the late day comes from the Associated Press' Gary Robertson. Senators seemed to have been of two minds all day over whether they would run their tax package Wednesday or not. Gary says we'll see it tomorrow:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - North Carolina's Senate Democrats are set to consider a plan Wednesday that would change the state's tax system by reducing overall rates but adding taxes to many services for the first time.

The Senate Finance Committee is expected to receive a proposal that would lower the sales tax rate people pay in most counties from 6.75 percent to 6 percent and reduce corporate and individual income tax rates, according to a document highlighting the potential changes obtained by The Associated Press. The 2 percent tax on food at grocery stores and other retailer also would be repealed, the document said.

But the proposal, which will serve as a template for Senate leaders seeking to reform the tax system this year, also would place the sales tax on a host of services, including building repairs, warranties, information technology, moving expenses and sales of downloaded music and software.

[snip]

Under the plan, the individual income tax rate would be reduced from 7.75 percent to 7.5 percent, while the lowest rate would drop from 6 percent to 5.25 percent, according to the document.

There also would be a new bracket in which income earners would pay no new taxes - for example, married couples filing jointly and making up to $10,000. Right now, people must pay 6 percent even if they earned only a few hundred dollars.

Individual income tax rates would be simplified by basing payments on a taxpayer's adjusted gross income as calculated on federal tax returns, instead of having to change the amount to compute state taxes. There would be some credits for charitable donations and home mortgages, while the per-child tax credit would increase from $100 to $125, the document said.

The corporate income tax would be reduced from 6.9 percent - one of the highest in the Southeast - to 4.5 percent over two years, but limited liability companies would have to pay franchise taxes while state and local privilege license taxes would be repealed.

A host of business tax credits started in the mid-1990s to reward companies that created jobs or invested capital would be eliminated.

The Workplace Smoking Ban, aka H2, was due to be heard in the Senate Health Committee today but was pulled from the calendar.

According to Committee Chairman William Purcell, the film industry had a concern that needed to be addressed.

"The concern came up about film makers in Wilmington not being able to smoke on sets," Purcell said. Apparently, they wanted to ensure that there wouldn't be any fines handed out for actors doing a scene that involved smoking.

Purcell said that was the only issue of substance that would keep the bill from moving forward.

Purcell said the PCS - legislative talk for "proposed committee substitute," which is essentially a rewrite of a bill - took out the "Cole Amendment." That amendment allowed any business that didn't serve or employee people under 18 to post a sign and allow smoking. Essentially, the Senate is looking at running a bill that regulates smoking more tightly than the House version.

The Cole amendment had raised the ire of the restaurant industry, which thought it gave bars an unfair advantage over restaurants.

Purcell said the Senate PCS would also tighten the definition of "private clubs" where smoking would be allowed. That definition, Purcell said, would carve out VFW or other fraternal groups, but not exempt private clubs that exist pretty much as stand-alone bars.

Purcell said the bill would come back next Wednesday.

Sen. Dan Clodfelter and the Senate Finance committee rolled out their much anticipated proposal to rewrite the state's tax system.

You can click here for a 45-minute audio file that contains Clodfelter's explanation of the bill.

During the hearing, three different documents were handed out, presented here as handy PDFs:

• * Document 1 is an overview of the proposed changes.

• * Document 2 outlines in more detail changes made to personal and business income taxes and sales taxes.

• * And if you stare at it long enough, Document 3 supposedly shows the impact of the various tax changes on different kinds of tax payers and state collections.

Clodfelter took pains to say that the proposal would not be voted this week and may not see a vote next week. And, he said, the committee was open to reviewing changes. However, he warned, if someone wanted to pare down the revenue coming from a particular tax, they would be asked to make up the difference somewhere else.

I'm still trying wrap my brain around all this, but here are some highlights gleaned from today's presentation:

• * Income and sales taxes are lowered, but there are trade offs in each case. For sales taxes, the trade off is that more things - including services - would be taxed. For both personal and business incomes, the trade off comes in the form of fewer deductions and weird little loopholes.

• * State income tax would be based on federal adjusted income. This should, Clodfelter said, make filing state income taxes easier. Also, the plan would create a new bracket for the first $10,000 of income a couple earns. Instead of getting a credit, those very low income families would not be taxed at all, Clodfelter said.

• * Sales tax would be reduced to 6 percent.

• * You'll be paying sales tax on software on the software you download over the internet, as well as warranties and repairs for tangible personal property.

• * Heavy equipment, such as mill machinery, would be exempt from sales tax but things like grease and parts used to maintain those machines would be subject to sales tax. That's a change from the current system that taxes all such items at 1 percent but caps the maximum amount payable at $80.

• * Cities and counties would lose their sales tax exemptions. School boards have been battling for years to get the same exemption that other local governments have. Now, all local governments would be in the same boat.

• * Cigarette taxes would be increased 15-cents-per-pack to 50-cents. The tax on other tobacco products would rise 3 percent.

• * Alcohol excise taxes would rise. The amount collected would be similar to the amounts outlined in governor Bev Perdue's budget, but collected as an excise tax rather than the extra sales tax that Perdue had proposed. Taxes on particular alcoholic products would rise based on the amount of alcohol by volume they contained.

There’s more to it than that. If you have a question or a highlight (lowlight?) you want to point out, the comments link is open.

Two bills of local interest were filed in the House today:

• * H 1538 honors the 100th anniversary of the High Point Furniture Market.

• *H 1537 is Rep. Earl Jones' bill to legalize video poker. More on that here, here and here.

My colleague Jonnelle Davis reports Rep. Nelson Cole of Rockingham County has filed H1530: AN ACT TO AUTHORIZE COUNTIES TO RESCIND AN ADVANCED GENERAL REAPPRAISAL OF PROPERTY. From her early brief:

Rep. Nelson Cole, D-Rockingham, on Wednesday filed a bill that would let counties rescind property revaluations.

House Bill 1530 is scheduled for its first hearing in the Local Government II Committee on April 29, Cole said in a news release.

The Rockingham County Board of Commissioners in February voted unanimously to rescind the property reappraisals and put it off until 2011. The decision came amid public outcry that the county was reappraising property during an economic recession. Some residents complained of inflated revaluations.

Cole said in his release that the offices of the attorney general and the N.C. Department of Revenue issued a directive this week stating that Rockingham and three other counties that had rescinded property revaluations would not be allowed to do so.

Counties are required to revalue their property every eight years. They can do it more frequently if they choose, as appears to be have been the case with Rockingham. Traditionally, the reason for a revaluation is to keep tax values more in line with property values.

In theory, revaluation tax years can be "revenue neutral," a wonky phrase that says the government won't collect more in taxes than it did the year before. However, people can get a shock when their tax values go up. And "revenue neutral" reflects an average, and some people do end up paying more in taxes.

In Rockingham's case, they revalued in 2003 and would not have been required to revalue until 2011. More background from Jonnelle here and here.

The same conversation has been going in Orange County.

From today's paper:

RALEIGH — The good news: Sales taxes and income tax rates would drop under a finance package state senators started examining Wednesday.

The bad news: North Carolinians would end up paying the state more anyway.

“We’ve got a short-term fiscal crisis on us and it has run smack-dab into the long-term problems we’ve got with the state revenue system,” said Sen. Dan Clodfelter, a Charlotte Democrat.

Click here for the full story.

More, including documents outlining more about the plan and audio of Wednesday's briefing, at this blog post.

Update: Ha, ha, stupid me. There I go listening to presiding officers and committee chairmen again.

H 1537, Jones' video poker bill, didn't get assigned to Rules. Sure, that's where Speaker Pro Tempore Wainwright, who was running the House session today, referred it on the floor. And yes, Rules Chairman Bill Owens, said his committee had the bill and wanted to hold onto it for a while.

But no.

It was sent to J II and then on to Finance.

So, ignore the rest of this post, except as a monument to my overly trusting nature.

I got a call this week from Marcus Brandon, who said he will be challenging Rep. Earl Jones for the 60th District State House seat in 2010.

Now, it is early, way freaking early, for candidates to be jockeying for position in the 2010 state legislative races. (I'm pretty sure the 2010 U.S. Senate Election began for real about three weeks ago.) And I've known candidates who have declared themselves at about the same point in previous cycles but were nowhere to be found when it came time to file.

With that caveat: here is the SBOE page that has Brandon's campaign finance filings.

When I spoke with him Thursday, Brandon said that he has been a political consultant and worked on the presidential campaign of Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich. And in fact, from what I can find, that seems to be the case.

And it looks like there is at least a web page for KMB Consulting listing Brandon as the President. It has a Washington, D.C. Address.

Brandon's campaign finance and voter file lists 808 Glendale Drive in Greensboro as his North Carolina address and show him voting in the 2008 election.

Brandon, 34, a Democrat, said he was born and raised in Guilford County and a graduate of Southern Guilford High School and NCA&T.

Of Rep. Jones: "He's a friend of my family's and they've known him for years. I just think it's time for us to move forward." Brandon mentioned Jones' video poker stance: "I would be more inclined to put money into people's pockets."

Is he sure he's running: "I'm 100 percent sure, I'm raising money right now." Brandon said he was starting early on organizing because it would take work to unseat a four-term incumbent.

More: "Basically, our platform is green jobs."

His uncle, Brandon said, is a Soil and Water Conservation District supervisor in Guilford County.

So I heard from a source or two last week that the North Carolina Education Lottery was looking at online games like Keno or video poker.

It's a pretty fair guess that at least part this rumor was inspired by the recent spate of news over video poker - including two court cases that could lead to legalizing some or all of the industry. (The statute that created the lottery gives it pretty broad authority to create whatever games it wants leaves, so legally the door seems pretty wide open.)

The rumor also fit with something I heard from video poker operators back before the General Assembly took a crack at outlawing them. They argued that their industry could adjust to work with the lottery, and that they could become a servicing arm for the machines while the lottery ran the servers and what.

But the lottery's boss, Director Tom Shaheen, says that video poker is not in the cards - at least not right now.

"This is not something I've brought up to anybody - never taken it to our commissioners, never taken it downtown," Shaheen said.

Part of why the video poker idea hasn't come up, Shaheen said, has to do with the age of the lottery.

"We're still building a basic lottery here, and that can't happen over night," Shaheen said. He noted that the lottery has just added a Pick-4 game.

As for what should happen with video poker - outside of the lottery context - Shaheen wasn't saying. He acknowledged, rightly, that if he were to say "Yes, it's bad, get rid of it," the statement would be seen as self-serving for the lottery.

"These are political things, and we're not a political machine over here," Shaheen said.

So, does video poker cut into lottery sales?

"Certainly, that (banning video poker) would benefit the lottery and benefit our sales - but these are North Carolina issues, not lottery issues," Shaheen said. "My concern, my focus is on what affects this lottery directly." And, he pointed out, the lottery began operating before the video poker ban fully went into effect and continues to thrive even though the industry lingers.

So is video poker not in the lottery's future?

"If the climate were right," Shaheen said - re-emphasizing that the climate is NOT right today. "In part it's a social issue, what's acceptable and what isn't."

The Swine Flu's spread into the United States after it has run roughshod through Mexico has gotten the attention of Public Health types.

The CDC has started a web page to track the spread in the United States. The score as of Sunday night:

State # of laboratory confirmed cases California 7 cases Kansas 2 cases New York City 8 cases Ohio 1 case Texas 2 cases TOTAL COUNT 20 cases

Health officials in North Carolina are on the case, according to this AP story:

"We're OK here so far," said Bill Furney, communication coordinator with the Division of Public Health in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Furney said Sunday that his agency has been in contact with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as with local health care providers. He said the effort was to make sure the information his department had was up to date. He said his office had also been talking to local health officials to make sure they have the information they need.

The U.S. declared a public health emergency Sunday to deal with the emerging new strain of swine flu.

To fight the illness, Furney said the key is to practice caution.

"The health message here is pay attention to the news reports. You use your typical prevention strategies as with any flu," he said. That means covering one's mouth before sneezing, staying away from people who are sick and washing hands frequently.

"The biggest thing is the prevention message," Furney said. "If they follow those ... they have the ability to be in control of the situation. We can't stress that enough."

According to the story, there will be a conference at Duke to discuss the flu Monday.

More from the AP here and the White House here.

From a story in Monday's paper:

RALEIGH — An effort to more tightly regulate material left over from burning coal to create power faces stiff opposition in the General Assembly, despite a massive December coal ash spill in Tennessee.

Coal ash can either be wet and stored in ponds or as a powder. Both forms can contain arsenic, lead, selenium and other toxic substances, researchers say.

“If the public understood the situation, they would scream for some regulations on this stuff,” said Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat who has introduced legislation that would more tightly control how coal ash is stored, disposed of or used in commercial applications.

In December, a Tennessee Valley Authority dam broke, releasing more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge into nearby communities and waterways.

Although none are as big as the TVA pond, Duke and Progress Energy have 14 coal ash ponds next to power plants throughout the state. They include Duke’s Dan River Steam Station in Eden and Belews Creek Steam Station in Stokes County.

Click here for the whole story.

Here's a map of where you can find coal ash ponds throughout the state (click for slightly bigger version):

So what does one of these things look like? Well, the WV Gazette "Coal Tattoo" blog has some good pictures of what happens when things get loose.

For a view of an in-tact ash pond, let's turn to the Google Earth image of Duke's Energy's Dan River Steam Station in Rockingham County:

View Larger Map

The baseball-diamond-shaped area that is dark black is the coal ash pond, with an estimated surface area of 8 acres. That, by the way, is one of the smaller ponds in the state.

Update: I'm told that the baseball diamond-shaped thing may be a stockpile and the coal ash pond is the thing to the right of the photograph that's kind of a dark, milky gray. And now that I look at it, that feature jibes better with the written description of the ponds as well as the size.

Basically, anywhere in the state where Duke or Progress Energy has a coal-fired plant, you have an ash pond.

Something that I wasn't able to map right off was all the places where coal ash has been used as fill. I found references to it being used in NC to help level road projects and parks. There has been some evidence this use can lead to icky things leaking into groundwater. More here.

Click here for info on H 1354, Rep. Harrison's bill that would regulate coal ash.

From a story posted online this afternoon:

RALEIGH — Rep. Hugh Holliman’s role in rewriting the state’s health plan makes him “part of the problem,” according to an employee group running radio ads criticizing the Lexington Democrat.

The two-year, $675 -million bailout raises deductibles and copays as well as increases the cost for dependent coverage. It also cuts benefits for those who are overweight or smoke. And while it costs taxpayers, it is not as expensive as other potential fixes to the plan.

The ad attacking Holliman is sponsored by SEANC, the State Employees Association of North Carolina, a 55,000-member, union-affiliated group that frequently gets involved in political campaigns and lobbies the legislature.

“Hugh Holliman has his priorities wrong,” says the SEANC ad, airing on WZTK-FM and WSJS-AM in the High Point and Greensboro markets. “He’s part of the problem when he needs to be part of the solution. Maybe it’s time for new leadership in the North Carolina legislature.”

Click here for the full story, including this from Holliman:

“I think it’s fair to say I really don’t appreciate that (the ad) but they’re certainly welcome to do what they think they need to do,” Holliman said. “I think SEANC needs to discover they’re in the real world... and we don’t have money to just throw around.”

Click here to listen to the ad.

Worth noting: SEANC also targeted Rep. Margaret Dickson with a radio ad, as you can read in this release.(PDF)

As I point out in the story, Holliman is really part of a two-headed beast that oversees the state health plan. The other is Sen. Tony Rand, the majority leader in the Senate.

I asked SEANCE why they were going after Holliman and not Rand. The reply came back from SEANC political director Kevin LeCount that Rand's time may come. From the story:

“Everything we say in the ad about Rep. Holliman, we would be happy to make the same assertions about Rand,” LeCount said. “It’s not because we’re not going to talk about Rand.”

However, I think it's worth nothing that Holliman had a relatively close General Election in 2008, winning by 5 percentage points in what could be a swing district. Meanwhile Rand was unopposed and in a district carried handily by Democrats at all levels of the ballot.

It would not be unreasonable to speculate that SEANC is spending its ammunition where it thinks the impact is more likely to be noticed.

What happens if you're late in paying your taxes? Among other things, you pay a penalty.

Rep. John Blust, a Greensboro Republican, thinks that ought to work both ways.

Already, the state has to fork over interest if it holds onto tax refunds later than June 1.

Blust's bill, H 1548: Late Tax Refund Compensation, would add a $50 penalty.

"It's kind of like the fine they'd hit you with if you were late filing," Blust said.

Blust would also start the clock on when interest would begin accruing when the taxpayer filed their return, not the day it was due (aka, April 15 for most folks.) In exchange, he gives the state 60 days to make a refund rather than the 45 days it has now.

"We shouldn't be able to cash flow the state on the backs of taxpayers," Blust said.

Parents or guardians would have to give written permission before a child could be spanked as part of a corporal punishment regime under a bill the House passed 91-24 Monday night.

Click here to read and for more info on H442.

The measure now goes to the Senate.

Many North Carolina school districts, including Guilford County, have policies that forbid corporal punishment. But state law still allows the practices and in some counties a child can be spanked without notifying parents.

“This is not about whether you believe in corporal punishment or not,” said Rep. Laura Wiley, a High Point Republican. “This bill is about giving parents the choice to opt out of corporal punishment as a form of discipline. We owe that to these parents.”

Click here to listen to Wiley's full comments.

But some members, including Greensboro Rep. John Blust, said that the state moved away from more stringent forms of punishment at it peril.

“I do think the practical application of the bill will be to diminish and ultimately end the use of corporal punishment,” Blust said, adding that he was a “beneficiary” of the practice. “I think over time I had it taught to me, and reinforced, a certain respect for authority that I think is missing” in some students.

Click here to listen to Blust's full comments.

I finished updating this story on the News & Record's main page just a little while ago:

Gov. Bev Perdue has issued an executive order that effectively furloughs all state employees paid with tax dollars in an effort to help bridge a $3.2 billion budget gap for the budget year that ends June 30.

All teachers and state employees will lose one-half-of-one-percent of their annual pay by June 30. For a worker making $50,000, that means they’ll have $250 less in their May and June paychecks.

In exchange, those workers will be given 10 hours of time off that they can take by Dec. 31.

“This is not the end of the world,” Perdue told a morning news conference, although she called the measures “distasteful.”

Since taking office in January, Perdue has cut about $2.2 billion from the state government. But tax collections figures from April 15 showed that the state’s current year deficit would be $1 billion larger than anticipated – a total of $3.2 billion.

The furloughs will bridge $65 million of that additional $1 billion. In addition, Perdue said she will use up to $350 million of the state’s rainy day fund, $400 million in federal recovery funds she had hoped to be able to use after June 30, and will pull money out of trust funds and other special accounts as needed.

Click here for more.

Click here for Executive Order 11, which Perdue used to order the furloughs.

Click here for the budget memo explaining more of this.

I've been writing for a while now about the Jordan Lake Rules, designed to clean up the water supply and recreation for the Triangle.

This affects the Triad and Greensboro because Jordan Lake is fed by the Haw River, which winds through Guilford County.

Environmentalists and state regulators say the rules are needed to clean up the lake. Local officials say they would be very costly for cities to put into action and not achieve very much.

The latest version of those rules rolled out to the House Environment Committee today:

RALEIGH — The latest draft of rules designed to clean up pollution running from Greensboro and other Triad cities into Jordan Lake pleases neither environmental advocates nor those representing builders and municipal officials.

The product of closed-door work sessions, the latest plan was handed to members of the House Environment Committee on Tuesday.

“It’s never what anybody wants,” said Rep. Pryor Gibson, a Wadesboro Democrat, said of legislative compromises on environmental bills.

Jordan Lake is principally a water supply and recreation area for the Triangle. But it is fed by the Haw River, which winds its way through Guilford and Alamance counties.

For a decade, environmental regulators have tried to establish rules that would curb the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus running into the lake. Although those nutrients are helpful as fertilizers for lawns and crops, in an over-abundance they can lead to harmful algae growth in waterways.

The final draft of those rules as written by regulators was approved late last year, but opponents have appealed the plan to the General Assembly. Legislators have undertaken what amounts to a rewrite of the plan.

Click here for the whole story.

Click here for the text of the bill and other legislative information.

Click here for a bill explanation that was handed out to the committee. This handout gets down into the nitty-gritty of the changes.

Click here for a chart showing Chlorophyll-a levels in different parts of Jordan Lake. Chlorophyll-a is a key indicator of something going amiss. (This chart came from Environment North Carolina.)

So the House started its public hearing on the budget at 6 p.m. tonight. I don't know about the satellite locations, but I ran out from the Raleigh location to do some edits on a story at 7 p.m. and there were still a good 60 folks or so hoping to eventually get a seat in the auditorium.

And Rep. Doug Young, who was running the show while I was in the room, said that more than 2,000 comments had come from online.

The comments seemed almost all aimed at asking legislators to preserve funding for different programs. I heard little from the cut-the-budget/lower taxes folks, but I wasn't in the room for a very long.

You can tune in live at this link. I've asked whether the forum will be archived online somewhere, but haven't heard back.

Among those who waited for (and eventually got) a seat were former Greensboro Mayor Keith Holliday and Guilford County Education Association President Mark Jewell.

Here's the early Associated Press report:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - House budget-writers gathered Tuesday night to hear from constituents and interest groups on what should be the state's spending priorities in the next two years, a job made tougher with news of dwindling tax collections.

The House Appropriations Committee held a rare statewide public hearing seeking comments about how to manage North Carolina government spending during difficult fiscal times.

Earlier Tuesday, Gov. Beverly Perdue announced that she would force state workers to take a 0.5 percent pay cut from their annual salaries through the end of June as April 15 tax collections were worse than projected.

The news meant lawmakers likely will need to find another $1 billion in spending cuts or additional taxes to close a budget hole entering the new fiscal year July 1, or a $4 billion-plus budget hole. That's nearly 20 percent of the $21.4 billion spending plan approved last summer by the Legislature.

Perdue presented a two-year budget proposal in March, and the Senate passed its version of the plan three weeks ago.

"The simple fact is that (Perdue's) budget is now obsolete. The Senate's budget is now obsolete. We are going to have to have more cuts than either the governor or the Senate," House Speaker Joe Hackney, D-Orange, said before the meeting.

A few hundred people gathered at the primary committee meeting in the auditorium of the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, but others also gathered at 10 community college campuses to participate by video conference. The event also was to be shown on the Internet.

The smoking ban bill, H2, cleared the Senate Health Committee this morning. (Background.)

Now that film industry concerns are addressed, the bill is rolling to a vote in the Senate. It has been to a state close to its original form, eliminating most of the loopholes the House put in during its consideration.

Rep. Hugh Holliman, a Lexington Democrat and the bill's primary sponsor, got the committee hearing started by explaining his bill to the senators.

“This bill is not about personal property or business rights,” said Rep. Hugh Holliman, a Davidson County Democrat. “It’s about the right of all North Carolinians to breathe clean air.”

Click here to listen. Much of Holliman's talk will sound familiar to those of you have been following the bill.

Later in the hearing, Lorillard lobbyist and lawyer Michael Shannon was at the hearing to try to convince the honorables to reject the ban.

“The bill before us right now is one of the most restrictive in the country,” said Michael Shannon, a lawyer and lobbyist for Lorillard, a cigarette maker based in Greensboro. “It’s on par with New York City and California.”

Click here to listen. Shannon did have an interesting point. Senators delayed work on the bill so that a concern of the film industry could be addressed:

"Last week in the paper I was shocked by a comment that says we need to postpone hearing this bill because the film industry had an issue and the film industry is very important to the North Carolina economy. I found that as an interesting comment. I think all industry is important to our state, but I do believe North Carolina still has a strong, vibrant tobacco industry. I guess it reminded me of the Mark Twain vote that the reports of our death are greatly exaggerated. Tobacco manufacture alone is a $23.9 billion dollar value-added to the state of North Carolina.

There were a couple of attempts to add back in loopholes that the committee substitute bill took out. Sen. Jim Jacumin made one of those attempts. He would have added back the Cole amendment, which let businesses opt out of the ban if they didn't employ anyone under 18-years-old and didn't serve anyone under 18.

Click here to listen to Jacumin state his objections to the bill - including the immortal phrase "the solution to pollution is dilution" - offer his amendment and hear that amendment rejected.

The bill next goes to the Senate. Should it pass there, H2 would return to the House for a concurrence vote.

Update: Click here for the story I'm working on for tomorrow's paper.

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Congresswoman Virginia Foxx had this to say on the U.S. House floor today:

“I also would like to point out that there was a bill -- the hate crimes bill that's called the Matthew Shepard bill is named after a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn't because he was gay."

Click here for a fuller clip direct from the source.

A staffer in Foxx's office who I asked about Foxx's comments pointed to a 20/20 piece and a article in the Washington Times, both of which question the motives of the murderers.

Still, the comments are provoking a rather strong reaction already.

Hat tip to Politico and my friend Lex Alexander.

Background on the Matthew Shepard murder here.

Update: Foxx's office just e-mailed this statement from the Congresswoman:

“It has come to my attention that some people have been led to believe that I think the terrible crimes that led to Matthew Shepard’s death in 1998 were a hoax. The term “hoax” was a poor choice of words used in the discussion of the hate crimes bill. Mr. Shepard’s death was nothing less than a tragedy and those responsible for his death certainly deserved the punishment they received.

“The larger context of my remarks is important. I was referring to an article published in the Washington Times on August 10, 2007 that referenced a 2004 ABC 20/20 report on Mr. Shepard’s death. The Times article and 20/20 report both questioned the motivation of those responsible for Mr. Shepard’s death. Referencing these media accounts may have been a mistake, but if so it was a mistake based on what I believed were reliable accounts.”

With news breaking out all over Raleigh (and interesting doings in D.C.) it is time to catch up on the news of today and get a jump on tomorrow:

-=-=-=-=-=-

The smoking ban bill is on the Senate calendar for Thursday. Although political handicappers like me have been saying the Senate is an easier win for the bill than the House, I'm hearing tomorrow's vote - if it happens - could be close. I'm hearing it will need at least a few Republican votes to pass.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Also on the Senate calendar for Thursday: Katie Dorsett's S68 which would keep ABC Stores 1,000 feet from local schools. The measure now applies only to Guilford County.

-=-=-=-=-=-

On the House Calendar tomorrow: H 1010 would let the City Council appoint the Greensboro City Attorney. Currently, the manager hires that person.

-=-=-=-=-=-

For those who missed last night's House public hearing on the budget, the video is online here.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Jordan Schrader, a colleague with the Asheville paper, reports that the sex ed bill (Health Youth Act) cleared a Senate committee Wednesday afternoon. But according to its bill status, it won't hit the floor. Rather, it has been re-referred to the Committee on Mental Health & Youth Services. So, no floor action on that Thursday. Update: So apparently this bill passed out of the Youth Services committee and there is growing speculation we could see this thing on the Senate floor Thursday...because there's just not enough going on. Sheesh.

So someone passed on a copy of H 1560: Attacks on America earlier this week.

The resolution, filed by Greensboro Republican John Blust, says in part:

Whereas, the United States of America has been unfairly attacked and pilloried at recent international forums as a cause of many of the world's problems; and

Whereas, such attacks have come primarily from leaders who have abysmal records on human rights and oppression who head nations where elections are not free and fair; and

Whereas, the President of the United States, while attending these forums, sat silently while America was under attack and has made apologies for the United States; and

Whereas, the United States of America was founded and continues to exist on the greatest set of principles and ideals ever known and articulated by man and adherence to such principles and ideals is what makes the United States of America strong, prosperous, and free; and

Whereas, the United States of America has throughout its history been what Abraham Lincoln called "the last best hope for mankind" and has been a strong, positive source of progress and good in the world; and

You can click here to listen to Blust and I talk about his resolution on Tuesday.

"That's just a reaction to what happened on some of the presidential tours where some of these thugs like Chavez bad mouthed, and nobody else said anything in the defense of this country," Blust said.

Blust, who said he still believes in American Exceptionalism, said he was genuinely angry that Obama apparently tolerated leaders who bad-mouthed the United States. For example, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Obama has the same "stench" as his predecessor but Obama still shook hands with him at a recent summit. (Not to mention a contender for the worse presidential gift ever.)

So did he mean to call out President Obama as part of this?

"I would think the president would be somebody that (said) whoa, wait a second," Blust said. "This is the head of our country I would have liked to have seen something said."

Update: These two bills will NOT be considered Thursday. Also, H2, the smoking ban bill, will not be heard as calendared today - it is now on for this coming Wednesday.

-=-=-=-=-

Much buzz surrounding these two bills today. From the Associated Press:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - A Senate panel has quietly approved separate bills telling North Carolina public schools to change how they teach sex education and to adopt detailed anti-bullying policies.

The Senate Mental Health and Youth Services Committee recommended the legislation Wednesday to the full Senate.

The sex education bill passed the House just two weeks ago. It would require schools to offer children in grades seven though nine one curriculum focused on abstinence until marriage and another with more about contraception. Parents would choose either one for their child or none at all.

The anti-bullying bill is opposed by conservative Christians who argue it would advance special protections for gay people.

I just posted an early version of this story online:

House Speaker Joe Hackney has ordered an investigation of Rep. Cary Allred, an Alamance County Republican, who numerous witnesses say may have behaved inappropriately on the floor.

“I heard various reports of alcohol use by him, of speeding on the way to session and his embrace of a page,” said Hackney, a Democrat.

House pages are typically high school students who help distribute papers and otherwise keep committee meetings and meetings of the House running.

Allred acknowledged in an interview that an investigation was ongoing, calling it a “witch hunt” by the Speaker, with whom he frequently spars with on the floor.

“I am simply responding to what I would characterize as numerous reports from people of both parties,” Hackney said.

Update: Click here to listen to my interview with Allred before the House session started today.

Update: Click here to listen to one of the more contentious moments from the House session Monday night.

I am by no means an expert concerning the ongoing problems with the state health plan. But judging from the latest audit report, there are few who can claim to be. And really, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that losing $79.7 million when you projected earning $57.9 million indicates something is out of whack.

The state auditor posted this audit report today (click here) detailing some of that out of whackness.

Among the findings:

"The BCBSNC contract limits the Plan actuary's ability to forecast administrative expense accurately because:

• * The contract requires the State to reimburse BCBSNC its costs, but does not specify which costs are allowable or how BCBSNC will measure those costs;

• * The contract allows BCBSNC to control any audit of BCBSNC costs initiated by the State Health Plan and prohibits an independent auditor from providing the cost data to the Plan;

• * The BCBSNC contract is a cost-plus-a-percentage-of-cost contract that provides no incentive to control costs and results in increased revenue to BCBSNC as the State's costs increase.

Does that sound like a really bad contract to anyone else? "We'll pay you some money to do a thing and y'all let us know how much we should pay because, you know, we trust you."

Click here for a thorough and dispassionate rundown from the AP, including this response from BCBSNC:

While current health plan administrator Jack Walker's office agreed that his predecessors failed to share crucial information about the Blue Cross contract, Walker said they were required to keep the otherwise-confidential information from their actuary.

Blue Cross spokesman Lew Borman said "the previous administrators of the State Health Plan, indeed, had the authority and obligation to share the contract and administrative cost information with their actuary." Failing to do that led to the plan's problems, he said. Blue Cross' profit on the contract was less than 1 percent, or $480,000 in 2008, Borman said.

The Blue Cross contract has been a sore point for the State Employees Association of North Carolina, whose union members saw their health insurance costs increase and benefits decrease as a result of the bailout Gov. Beverly Perdue signed last week.

Speaking of the state employees, the leadership of their association sounded none-to-pleased:

RALEIGH— The State Employees Association of North Carolina stands by its position that legislators are at fault for inadequate oversight and failed projections that resulted in the State Health Plan’s financial troubles. As chairmen of the legislative committee that oversees the plan, Sen. Tony Rand (D-Cumberland) and Rep. Hugh Holliman (D-Davidson)--the only two individuals with full access to the administrative contract with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina--bear full responsibility for the health plan shortfall.

“It’s easy to blame a former plan administrator, but Senator Rand and Representative Holliman dropped the ball,” said SEANC Executive Director Dana Cope. “They shouldn’t have been surprised by a major shortfall if they were truly watching over the health plan on behalf of its 667,000 members and state taxpayers.”

Click here for more of their release.

In that release, they point out that a 2003 audit found many similar deficiencies, saying that the state didn't track expenses closely enough. Click here for the copy of that that SEANC attached to their release.