News-Record.com

The North Carolina Office of the Commissioner of Banks paid nearly $500,000 in "performance bonuses" to staff members during the current fiscal year.

From a story that's now online:

RALEIGH — The North Carolina Banking Commission paid $478,081 in bonuses to 72 employees last year and wants to set aside funds for another round this year.

The bonuses and potential bonuses have drawn the attention of legislators, who are trying to bridge a $4 billion budget shortfall.

“It’s hard to justify when we’re cutting salaries for some state employees and furloughing others,” said Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat who heads the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the commission.

Most state workers are subject to tightly drawn wage rules, but in 2005 the General Assembly exempted the Commissioner of Banks and his employees from the State Personnel Act.

“The banking commission has been involved in a project over the past several years to find and attract people to do the important work of banking regulation,” said Mark Pearce, the state’s Deputy Banking Commissioner.

The nearly $500,000 in bonuses were issued in August and were the first for the agency, Pearce said. Pearce received a $12,088 bonus under the program. His boss, Banking Commissioner Joseph Smith, did not receive a bonus and is not eligible for one, Pearce said.

Click here for the whole story.

Click here for a spreadsheet showing who in the agency got bonuses and how much they got.

Click here for a report to the legislature the commission did relative to its bonus program. (As far as I can tell, nobody much read this thing until this month. Fair warning; it's a 12 MB file and coming off a slow server.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

One of my favorite time-wasting/good-for-background-noise shows on cable is Mythbusters, mainly for the show's propensity to gratuitously blow stuff up.

Among the best tag lines from the show comes when the two hosts approach a damaged apparatus (usually one subjected to the aforementioned gratuitous explosion) and notes, "Well, there's your problem."

It's a slightly more succinct way to say, "Wow, there's no question why this won't work anymore and I really don't need to explain it because the evidence is right there in front of your face."

I had one of those moments this morning, although, sadly, it didn't involve an explosion.

The latest Elon Poll asked a question reported deep down in its data sheet:

"Would you say that campaign contributions to state lawmakers influence their legislative activities [a lot, some, not much, or not at all]?"

Now, I know what the response would be if you asked your average journalists. But these results come from a sample of folks roughly split on public financing of elections and who, as much as ever happens in a poll, seem to reflect the general population of the state:

NOT AT ALL 4.9

NOT MUCH 5.3

SOME 43.0

A LOT 40.9

DON T KNOW (v) 5.4

REFUSED (v) .4

Simply put: Well over 80 percent of those surveyed believe campaign contributions in some way, shape or form influence how state legislators go about making the laws of North Carolina.

I've written dozens of stories over the years about campaign donations and they inevitably contain some quote from a politician or their spokesman that says, "Well, sure, I get money from X industry, but they just must like where I stand." In fact, you can find just such a quote regarding donations on the federal level in the Charlotte Observer's story about tobacco industry donations to Richard Burr:

Burr spokesman Chris Walker says the campaign donations don't influence Burr's policy agenda.

"It's not something that comes into any equations here," Walker said. "It doesn't really affect what we're doing legislatively."

Let's be clear: this is a Republican/Democrat thing. You can write that same kind of story for just about any politician of any influence at the local, state or national level.

Even if it's true the policy position came first, even if it's true that a few thousand bucks isn't so much money in the grand scheme of fundraising, and even if it's true the money chased the policy position and not the other way around, the Elon Poll says 80 percent of the people don't believe you.

Well, there's your problem.

It does not matter if the campaign finance system is pure as the driven snow. The average citizen is unwilling to make the leap of logic to say; sure, you might get thousands of dollars from a particular interest but you, Mr. or Ms. Legislator, but it doesn’t influence your choices at all.

If you accept the poll results, there are a couple of relevant questions:

• * Is there a fix?
• * If so, what is it?

The same Elon Poll says folks are split on the idea of public financing for campaigns. The idea of putting tax dollars into campaigns with whose sentiments you might disagree sits poorly with a lot of folks.

So what's your solution? (Or should we take the results of the poll to mean that people believe money influences politics but they're okay with that?) The comment link is open for opining.

Update: Click here for Friday's newspaper story.

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Here's a little more on the NC Community College Board's discussion (click for today’s brief update) over whether to admit illegal immigrants to colleges in the system.

First off this post from earlier in the month (click here) has links to some of the policy letters that went back and forth and bills that have been filed in the legislature.

Also interesting, my friends at Stateline have written about a very similar discussion going on in California and elsewhere.

Finally, you can hear the most interesting bits of consultant Gina Shkodriani's and lawyer Alice Maginnis' presentations to the board by clicking here.

The Supreme Court issued a ruling in Bartlett v Strickland today, a case that involves voting districts in the Pender County area. Click here for a PDF of the decision. This is the AP's early report on the topic.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — An attorney representing Pender County officials who sued North Carolina in a redistricting case is thrilled his clients have won at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The nation's highest court ruled Monday that a federal civil rights law doesn't require North Carolina to draw legislative districts in which black residents comprise less than half the voting-age population.

The justices said in a 5-4 decision that such gerrymandering is required only if a district has a numerical majority of black voters, even if that voting block is potentially strong enough to determine an election's outcome.

Attorney Trey Thurman represents current and former county commissioners who originally sued in 2004, after lawmakers redrew district lines and split the county based on racial makeup.

On its face, I don't see this suit having an immediate impact on Guilford County. Only two of the county's ten legislative districts cross county lines. Both are senate districts held by Republicans and both were drawn to round-out raw numbers rather than racial make-up.

The following came via e-mail from Linda Struyk Millsaps, the Chief Operating Officer of the N.C. Department of Revenue. It is a statement from Revenue Sec. Kenneth Lay:

"We are experiencing a temporary backlog in issuing refunds because of the difficulty of garnering the special funds we are using for cash flow. We expect some significant progress to be made in the next few weeks. We are writing checks every week, and everyone who is due a refund will get a refund."

A side note: this directly contradicts what I was told not once but twice in the past two weeks by the Department's spokeswoman, Kim Brooks. She said that there were no problems or delays in issuing refunds.

I also wonder where this falls in the pantheon of things that Gov. Bev Perdue doesn't want to be surprised by.

Update: Click here for WRAL's story.

Earlier today, the AP reported:

Gov. Beverly Perdue's choice to lead North Carolina's public school system has a second title after being elected chairman of the State Board of Education.

Former Cumberland County Schools Superintendent Bill Harrison was sworn into a seat on the board today. Within minutes he was elected chairman, replacing outgoing chairman Howard Lee.

Harrison also leads the state's public school system, which serves 1.5 million students.

Harrison's dual titles are part of Perdue's plan to consolidate power in public education and makes the governor ultimately responsible for public school performance.

Just before 5 p.m., State Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson sent this along:

“I congratulate Dr. Bill Harrison for being elected as chair of the State Board of Education.

The State Board of Education also approved the establishment of a chief executive officer position with the authority to manage the day-to-day operations of the Department of Public Instruction and appointed Dr. Harrison to serve in that role. I believe this action violates the Constitution of North Carolina and usurps the will of the voters who granted me the privilege to serve as State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I do not believe that the governance issue will be resolved until it is challenged in the judicial system or the Constitution is changed. I will not abdicate my constitutional and statutory responsibilities.

I remain committed to the 2.2 million voters who elected me and to the children and educators in this state.”

For those trying to figure out whether we really have a pending constitutional crisis might want to take a gander at the state constitution.

If you play the home game, let me know what you think via the comment link below.

Fred G., a reader from Greensboro who drops me an e-mail from time-to-time, called earlier this week to chat about a couple things, including his car insurance rate going up. He had gotten a letter from his company saying that a new state law was partly to blame.

That law requires drivers to carry coverage in case of an accident with a motorist who was uninsured or under-insured. Before Jan. 1, you could opt out of such coverage or have a lower than recommended coverage. Now all drivers are required to carry coverage equal to the amount they have for other parts of their coverage.

For Fred, it meant a bump of more than $100 in his premium.

This struck me as odd since back in January, when the new law took effect, the Department of Insurance estimated that the average driver would see their rates go up $17.

"The intent is to add another layer of protection for consumers," said Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin.

Up to 12 percent of drivers are on the roads without insurance. That's illegal and those folks can't get their tags renewed, but those folks are out there. It makes sense, Goodwin said, to make sure everyone has enough coverage so they're not left with a big bill should they have an accident with one of those folks.

And, he said, the number of uninsured drivers could go up as the economy worsens and people try to cut down on expenses or simply can't pay their bills.

But, Goodwin allowed, the law "has lead to some unintended consequences."

There's already an ongoing fight between insurers and the state over insurance rates, and this question of uninsured motorist coverage has gotten sucked into that, Goodwin said.

My friend Mark Johnson, who writes for the Charlotte paper, beat me to the punch reporting this out fully. Click here for his story from today's paper that outlines the issue pretty well and includes this:

It's unclear how many car owners saw a rate increase because of the requirement for equal levels of coverage. About 70,000 customers of Nationwide, the largest auto insurer in the state, got bigger insurance bills because of the law, said Susan Valauri, director of government relations for Nationwide in North Carolina. The average increase was approximately $22 for the year, with the largest jump being about $120 for the year.

Glasgow likely saw such a sharp price increase because he had a high level of coverage on his liability insurance and the minimum level of coverage on his uninsured motorists provision.

Valauri said more than 99 percent of the company's N.C. customers already had uninsured motorist coverage, and 91 percent maintained an equal level of coverage with their liability insurance.

“It's not a big deal for the vast majority of drivers,” Valauri said. “For those other customers ... it may have been a very big deal for them.”

According to Johnson, Mecklenburg Sen. Dan Clodfelter is working on a fix to the law.

Has your car insurance rate gone up? If so, drop me a line in the comment links or at mark.binker@news-record.com.

Presuming the Council of State decides to take a 20-acre gift from Rockingham County during its meeting tomorrow, the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention will build a Youth Development Center in Wentworth.

Guilford County had been a candidate for the center (and the jobs that come along with it), but neighbors objected. This is from a Jan. 20, 2007 a colleague wrote out of a Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting:

GREENSBORO - Sandy Camp Road residents made a last-ditch, late-night plea to block the state from building a juvenile jail in their neighborhood.

They won.

Guilford County commissioners on Thursday overwhelmingly turned away the state's permit request for the 32-bed youth prison in the area. Commissioners worried that the jail would hurt property values and lacked enough security to prevent convicted teenagers from breaking loose and terrorizing neighbors.

"We were absolutely humbled by it," said Larry Rayle, a lifelong resident of the area. "This is the first group of people in a year that really sat down and listened to us and discounted what the state was presenting."

Residents have been fighting the state since it revealed plans for the center more than a year ago. Juvenile justice officials promised that the building would look like an elementary school with trees out front along Sandy Camp Road .

The state easily won over the county planning board. But the commissioners, who can be more easily influenced by passionate pleas from voters, said the state failed to meet guidelines for granting the request.

"The surrounding property is all residential," Republican Billy Yow said. "There's not one commercial application out there."

Commissioners said they hoped the state would still build the center in the county. One suggestion has been the county prison farm in Gibsonville, though Chairman Paul Gibson, a Democrat, suggested putting it in an industrial park away from homes.

"It doesn't need to be there in a residential area that's growing," Gibson said.

Kim Yonkers, a spokeswoman for the juvenile-justice department, said only that the state would "evaluate the situation and make a decision on where to go next." The department plans to build five youth prisons across the state as it takes a more community-oriented approach to jailing its youth .

Following on the N+O's probation work, my N+R colleague Ryan Seals writes:

GREENSBORO - Overwhelmingly big case loads and low pay are overburdening Guilford County's probation system, leaving many offenders without direction or supervision and putting the public at risk.

Of the county's 6,185 probationers, 1,219 of them could not be found as of Wednesday, probation officials said.

Just do the math: Each of the 90 probation officers assigned to Guilford County must keep tabs on nearly 70 probationers.

Good probation officers are leaving, tired of juggling heavy case loads and long hours for little pay. Offenders keep committing crimes in a system meant to help them become productive citizens.

And it costs taxpayers when criminals return to an expensive and crowded prison system. And when innocent people are put in danger.

Also from the story:

"The ultimate question will be with the worsening economy and the deficit we find ourselves in: How are we going to find the resources to tackle the (probation) problem?" said newly elected state Sen. Don Vaughan. "We need to find a way to stretch our resources to make probation effective."

Vaughan, a local attorney with 25 years of experience, plans to make the probation system one of his priorities in the General Assembly. The state also needs to look at how probation cases are handled in the courts, he said.

"On Monday morning, you can wait an hour to an hour and a half just to get inside the courtroom door because of the volume of (probation) cases in Guilford County," Vaughan said.

"It's overwhelming right now, and I think the Eve Carson case in Chapel Hill was the awakening of the state legislature that the system needs attention."

Click here for the whole thing.

Click here for my 10-Plus interview with Keith Crisco, North Carolina's new commerce secretary. And here are few bits of audio that expand on what could fit in print.

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Until recently, Crisco was a city council member in Asheboro, recently named by Forbes as one of "America's Fastest-Dying Towns." (More here.)

"It was depressing," Crisco said. In this audio clip he talks about why he thinks the Forbes study was unfair, the challenges that Asheboro faces and what part of that experience will inform him as Commerce Secretary.

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Recently, UNC researchers told legislators that the state should eliminate some tax incentives for job recruitment, according to their research.

Crisco says in this audio clip that the approach makes sense, and in particular liked that the approach was based on research rather than philosophy.

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Crisco once testified to Congress in favor of CAFTA, a free trade treaty. I put to him that many workers blame free trade on losing their jobs.

This was his response.

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And because it was a good story, but too long to include in its entirety, click here to hear how Crisco got into Harvard's graduate business school. Not only did he admit to not having the best grades in the world as an undergraduate, the punch line tells you something about the guy's philosophy. It was a chance to sell myself, which is an important part of life," he said.

I'm scheduled for an interview with North Carolina's new commerce secretary, Keith Crisco, tomorrow. Does anyone out there in cyber-land have a question for the businessman-turned-job-recruiter? If so, leave it in the comment link or e-mail it to mbinker@news-record.com.

I dropped in on the N.C. Ethics Commission for their meeting today.

One item of note was up for discussion: the commission is getting ready to send a package of requests to the legislature, either for increases in resources or tweaks to their law.

Some make good sense, no matter who you are. For example, they're talking about storing and distributing financial disclosure forms signed by legislators, board members and the like in electronic form. As anyone who has ever made the pilgrimage to the basement of the administration building on Jones Street can tell you, electronic distribution makes a whole lot more sense than having banks and banks of file cabinets.

Some are a little iffy. One example: Currently, "covered persons" - anyone required by law to submit a disclosure form - must report if they own $10,000 or more worth of an individual stock. They don't have to report the amount or number of shares, just that they own it.

William Pope, a board member from Iredell County, said that threshold ought to be raised to $100,000.

Jane Pinsky, director of the N.C. Coalition for Lobbying and Government Reform, was in the audience and suggested that $100,000 might be a tad high.

"For many people in North Carolina, having $10,000 in stock is a lot of money," Pinsky said.

Pope later backed off his thought.

"I don't think there's anything magic about raising it to $100,000," he said. "My personal view is that people are basically honest ... I just think the threshold is too low."

The ethics commission staff said they would look at what other state ethics boards use as a threshold and report back. It seemed like there was general consensus for raising the bar, though. That would mean the public would know of fewer cases where there is a conflict of interest.

Will someone sell their good name for the impact an action may have on $10,000 worth of stock? Who knows? Where's the threshold? Michael Decker sought a $50,000 bribe to keep Jim Black in power, so maybe $50,000 should be the threshold?

Being a reporter, I'm always in the more sunshine is better camp, but could be wrong.

The legislature's Environmental Review Commission heard from Steven Smith, chairman of the EMC, today.

In particular, he gave a summary of the Jordan Lake Rules, which have caused a great deal of consternation in Greensboro and throughout the Triad.

You can click here to listen to his summary of the rules, which basically told the honorables why it is they'll probably be dealing with them during the coming legislative session.

More interesting to me was question from Sen. Stan Bingham, who asked about the impact of agriculture on the nutrients flowing into the lake.

This has been one of the major sore points with city officials, like those in Greensboro, who say they're being required to clean up their act, but that farms are getting off with very little by way of regulation.

"On the Jordan Lake, do you have a feel for these nutrients what portion of that would be agriculture versus residential run-off?" Bingham asked.

Smith's reply: "Not off the top of my head. ... I'm pretty sure that breakdown was done early on in the process."

Bingham replied, "I was just curious if the agriculture side of this contributed quite a bit - I just wondered what steps were being taken to maybe mitigate some of this ..."

Smith said, "One of the things we found was that in this water basin, there is existing agriculture, there's no doubt about it. (But) there is a fairly substantial amount of property that is classified as agriculture but what it really is, is land awaiting development that has been taken out of active agriculture, but I don't mean to say there is not active agriculture in this watershed."

The discussion continued on for a little while after than. You can click here to listen to the full conversation.

Lanier Cansler, the the new DHHS Secretary, (more here) introduced himself to the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee for MH-DD-SAS today.

Click here to listen to his seven and a half minutes.

Cansler said he regretted not being able to stay for the whole meeting.

"There's budget cuts that we're trying to decide upon and get over to the state budget office," he said.

In general, Cansler offered a promise to work hard, focus on mental health, issues, etc...

"The mental health thing is important and we are working to make sure we have a new focus, maybe I should say an enhanced focus ... on making sure we develop the community capacity that we need across the state to try to serve folks as appropriately in their communities," he said.

He said state hospitals needed to hone their focus on longer-term and more dangerous patients, which is an old idea but one that hasn't come off in recent years.

"I'm in my third day in this position ... but the one thing that I know that I know the governor wants to do is make sure our hospitals ... make sure that when people come to those facilities for help that they get the quality care they deserve and we meet their needs and that they're safe and they can depend upon having the right kind of care. So one thing I want to make sure we do is we develop a very clear policy of zero tolerance for any kind of abuse or neglect of patients."

He emphasized training and ramping up accountability for those who work in mental hospitals.

"There will be some things we need your help with," Cansler told the legislators.

Gov. Bev Perdue swore in her cabinet this afternoon. Among them was Linda Carlisle, a Greensboro businesswoman and former lottery commissioner who now serves as Secretary of Cultural Resources.

I talked to her during a reception for the new cabinet today and you can click here to hear the full audio of that conversation.

The summary:

• * I asked her if she would live in Greensboro or Raleigh. She's buying a second home in Raleigh.

• * I asked how she could sell the General Assembly on maintaining arts funding at a time when the budget is squeezed and the economy is struggling.

  "What we have to do is continue to tell our story well," she said. "I think so often people understand what cultural resources are but they forget to really put a price tag on what the value is to our citizens, what the value is toward building a good place where businesses can grow."

  Carlisle said she would be looking for ways to expand arts in North Carolina without spending a lot more dollars. The word "volunteer" came up a lot.

  "Frankly, I'm not really satisfied to maintain status quo," She said. "I think even in today's environment, there are creative ways that we can look to expand on the offerings we have."

• * Libraries fall under the purview of Carlisle's department. And every year, libraries come begging to the General Assembly to defend their funding.

  "Everything you read and hear tells you libraries become a greater resource during economic downturn times," Carlisle said. She added that she would do her best to defend funding for libraries.

  "Our funding for our libraries is abysmal at times," she added.

• * So, how did she get the job?

  "It wasn't a plan," Carlisle said. "In fact, I feel like back in Greensboro there's a lot of egg on my face because I've told people for a very long time that I was not aspiring to take a job in Raleigh."

  But Perdue called her and asked her to take the job. Carlisle is a known quantity to folks in Raleigh from her service on the UNCG Board and as one of the commissioners who started the state's lottery.

  "I had to think about it, not because I wasn't flattered ... but simply because it wasn't on my game sheet. But Bev (Perdue) said to me that, 'Sometimes, the good Lord has better plans for you than you have for yourself.' So she trumped all of my arguments. There was nothing else I could say to that."

• * I asked about the Charlotte Hawkins Brown site in Sedalia, the state's only African American historic site and one that frequently comes up during budget discussions.

  "I am aware of the desperate need for funding and for R and R (repair and renovation) kind of funds to help support that. What I need to do is look at it in the total context of what the needs are."

So while I've been wandering about D.C., there have been happenings at home.

Governor-elect Bev Perdue completed her cabinet Tuesday.

(By the way: thanks to my colleague Gerald Witt for picking up my slack on Perdue's Commerce and cultural resources appointments.)

The head-scratching pick of the day might be Lanier Cansler as HHS secretary. There's two ways to view this appointment:

The guy is a consultant knowledgeable about the health care, has served in the agency so knows the lay of the land and is a Republican to boot - giving Perdue some bipartisan cred. (Lanier is a former legislator and gave advice to state Sen. Fred Smith during the campaign, according to a March 17 story in the Asheville Citizen Times.)

Then again ...

The guy was a consultant in the knowledgeable about the health care field: Specifically, Dome reports he is a registered lobbyist for a company that has sold the state a Medicaid bill-paying system. (Perdue told reporters in the state that Cansler is detached from his private industry dealings.)

He has served in the agency so knows the lay of the land: Specifically, he was deputy secretary from 2001 to 2005, right about when the mental health system started its rock-sled ride to perdition. And fixing mental health will be one of the DHHS secretary's most high profile tasks.

He is a Republican - okay, that's not a potential failing, is it?

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Both the North Carolina Democratic Party and North Carolina Republican Party will be looking for new leadership in the new year.

In a statement, GOP Chairman Linda Daves:

"Serving as the Chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party has been a great honor. The ability to serve the interests of the people of North Carolina has been one of the great privileges of my life. The best part of this job has been the ability to meet the many diverse people who make up the fabric of our state. I have spent many years working alongside dedicated, hardworking Republicans in North Carolina as a grassroots activist. It is these good people who make up the heart and soul of our party. Having the ability to see their commitment to making our state the best that it can be has given me renewed hope for our future each day.

There was also the small matter of the state GOP getting a butt-whoopin' last fall. A gain of one seat in the state senate is far outweighed by losing the state auditor's office, losing the state's presidential electors for the first time since 1976 and losing a senate seat held by a well-known incumbent.

One prominent North Carolina Republican told me this week "the party is in shambles," referring both to its national standing and its operations in state. Rebuilding it will fall to the next chairman.

There doesn't seem to be a line out the door for the job. State Sen. Fred Smith doesn't seem to be going hard at it.

Former Guilford County GOP Chairman Marcus Kindley has been stumping for the job. Four years ago, he drew a lot of support from rural areas of the state.

-=-=-=-=-=-=

On the Democratic side, many folks have seemingly expressed interest in the job - if not said they were running outright. The most widely known name being floated might be Jim Neal, who ran against Sen. Kay Hagan in the Democratic primaries. He wrote this in an e-mail Tuesday:

Many members of the State Executive Committee (NCDP SEC) have been urging me to run for Chair of the NCDP which Jerry is vacating. Some I got to know during the primary campaign; others I'm talking to for the first time. They've got my ear and I am considering in earnest.

Initially, I was approached over the summer about seeking the office at which time I passed. Six months later.....I'm willing to listen as my life has settled since the aftermath of the elections. I'm intrigued and have no doubt that I would be an effective representative and leader. The sheer cross-section of folks across the SEC who've been calling is telling and exciting. Whomever is elected as the next Chair will have to continue to build upon the impressive coalition of traditional and newer party activists whom Jerry did such an effective job of uniting during this past election cycle.

I have not declared my candidacy as such but I am seriously considering doing so. I simply have not made a decision as yet. I have not been in contact with legislative leaders; it is premature to do so and they've all got a lot on their plates at this time. I certainly will do so should I decide to run.

According to news reports: Luke Hyde, the 11th district Democratic chairman, is actively running for the job. There are at least three other names in the mix according to Dome.

Whoever inherits the State Party Chairman Jerry Meek's job will have the opposite problem of their Republican counterpart. Rather than rebuilding, they'll be at the reins of an organization that just won big - so the bar will be pretty high.

There are a few things that public officials say that are an automatic FAIL, the public service equivalent of Godwin's Law..

Somewhere near the top of that list is saying something like, "Well, sure this went wrong, but why'd you go and write about it," or "Hey, good job fixing this, but why did the public know there was a problem in the first place."

And from the N+O's "Crosstown Traffic" blog we have an example of a Greensboro DOT Board member reaching the point where Vanna comes on stage, hands out some lovely parting gifts and points the way to the door:

Who let the horse out of the barn? That’s what Andrew Perkins Jr. of Greensboro, a member of the state Board of Transportation, wanted to know.

At a board meeting this week Perkins said he was satisfied with how the state Department of Transportation responded to a critical audit and review by the Federal Transit Administration.

But he didn’t like seeing a newspaper story published before DOT had a chance to put the best face on its problems with the feds. He chided DOT for the bad press.

[snip]

"How did we get all that into the news media before you even got an opportunity to correct it?" Perkins asked Roberto Canales, DOT deputy secretary for transit, at a board committee meeting Wednesday.

Because, really, why would the public have any interest in knowing about the use, misuse or non-use of government tax dollars, right?

Click here for the full post.

Perkins, by the way, is the assistant vice chancellor for business and finance/facilities at NCA&T, an institution with a view of press relations that might charitably be described somewhere between quixotic and quirky.

DOT lawyers did point out that pesky open records law made keeping things like this on the DL kind of hard. And in general, it's the policy - if not always practice of the state - to have an open and accountable government.

I don't think that explanation stuck. More from the post:

Perkins said that reporters' inquires should be referred to a DOT spokesman, and that the messy details of DOT exchanges with the FTA should not be made public.

'There ought to be a way in which we can deal, when they come in with an FTA review or any federal review. And that stays within the department in terms of coordination between the federal agency and the department.

"And there is only one spokesman for that. It should only come out of the public relations area, and that be a de-sanitized version. Do not let yourself be manipulated to come up with something that's inflammatory, " Perkins told Canales.

Thanks for playing, but you don’t make it to the bonus round.

Following up on the story from Thursday’s paper, folks at the Alamance-Caswell-Rockingham LME said the state has judged them too harshly:

Managers with the public mental health agency that serves clients in Rockingham, Alamance and Caswell counties say they follow up with patients better than a stringent warning from state officials would indicate.

On Oct. 1, the Division of Mental Health put the Alamance-Caswell-Rockingham Local Management Entity on notice that they could lose the funding and authority to coordinate care for their most seriously ill mental health consumers. The state said that 45 percent of those who left a mental hospital and returned home to those three counties received follow-up care.

That's below the state average and made the agency one of five across North Carolina at risk of losing their funding. But agency officials say that by their count, they outperform peers.

"We're at upwards of 65 percent," said Victor Armstrong, the agency's care coordination manager.

Click here for the whole thing.

It should be noted the state is not quite convinced:

"They have had conversations with our staff and they have talked about some of the things they think they are doing," said Leza Wainwright, co-director of the Division of Mental Health.

She was cautious in her appraisal, noting that even though there is information the state doesn’t have -- such as billing records for patients with private health insurance -- that information was missing for all patients in its study. That means the Alamance-Caswell-Rockingham LME was compared to its peers based on the same set of information and its performance lacking relative to the 23 other agencies.

And some things the county may count as a follow-up service may not meet state standards. For example, Armstrong said the county has beefed up the staff that makes contact with patients coming home from the hospital.

This will bear watching in the new year.

From today's papers:

PED staff ponders ways to make ABC system more profitable.

The Division of Mental Health takes a hard look at the Alamance, Caswell, Rockingham LME. Wake and Orange County are in the same boat the N+O says.

Related reports.

The General Assembly has a research arm called the Program Evaluation Division that looks into various aspects of state government and suggests places where there might be some improvement.

Two reports of interest came along today.

First up, the PED concludes North Carolina's alcohol control laws are antiquated and in need of an update.

What, just because there are 158 different local ABC boards, some of which compete directly with one another and at least a few of which lose money every year?

One of the more clearly understood recommendations of the PED was to give the state ABC Board more latitude to regulate the local boards. That way, stores that barely turn a profit can get some help or be consolidated in ways that make sense.

The report is at this link.

Related only in a tangential sort of way, the PED issued the second of three planned reports on the state's mental health system.

The bullet out of the meeting for me was that five mental health systems, including the one that operates in Rockingham County, have been told they need to improve or the state will take a major set of functions away.

Patients coming home from state mental hospitals only get seen by providers in their communities about 54 percent of the time on average. That's not good.

But the Rockingham, Alamance, Caswell system was among five systems where that performance was even worse that the state average.

According to Leza Wainwright, on the co-directors of the division, the state has told them they need to shape up or follow-up care responsibilities will be moved elsewhere.

The PED report itself talks about the need for better follow-up and tracking of patients coming out of state hospitals and the need for more critical care mental health beds in communities. If you've been following the ongoing problems with the state mental health system, neither recommendation will come as much of a surprise.

Click here for the report.

So, I'm hoofing back to my office from the zoo funding study committee, and who to my wondering eyes should appear but Santa Clause, on top of a giant shopping cart, across the street from the old state capitol building.

You heard me.

Santa, the cart and company were hustling business for a food drive today outside the Department of Agriculture Building. Usually when I see the cart tooling around, Ag Commissioner Steve Troxler is at the wheel. But I guess the Reindeer union being somewhat persnickety about wage and hour rules this time of year, Santa needed to borrow the ride.

(Click to enlarge.)

From my contribution to today's paper:

Even as issues of energy supplies and conservation have gained national and international importance, a legislative oversight committee responsible for keeping watch over the state’s utility regulators and power companies has met just once during the past six years.

The Joint Legislative Utility Review Committee has been dormant even as the state has enacted new and sometimes controversial laws to encourage conservation and new energy technologies.

Although the committee’s mission may be more important now than when it was formed in 1985, advocates and other legislators complain its co-chairmen have passed on exercising their oversight powers. And, they note, both chairmen are beneficiaries of campaign donations from the power industry and one of them now works for a power cooperative.

"There's never been a more important time to be thoughtful about energy policy," said Rep. Pricey Harrison , a Greensboro Democrat and one of the panel’s 10 members. "This committee is precisely situated to engage in that kind of discussion and oversight, and it’s very frustrating to me we’re not engaging in that."

Click here for the story.

Other good stuff:

• * My colleague (and fantasy football commissioner) Jason Hardin writes about the life of undocumented immigrants here in North Carolina. One anecdote:

  Moises Campos Palencia was on his way to realizing the American dream — a wife, a young daughter, a business he started from scratch.

  Until it all fell apart at a traffic light in High Point a few months ago.

  A police officer pulled him over, saying he’d turned left on red. The next thing Palencia knew, he was in a detention center in Georgia, awaiting deportation.

  Although he had lived in the United States since he was a boy, brought here by his parents, Palencia hadn’t been able to attain citizenship, despite his efforts.

• * The N+O revisits the probation and parole office in force:

  Since the start of 2000, 580 people have killed in North Carolina while under the watch of state probation officers -- 17 percent of all convictions for intentional killings.

  The high profile killing of UNC student Eve Carson is part of this story, as are hundreds of other cases. The killer line in the story is the quote from Corrections Secretary Theodis Beck:

  "This is not something we would have expected to deal with," Beck said. "We're here because of the failure of two cases out of 117,000."

  Granted this is something that three reporters and a team of others at the N+O spent a year on. But if a group of outsiders can figure out this stuff, surely the people who own the data and actually manage the system can...right?

  The N+O has two more parts to this series coming, and I wouldn't expect them to be warm and fuzzy follow-ups.

That's the early take this morning. Let me know what you're reading.

Update: This came to me by way of a Facebook link posted by an acquaintance of mine at the Inky: Smoke and Mirrors: The Subversion of the EPA. It's worth a read and listen.

From a NC Department of Agriculture (and random facts) release:

"North Carolina produced nearly 4.8 million poinsettias in 2007 and generated cash receipts of $15.2 million," said Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler. "Overall floriculture production contributes more than $194 million to North Carolina’s economy, and poinsettias are a very important part of that."

Poinsettias are grown in greenhouses across North Carolina. They have specific climatic requirements, and need the correct balance of sunlight and darkness in order to produce quality plants for the holiday season.

As Johnny Carson might say, "I did not know that."

Believe it or not, the North Carolina Zoo has its very own legislative study committee.

And that committee is getting ready to make some recommendations that could help the zoo go from a day-trip attraction to a destination for over-night travelers.

Of course, it could also lead to taxpayers plowing more dollars into the attraction.

First a little background.

Earlier this year, there was a big referendum down in Asheboro on allowing alcohol sales within the Asheboro city limits. As mentioned by my colleague Joe Killian at the time, this is in part expected to help the zoo's expansion plans.

Those plans, as laid out for the study committee last week, include a third "continent," what the zoo calls its major exhibit areas. Already there are North America and Africa. Asia would be the third group of animal habitats.

As one who has hoofed it through the entire zoo, a good bit of that way carrying a sleepy four-year-old on his shoulders, the zoo is already a full day. Adding a third area would definitely put it beyond the see-it-all-in-one-day threshold.

Of course, Zoo Director David Jones made the case to Killian back in August that the zoo was already a multi-day affair:

"To do the zoo properly, you really need to be here for at least a day and a half," Jones said. "If you can encourage people to stay the night, their spending goes to about $145 a day."

Jones said the zoo has been looking to expand, add a new continent exhibit and draw in multiday visitors for years -- but the alcohol ban made things more difficult with potential investors and visitors.

The Asia continent is on the long-range capitol planning spreadsheet he gave committee members last week.

However, to meet existing renovation needs (for example: the zoo is in the process of improving its polar bear tanks and replacing its African Pavilion already) and build for the future, it needs a source of income.

One idea the study committee just might endorse is allowing the zoo to use more of the money it gets from ticket sales to go toward a special capitol fund. That money could be used to repay bonds that pay for repairs, renovations and expansions.

The upside is the zoo would not have to come to the General Assembly every year to ask for money for individual capitol projects. (No more legislative debates about polar bears and large animal barns.)

The downside is the zoo uses ticket sales to pay for staff and other operational costs now. If that money were shifted away, it would need to be replaced with tax dollars - probably to the tune of $4 million.

It's not a crazy idea - the Zoo is a state agency operating under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. But with big old budget deficits staring the state in the face, now isn't exactly the best time to go prospecting for tax dollars.

DENR Sec. William Ross endorsed that idea in a letter to the committee last week. (You'll note, he didn't endorse the idea of making the zoo a free-standing agency or its own nonprofit.)

Rep. Harold Brubaker, a Randolph County Republican who manages to get things done despite his affiliation with the minority party, said that 2009 may not be the year to get a change in zoo funding done. But he said that 2010 or 2011 might be.

The upshot of the expansion would be the zoo could then attract an up-scale hotel on-site or nearby. (And yes, if it were on-site there would need to be a fix to the Umstead Act.) Jones also mentioned an additional attraction, like a theater.

If more folks started staying over night, that generates more business for local businesses and, of course, more government revenue from taxes on things like hotel nights and restaurant meals.

More coming in a story due to be published later this week.

The state auditor's office put out a report today claiming the state paid $294,413 too much for office supplies to Office Depot during a six month period.

News release: claiming the state paid $294,413 too much for office supplies to Office Depot during a six month period.

Audit: claiming the state paid $294,413 too much for office supplies to Office Depot during a six month period.

Worth noting: this is not the first time the Auditor has found issues with Office Depot. More: here.

You might remember that the decision to give the office supply contract to Office Depot in the first place ticked off a lot of local sellers, who said that the large national company could undercut their prices but would be unresponsive when problems arose.

Click here for a copy of that story.

Update: From the Department of Administration:

RALEIGH – Administration Secretary Britt Cobb today directed the Division of Purchase & Contract (P&C) to develop an action plan to address deficiencies identified in a report by the State Auditor regarding the state office supplies contract with Office Depot.

"We are determined to develop more effective ways of managing this and all state contracts," Cobb said. "We are committed to providing goods vital to the function of state business in the most accountable and cost efficient manner."

Cobb said that P&C first notified Office Depot in March 2008 demanding repayment of overcharges. P&C has continued to monitor and pursue recovery of overcharges from Office Depot.

"We have been consulting with the Attorney General’s Office to ensure that all overcharges have been accounted for and credited," Cobb said. "We also have asked that the State Bureau of Investigation to review claims in the report to determine whether a criminal investigation is warranted into the pricing practices of Office Depot."

You can read that here.

H 2499, a bill aimed at letting the state government better manage through a drought, became law today. Gov. Mike Easley signed the thing during a news conference this morning. (Click here for the release.)

The new law gives the state more powers to tell local communities to create drought management plans and use them should it look like the state is hitting a dry spell – like the one we’re in right now.

Easley was asked if he would have liked to have seen anything else in the bill or if there are additional steps the state ought to be saying. He said no, he had gotten what he wanted out of it.

But House Speaker Joe Hackney weighed in: “I just want to say this is a good first step, but there’s a lot of water wasted in North Carolina and we need to do something about that as we go forward. An example, are our leaky pipes in almost every municipality or water system in the state.”

Click here for audio from that.

-=-=-=-

As the drought bill was going through the General Assembly, there was a lot of discussion over private wells and what exactly the state could or should do to encourage the owners of those wells to conserve. So what changed in the final bill, Easley was asked.

Not much, Easley said. The state really can’t do anything now that it couldn’t do a day ago.

Click here for audio from that.

-=-=-=-

After the drought talk, Easley went off topic for a while. He was asked about national independent expenditure groups spending money in North Carolina gubernatorial campaign between Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue and Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory. The state, Easley said, had done it’s best to keep 527s at bay, but the courts have ruled you can shut them out entirely.

“The truth of the matter is the squirrel always finds a way into the bird feeder.”

Click here for audio from that.

-=-=-=-

At the end of the news conference, Easley was asked about his shoulder and why it wasn’t in a sling.

“There’s always some specific moment you remember that really made one of the shoulders hurt,”

Pray tell?

“When Barack Obama came, and I welcomed him, he came up on the stage and we did the little fist bump…”

Ah, so it didn’t just look awkward…go on:

“…and then he wanted go up high with that right arm, his left and my right, and he was grabbing that right shoulder. I was smiling but I was saying you know, I got to get this fixed.”

Click here for audio from that.

Update: Late with this, but here's Tuesday's newspaper story on Save-A-Watt.

-=-=-=-=-

I spent a little time this afternoon at the NC Utilities Commission’s hearings on Duke's Save-A-Watt program.

For those who haven't tuned into this thus far, basically Duke Energy has proposed a program aimed at curbing power use. Because it's something that rate-payers would have to pay extra for - residential customers would pay whether they directly participate or not - they have a case before the utilities commission.

Those inclined to tip-toe through the paperwork, should click here and brew yourself a big ol' pot of coffee. This case was first filed in May of 2007 and Duke as well as advocates on all sides (including Wal-Mart) have been filing briefs and testimony ever since.

Now, saving energy sounds like a good thing, but this program proposal has put environmental and consumer advocates at odds with Duke. The crux of the conflict is this:

The power company says its program will help it make energy efficiency a fifth fuel and let them recoup the costs of helping people cut back on their power usage.

Consumer advocates say that the company will charge customers too much for the privilege of not buying power. In fact, the way Duke conceptualized the way it will be paid back is by way of recouping 90 percent of the cost for a power plant it will never build.

Environmental types say that other energy efficiency programs in other states have produced more savings than what Duke projects.

A story on all this is coming for Tuesday's paper.

Interesting side-note: Duke Power CEO Jim Rogers was the subject of a rather slurpy New York Times Magazine profile last month. It focused mainly on his carbon cap and trade efforts but included this graph on Save-a-Watt:

Interestingly, the one green initiative Rogers says he hopes will emerge most quickly is focused not on generating power but on conserving it. Last year, he concocted the Save-a-Watt plan, which would let Duke profit from helping its customers drastically cut their energy use. Like roughly half the utilities in the United States, Duke is regulated; it can charge more for power only if it builds a new power plant and persuades the regulator to approve a rate increase to pay for it. But the fastest way to reduce a carbon footprint is by improving efficiency. Under Save-a-Watt, Duke would, for example, distribute “smart” meters that automatically turn off customers’ appliances during periods of peak power use. For its first experiment, Duke plans to cut the consumption of its customers in the Carolinas by 1,800 megawatts, which is equal to the output of two new coal-fired plants. The regulator would then let Duke charge higher rates for the electricity its customers do use to pay for all the efficiency technology. Save-a-Watt thus turns the power business on its head: rather than charge customers more to build plants, Duke will effectively charge them not to do so.

Beyond that, the story doesn't really explore the Save-A-Watt idea, or the objections to it, very much. But toward the end, with things re-focused on carbon cap and trade, there's a graph I found really interesting. It speaks to Rogers wanting to craft this image as the power company CEO that environmentalists should love, but who is spurned:

Yet many local environmentalists no longer believe Rogers, and they have precisely the opposite view of how the future should unfold. They view the Lieberman-Warner bill not as too strong but as too weak. They point out, correctly, that Duke stands to reap tens of billions in free allowances, even under the existing bill, money that will subsidize the burning of coal. “This bill gives huge windfall profits to a company that buys a lot of coal, like Duke,” says Frank O’Donnell, the head of Clean Air Watch, an environmental group. “I happen to think that it’s immoral. In a sense, you’re paying the polluter. You’re rewarding the very companies that are the source of the problem.” He says he doesn’t believe that coal-dependent companies will move fast enough unless they feel the tighter pressure of even more aggressive carbon caps. Rogers is simply “greenwashing” his company, saying all the right things so he can wear the mantle of the revolutionary without having to make the hard sacrifices.

That same sort of dynamic seems to be at play with Save-A-Watt, with Duke claiming that they're going to be the more environmentally friendly power company that environmentalists should like, and the environmental side being skeptical.

For those following the dust up over Agriculture Research Stations, there appears to be an agreement to play nice among all involved.
Rep. Dewey Hill, who chairs the House Ag Committee, sent out an e-mail this afternoon saying H 2450 wouldn't move forward:

House Agriculture Committee Members:

HB 2450 Study Ag. Research Stations/Develop Plan will not be moving forward. Commissioner Steven W. Troxler, NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services; Dr. Johnny C. Wynne, Dean and Executive Director for Agricultural Programs, NC State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Dr. Alton Thompson, Dean, Agricultural Education/Economics and Rural Sociology, NC Agricultural and Technical State University have agreed to continue their work together and to jointly study and develop a comprehensive strategic plan for the management of agricultural research stations.

I am pleased these leaders in our thriving agricultural community will be working together to improve our way of life as we live and work in this great State of North Carolina. A common vision of an agricultural research system that is efficient and up to date is shared. Also shared is a continuing commitment to work together for the best future of North Carolina agriculture. Your ongoing support is most appreciated.

Sincerely,
Dewey Hill, Chair
House Agriculture Committee

That comes on the heels of this joint letter from the Ag Department, NCSU and NCA&T going out Tuesday along with this e-mail from Ag Commissioner Steve Troxler:

Dear Friend of Agriculture:

Many of you are aware of efforts recently undertaken by the General Assembly's Program Evaluation Division (PED) to study the agricultural research stations system in North Carolina. The goal of the PED's work was to find ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our research system. This is a laudable goal and one that all agricultural leaders agree is necessary as food prices climb and our population continues to grow.

I am pleased to report that NCSU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean Johnny Wynne, NCA&TSU School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Dean Alton Thompson, and I have collaborated on a joint letter that reaffirms our commitment to work together to improve our agricultural stations system. A copy of the letter is attached.

Dean Wynne, Dean Thompson, and I are looking forward to moving ahead with our efforts. We look forward to consulting with you as plans are developed, and appreciate your continued interest in our agricultural research system. I hope you will not hesitate to contact my office if you have questions.

Sincerely,

Steve W. Troxler
Commissioner of Agriculture

I'm not sure if or how this affects Rep. Nelson Cole's bid for horse facility money.

But it does seem to indicate that some of the tension between NCSU and the Ag Department might have eased.

Oh, woe is us, the Jordan Lake Rules are at hand.

Eh, not so much.

I've written about these things before (here / here / here / here) but it for those coming late to the story:

The Haw River sweeps through the Triad, taking leftovers from storm water runoff, sewage plants, bits of farm fertilizer, etc... with it. At the end of its run, the Haw feeds into the southern end of Jordan Lake.

Jordan Lake, which serves as a water supply in the Triangle area, has problems with pollution in the form of too much nitrogen and phosphorus that cause algae blooms and other problems.

So on Friday, the Environmental Review Commission approved new rules that would help curb pollution in the Haw River arm. From a news release sent out by DENR:

The approved nutrient management strategy is comprised of 11 rules that define the strategy’s goals and set requirements for nutrient management, agriculture, wastewater discharges and storm water management for new and existing development and government entities. The rules also address buffer protection and mitigation for buffer impacts and provide criteria for trading nutrient reduction requirements among different sources of nutrients to achieve more cost effective options. The goals for reducing nutrients are based on nutrient loads entering Jordan Lake between 1997 and 2001.

That all sounds fine and dandy, but there's significant cost attached to accomplishing all of that. Ballpark estimates say the City of Greensboro will spend a minimum of $70 million just to upgrade sewage plants. And the city could be forced to tear into existing neighborhoods to create storm water controls and developers are none to happy about the idea of doing all this either.

So are these rules going into effect right away? No.

Next stop is the Rules Review Commission, which will knock things about and then almost certainly enough people will write protest letters to knock things back to the General Assembly.

And because of all the moving pieces involved, most folks don't think the legislature is going to get it back before 2009. And once it's back in the General Assembly, expect both sides to release all their various hounds for a big ol' legislative showdown. My guess is we're looking at 11-monhts minimum before we know what the outcome of this will be.

Update: Click here for Jennifer's story.

-=-=-=-=-=

My colleague Jennifer Fernandez was in Judge John O. Craig's courtroom today listening in on a hearing on video slot machines. Click here to read my preview from Friday's paper. (And click here for a little bit deeper story from a few weeks back. Also a prior blog post.)

Jennifer reports that Craig granted an injunction that will keep ALE agents from pressing cases against stores that have machines with software from Hest Technologies and International Internet Technologies. But he's also ordered the two companies not to expand their operations into more stores, Jennifer reports.

We'll have a story on the hearing in Saturday's paper.

There's too much going on today. Some of the items:

• The Council of State met this morning. Gov. Mike Easley, Lt. Gov. Perdue and AG Cooper were not in the house. The rest of the crew approved an addition to the Haw River Park.

• Easley did hold a presser on mental health today. He and DHHS Sec. Dempsey Benton gave a long spiel on the fixes they would make. They left the room before reporters were done asking questions. Click here to read about that.

• The hearings about the alleged misdeeds of Rep. Thomas Wright continue at the legislature. Lawyers for Wright attempted to have Rep. Rick Glazier removed as chairman of the proceeding, alleging he was acting in a racist manner. The committee declined and the case rolls on.

Remember video poker? You know, the little machines that used to be convenience stores and the like. They were one of the industries that former House Speaker Jim Black was known for protecting before he got sent up the river.

Background here and here.

Well among the biggest spokesmen for the industry - at least among the folks who I talked to a few times - was Rockingham County's George Trent.

An excerpt:

Instead, legislators should start a system of statewide regulation of the machines, said George Trent, of Reidsville, speaking for the N.C. Amusement Machine Association.

Statewide registration would eliminate the confusing county-by-county regulatory system and make it easy for authorities to identify illegal machines, Trent said.

His Trent Brothers Music Co. owns a number of video-poker machines.

The machines are owned mainly by family-run businesses that provide employment for law-abiding residents, Trent said. They are harmless fun when operated according to the law, he said.

"If we can get rid of the illegal machines, the majority of our problems would be gone," Trent said.

Trent's name is among those picked up by the ALE today in an "illegal slot machine" sweep.

New release: here.

Trent was not only a donor to his industry PAC, but gave political donations to Rep. Nelson Cole and Sen. Phil Berger, among others.

Also worth noting: he has been charged with the big-boy crime of operating a "continuing criminal enterprise," which is a class H felony.

And I'm trying to confirm, but I believe video poker machines would now, under the law, fall into the definition of an illegal slot machine "or device where the user may become entitled to receive any money, credit, allowance, or any thing of value..."

For those who have been paying attention to the news on Mental Health reform (such as this or this), the following from DHHS will set some tongues-a-wagging:

RALEIGH - North Carolina Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Abuse Services (MH/DD/SAS) Director Mike Moseley today announced that he is retiring.

"I've accomplished a great deal in my three decades of public service to the State of North Carolina," Moseley said. "There have been a lot of changes in the state system during my tenure, and I'm proud of what I've done to move things forward for the people who depend on this system for their care."

Moseley has been one of the leaders responsible for shifting the state from a government provider model to a mental health system that relies largely on private health providers.

The release from DHHS notes: "Moseley will leave the Division effective Feb. 29, but he plans to work another 90 days at the department level as part of the transition starting March 3."

For those who don't believe in coincidences, I would note that the N+O is getting ready to roll out a big series on mental health this weekend.

I popped into a meeting of the North Carolina Economic Development Board this morning, attracted by an agenda item on the drought.

The state is in the process of trying to determine the price tag for the drought in North Carolina, said Stephanie McGarrah, assistant secretary of commerce.

"No other state has been able to do that," she said.

That said, there is some economic cost already to the drought, and it is more than just what governments are spending interconnecting water systems or making contingency plans she said.

Farmers, Christmas tree growers, those who make their livelihoods in the landscaping business are already suffering. Basically, all the businesses that rely on stuff growing are in trouble.

"We haven't seen any problems in terms of it affecting recruitment or retention yet," McGarrah said.

Yet.

But think about it. If you're looking at moving your company somewhere, are you going to move to place that potentially could run out of water? What if your company uses water in some of its manufacturing processes? It wouldn't matter what kind of tax breaks the state offered if you couldn't carry out your business or convince your core workforce to move here.

This was actually one (and possibly the only) upside to textile manufacturers leaving Greensboro in droves. The city's water use fell by hundreds of thousands of gallons in the later 1990s and early 2000s because companies weren't drawing on the municipal system as much.

Lots of industries could be affected, McGarrah said. From the motel/hotel folks to anyone in the food processing business to power companies to microchip manufacturers could be affected in some way. All of those industries rely on water in some way. Even those that don't use large amounts but need it to be a certain quality could be affected as municipal water systems draw from lower down in reservoirs than usual.

All of a sudden, I don't feel as bad about my lawn looking scruffy.

There was a letter to the editor in today's edition that basically cheered DHHS for taking a closer look at the state's ongoing mental health reform efforts.

However, the letter (click here to read it) makes one factual assertion that I think is pretty much wrong:

Once Dorothea Dix Hospital closes, there will be no safety net statewide. These committees might conclude that time should be on the side of the patients and their families for a change, not on the side of politics.

If and when Dix closes (DHHS Sec. Dempsey Benton was circumspect when asked at his press conference earlier this month) it will be replaced by the new Central Regional Hospital.

You can argue whether the capacity at that new hospital is adequate. (And that IS a subject of much debate. In fact, the state has already acknowledged the need to keep "overflow" capacity open at its old John Umstead Hospital.) However to say that there will be "no safety net statewide" overstates the case.

Click here for the news release from DHHS on the changes announced today.

Audio coming in a bit. More coming for tomorrow's paper.

Update: DHHS Sec. Dempsey Benton spent a good long while with us scruffy media types this afternoon.

Click here for audio of Benton's prepared remarks.

Click here for audio of Benton's Q+A with the press.

Sorry it's not more parsed, but I've got to go make some calls.

One of those came in from Gov. Easley's office, who said that Easley had planned on being in the room to back up Benton. However, his mother in law passed this week and he has to be in Wilmington today.

DHHS sent word last night that Sec. Dempsey Benton had a "major announcement" today at 2 p.m. regarding mental health.

I'm sitting in that news conference as this entry auto-posts, but according to DHHS staffers the bare bones of what will be announced include:

• * The closing of Dorothea Dix and John Umstead hospitals will be delayed.
• * The opening of the new central mental hospital will also be delayed.
• * The staff that runs the state mental hospitals will be moved from the Division of Mental Health and report directly to Benton.
• * Consultants from local universities and advocacy groups will be brought in to do some work.

For those that are new to the state or haven't googled "North Carolina Mental Health Reform News," there have been stories of problems throughout the state system from local providers to state-run facilities.

Back in December, Gov. Mike Easley was asked what changes he would make to the state's mental health system. He said at the time:

"If you had asked me this same question in March or April of last year, I would have laid out a whole plan for you. But since (DHHS Sec. Dempsey Benton ) has gotten into office, we've had some conversations and I've concluded that the plan I had at that point is probably not the best and I'm letting him work through this and I think we'll get some resolution and have to work with the legislators on it."

It sounds like we're going to get a look at what Benton has in mind.

Although the one I'm looking for doesn't appear to be posted, the State Ethics Commission has posted several ethics opinions on its website. They are broken down into Ethics, Lobbying, and Legislative Ethics Committee Opinions.

On first blush, it's interesting to see what folks have been asking about, including "Use of Legislative Postage and Stationery to Send Communications upon the Occurrence of a Significant Event, Letter to Newly-Registered Voters, and Holiday Greetings" and "International Study Trip & the "Educational Meeting" Gift Ban Exception."

The posted opinions have been scrubbed of identifying information, but I bet you folks out in the blogsphere can take some pretty good swings at who was asking what. Let me know in the comments link below.

Update (12/31/07): We had some server trouble over the weekend (forgot to spray for gremlins) so some comments didn't get posted. One that was left here came from Chris who wrote:

I'd venture a guess that the liaison opinion was for former Rep. Wilma Sherrill who became the "liaison" for UNC-Asheville soon after retiring "for health reasons."

So if you work for government you're a liaison, but if you work for the private or non-profit sector, you're a lobbyist. What a crock.

I suspect is guess is dead on. Any others out there?

From the lede of a story on local mental health agencies scheduled to run today (Sunday):

GREENSBORO -- One worker played the "tripping game" with his mentally ill clients. Another staffer used belts and hangers to smack a troubled teenager. And still another allowed a 16-year-old girl with bipolar disorder to wander through a local park unsupervised.

The girl got into a car with two men and was later raped.

All three incidents occurred at Guilford County group homes for the mentally ill that were founded in the past five years and described in reports by investigators with the state's Division of Health Service Regulations.

They are some of the unforeseen consequences of the state's efforts to remake its mental health safety net, which have relied heavily on newly formed private companies to care for some of the state's most vulnerable citizens.

Click here for the full story.

And you can click here for links to earlier reporting on the mental health system.

I'll be out of the office and out of the state until next week. Until then, your comments are welcome below.

What's my favorite irony about the state ethics commission, which the General Assembly created in 2006?

It has to be the fact that the legislature made the group responsible for making government more open, transparent and accountable is forced to do the majority of its business behind closed doors and without reporting the results.

A story from today's paper says "covered persons" should at least be getting a little bit of guidance before the end of the year.

The commission's executive director, Perry Newson, says they will make public about a dozen opinions by the end of the year, after being asked for advice over 2,000 since the group's inception.

The group, of course, has given out lots more advice than in those dozen cases. But that other advice has either come in the form of phone conversations or informal letters and e-mails -- which are none of your business, according to the state law that created the ethics commission.

Now keep in mind, neither the formal opinions or informal ones tell you whether something is ethical. They simply let you know whether you've run afoul of the state's ethics laws. I suppose there's an argument to be made that if you're doing something and you feel maybe you should run it past the ethics commission in order to keep your hind parts our of jail or from getting fined, the behavior in question might not be all that ethical anyway...but I'm told I'm grouchy on Mondays.

You may note in the story that opinions about legislative activities are sent from the commission over to the legislature's own Joint Ethics Committee, which can accept, modify or reject any of those.

Rep. Rick Glazier called this morning (we missed each other last week) and said his group has plowed through about 15 opinions sent over from the commission. While none have been rejected out of hand, several were modified he said. That probably explains the discrepancy between the dozen or so Newson said he anticipates publishing by the end of the year and the 15 that Glazier said his group has looked at.

So why am I so interested in all this? Other than the fact that government work done behind closed doors aggravates me? One of the opinions getting run through this meat grinder has to do with the legislative black caucus and questions about its foundation.

My guess is that if the caucus and the foundation are found to be in the clear, you'll see more legislators find a charitable zeal.

My soon-to-be-departed colleague Nate DeGraff and I have a pair of stories regarding the state's mental health care safety net in Sunday's paper. The lede from the main bar:

HIGH POINT -- Six years into North Carolina's effort to remake its mental health safety net, the system still struggles to fix the problems that came with the overhaul.

The eventual result may well be the more cost-effective, nimble and comprehensive mental health network envisioned by legislation passed in 2001, providers, advocates and analysts say.

But we're far from that goal.

Today's public mental health system cannot always provide the service a client needs or the quality of care one might expect from an agency dealing with vulnerable people. A critique of the state system recently completed for the N.C. Division of Mental Health found that too much change undertaken too quickly had shifted the focus away from patients, something that even top mental health officials say is a fair criticism.

To read the full stories:

• *Click here for the main bar.

• *Click here for Nate's story on ACT teams, a service for the most severely mentally ill folks who don't have to be in a hospital.

• *Bonus: a related column by Lorraine Ahearn.

Right now, I don't have a lot to add other than to say at least one more package regarding the state's mental health system is in the works. With luck, it will roll out later this month. That story (or stories - these things have a way of changing in the writing of them) will take a harder look at the private providers who do a lot of the care in the revamped mental health care system.

Like the swallows returning to Capistrano or semi-annual migration of New Yorkers to central North Carolina to stare a furniture, certain events just mark a changing of the season. One such mark in the Almanac of modern life was announced today:

RALEIGH - N.C. State Health Director Dr. Leah Devlin today said that the North Carolina State Laboratory of Public Health has confirmed the State's first case of flu this season. The disease was diagnosed in a 12-year-old Buncombe County boy.

Update: So, the DHHS sent out a correction this afternoon, saying they needed to clean up a few "details" in the original release. You kids at home, see if you can play editor and spot the changes!

RALEIGH - N.C. State Health Director Dr. Leah Devlin today said that the North Carolina State Laboratory of Public Health has confirmed the state's first case of flu this season. The disease was diagnosed in a 43-year-old Buncombe County woman.

Click here for the full release and please pass the Vitamin C. (Release updated.)

Left turn, left turn, what now?

Getting a hepatitis shot is standard procedure for travelers to parts of Africa and Asia, but some congressional aides were instructed to get immunized before going to Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord and the racetrack in Talladega, Ala.

Click here for the full story.

For those following the debate over the death penalty and lethal injection, including the latest twist in North Carolina, the Supreme Court of the United States is about to weigh in. From Stateline.org:

Nine minutes after a lethal dose of drugs was shot into his arms, Texas murderer Michael Richard last night (Sept. 25) became the 929th death-row inmate in the United States to be executed by lethal injection since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977.

The three-drug mixture used to stop Richard's breathing and then his heart is the same chemical cocktail the U.S. Supreme Court — just hours before — agreed to scrutinize in a case that challenges the way 37 states put inmates to death.

The case was brought by two Kentucky prisoners, who argue that the state's drug regimen exposes inmates to illegal cruel and unusual punishment. The appeal doesn't seek to throw out lethal injection as a form of capital punishment but seeks changes in how it's administered and reviewed in the courts.

By agreeing to hear arguments, the high court raised hopes among death-penalty opponents that an immediate, nationwide moratorium on use of lethal injections would result — at least until the justices issue an opinion in the case, Baze v. Rees, sometime next year.

Click here to read the whole story. You can read the petition to the court on behalf of the men here.

Obviously, there are ramifications for North Carolina here. One could well imagine the pending decision being used as an argument for continuing what has been a de facto moratorium here in North Carolina, at least until the justices hand down a decision.

From the lede of a story in today's paper:

RALEIGH — The small hologram patch that began showing up on North Carolina driver's licenses in December hardly looks like the first step down the road to perdition, or a multinational union that sacrifices national sovereignty.

But motor vehicle administrators say although North Carolina may be the first in the nation to use what they call a "common security element," the state isn't on the leading edge of anything other than a new way of telling whether a license is legitimate.

That hasn't stopped conservative Internet sites and talk radio from getting riled.

Click here for the full story.

And click here to see a picture of the patch in question. Click here to see the website for ALIPAC, the group worried about this thing.

For those interested in the raw milk story, this news release came my way from the Dept. of Agriculture on Friday:

The N.C. Board of Agriculture today approved a rule requiring anyone who sells unpasteurized milk for pet food to add a food coloring to the milk to give it a charcoal gray color. In addition, the product label would have to carry the statement, Not for Human Consumption."

North Carolina law allows unpasteurized milk to be sold for pet food, but not for human consumption. Food protection officials with the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services say the new coloring and labeling requirements will help keep unpasteurized milk out of the food chain.

The board voted 5-0 to approve the rule. It is scheduled to take effect Nov. 1, pending review by the state Rules Review Commission.

From a letter writer in today's paper:

"Fundamental disagreements" regarding the state and county responsibilities sounds familiar. That is precisely what happened two years ago on the Gulf Coast. Federal, state and local officials pointed at each other while an entire metropolitan area washed away. Our representatives continue to be more concerned with flowcharts than with human suffering.

Leaks are springing today in the levees that stand between mental health patients and the streets of Greensboro.

The writer is commenting on this.

Back during the legislative session I wrote about a bill that would make the sale of raw milk for human consumption legal in the state. An extension of that debate is due to come up Friday. From today's paper:

RALEIGH - Call it mooo-shine.

Raw, unpasteurized milk occupies a dicey niche under North Carolina law. Despite a prohibition on sale for human consumption, enthusiasts work to find regular supplies and regulators work equally hard to make sure it's difficult to come by.

On Friday, the N.C. Board of Agriculture is scheduled to take action aimed at cutting off one part of the state supply chain.

Farmers can legally sell raw milk as "pet milk," for consumption by dogs and other animals. An administrative rule the board is scheduled to adopt would require that this milk be labeled "not for human consumption" and dyed charcoal.

Click here for the full story.

The intent of the rule is to make the milk unappealing to those who would put it on the dinner table rather than in fido's bowl. People have been using the "pet milk" provision to skirt the law.

Interestingly, a bill that would let people enter into contractual "cow shares" arrangements passed the Senate this year. The bill is still eligible for passage and in the House Agriculture Committee. For more from the legislative session:

• Click here for audio of the debate.

• Click here for links to my earlier story and background on the raw milk debate.

For more regarding the illnesses in Georgia attributed to raw milk this summer click here and here.

And for more info on the N.C. Department of Agriculture meeting this Friday, click here. The board is holding its meeting out west to coincide with the annual Mountain State Fair.

From the working lede of a story for tomorrow's paper:

RALEIGH - Some mental health patients find it hard or impossible to get the services they need because government officials and mental health care providers have struggled to keep up with the rapid pace of changes demanded by North Carolina's mental health reform effort, according to a consultants report release Wednesday.

The 91-page document does point to some successes, but is clear that the state needs to move rapidly to fix "gaps" in the system.

Most of its criticism revolves around a central theme: the pace of change focused state and local governments on remaking the bureaucracy while leaving some mental health consumers unable to find care.

"In the rush to complete structural changes, the public partners have lost sight of the effect on consumers," the report says. "(T)here has been insufficient joint effort at resolving consumer access problems."

Click here for the online version of the story.

You can click here to read the whole consultant's report. (Large MS Word Document)

I called the Guilford Center late Wednesday afternoon and officials there have not had a chance to read through it. I'm supposed to catch up with them tomorrow. In fact, most of the people I spoke to Wednesday were still plowing through the 91 page document.

If you give it a read through, what are your questions? If you're involved in the mental health care system either as a provider or patient or in government, is this a fair assessment of where things stand?

I wrote earlier this year about UNC Chancellor James Moeser's use of state aircraft. Recently, the Independent Weekly here in Raleigh wrote about the same thing:

UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser travels a lot for his job: to New York City and Washington, D.C., to meet with potential donors, to Nebraska to watch the Tar Heels play in the College World Series, to professional meetings throughout the state and sometimes across the country, among many other places.

In the 24 months between June 2005 and June 2007, Moeser took to the air for 48 business trips, an average of two a month, at a cost of more than $77,000 in taxpayer money, according to public records obtained by the Independent. Private dollars from UNC's development fund and other sources, such as groups that invited him as their guest, picked up additional costs.

It goes on.

The North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law is once again getting its lawsuit on:

Raleigh, N.C. - Dean Webster, Executive Director of the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law (NCICL), announced today that NCICL, representing three individual plaintiffs from North Carolina, has filed a legal challenge to the North Carolina legislation which granted for Google Inc. an exemption from certain retail sales and use taxes relating to Google's construction and operation of an internet data center in Lenoir, North Carolina. In addition to the Google legislation, NCICL is also challenging the constitutionality of the state's potentially $4.8 million Job Development Investment Grant to Google. Google Inc. announced its decision to locate in North Carolina in January 2007, after over a year of secret negotiations with state and local officials.

Click here for the full release.

I took a short trip out to the state fair grounds Wednesday to hear the Board of Agriculture
talk about new rules for euthanizing dogs and cats. From my story:

RALEIGH - It's not much of a choice really: lethal injection or the gas chamber.

Those would be the two ways most of the 225,000 cats and dogs who meet their end in North Carolina animal shelters would be dispatched under new rules under consideration by the State Board of Agriculture.

Click here for the full story.

Of course, the reason the rules are such a big deal is that animal shelters in the state have to put about 225,000 unwanted cats and dogs to death every year, according to Ag Dept. stats. That's a fairly horrific total.

Some of those who came out to comment Wednesday said the state really needs to work on reducing the pet over-population problem rather than concentrating on the best method of disposal. And you probably wouldn't get much argument for the board. But a 2005 law compelled the board to draft the rules but didn't give a whole lot of direction when it came to spay-neuter programs and that sort of thing.

Click here to read the department's FAQ on the rules and click here to read the new rules (PDF) for yourself.

The comment period is open through the end of August, so if you want to put in your two cents, there is still time. From the FAQ page:

Send comments to David McLeod, N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, 1001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1001 or by e-mail to david.mcleod@ncmail.net.

Word is that Greensboro-based Red Oak Brewery was pitching is legislative agenda down at the
N.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission

For those who spend time driving on I-40/85 into the city, Red Oak is building the shiny new brewery out near the old Konica plant.

They've also been building a case for a bill that would let them sell up to 60,000 barrels of beer without going through the state's three tier system. Currently, Red Oak and other small brewers can only sell up to 25,000 barrels without going through a distributor.

That bill has had trouble getting traction here at the General Assembly. Part of that has to do with the bill's sponsors having other fish to fry. But there's good reason to think that part of it just might have something to do with pushback from these guys and these guys.

A staff attorney for the ABC Commission confirmed that Red Oak put in an appearance today but said in a voice mail that the commission took no action.

Reminder for those of you interested in the Jordan Lake Rules (Background here and here) there will be a public hearing tonight:

Date: July 12, 2007 Time: 6:30 p.m. Location: Century Hall at Century Center, 100 N. Greensboro Street, Carrboro, NC 27510

Sierra Club of NC e-mailed a statement on the new rules (they like 'em, but have a suggestion or two) out on Wednesday. Read it after the jump.

The state auditor's office says UNCG played favorites when it hired a contractor for an energy savings project. In the included response, UNCG officials say the state auditor's office is mistaken.

Click here to read both accusation and reply.

My colleague (and the paper's higher education reporter) Lanita Withers is looking into it.

The proposed rules designed to clean up Jordan Lake - and which Greensboro and other local governments find objectionable - are out.

Click here to link to the N.C. Register home page. The rules in question are in the June 15, 2007 edition.

Or you can click here for a 49-page Word file that I cut and pasted into.

And if you don't know what all the fuss is about, Click here for background.

Update: I forgot to mention, there are two public hearing dates:

Public Hearing:
Date: July 12, 2007
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Location: Century Hall at Century Center, 100 N. Greensboro Street, Carrboro, NC 27510

Public Hearing:
Date: July 17, 2007
Time: 1:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
Location: Koury Business Center at Elon University, 271 North Williamson Avenue, Elon, NC 27244

A long time ago, I had requested a list of all the stocks held in North Carolina's retirement fund. I had a couple ideas for stories that I wanted to get around to doing. Well, it took a while (not complaining, it was a lot of information) for the state Treasurer's office to make with the information.

And I've now got a couple of stories on my plate eating up huge chunks of time (not necessarily overly interesting stories, mind you, just time consuming) so I probably won't be able to get back to the ideas re: the pension funds for a while.

But you know me, I can't stand having a report burning a hole in my C: drive and not share it with the world.

So click here for the report of stocks and other assets held in trust for the N.C. Public Employees retirement program, as of June 30, 2006. It's an interesting mix of things if nothing else.

There's some European, South African and Canadian currency, Wal*Mart and Tyco stock, shares of Dow Jones and Co. (wonder how the Treasurer feels about a Rupert Murdoch takeover?), Fair Isaac Corp (which does credit ratings) and many others - to the tune of 188 single-spaced pages.

If you're inclined to tiptoe through these tulips, the PDF is about 2.5 megs. Dive in and let me know what you find interesting.

Update:(Friday, 6/15) Sara Lang, a spokeswoman with Treasurer Moore's office, called last night to offer a couple bits of insight on this post.

First off, the Treasurer rarely picks individual stocks like Google or Dell.

"In a fund of this size, that's not how it works," Lang said. Instead, the state is mostly invested in different kinds of index funds.

That's why you'll see the same stock show up multiple times on the list.

Because the list is from 2006, some stocks aren't in there any more. For example, the state has used a national nonprofit's list of payday lenders to get all of the paydays out of the fund. She's not sure about sub-prime mortgage lenders though. (The sub-primes took a beating on Wallstreet earlier this year, which is why I was interested in them.)

And because the state invests through index funds, its hard to expunge certain categories of stocks. You either have to get the fund changed or get rid of it entirely.

"The treasurer can converse with managers and tell them about what they cannot hold," Lang said.

The fund, by the way, is $75 billion (with a B).

I'm still interested in what you find interesting. Drop a line via e-mail or in the comments section.

My colleague Mark Schreiner at the Wilmington paper has more.

-=-=-=-=-=-=

The State Board of Elections, as of 6 p.m. tonight, has posted subpoenas on six folks to testify in their investigation of Rep. Thomas Wright. Click (here for background.) Hearings are scheduled to begin Tuesday.

Among those called:

• Thomas Wright, the representative himself.
• Daryle (or Darryl) Parker, who looks to have been Wright's campaign treasurer at one point in time.
• Helyn Loftin, 117 Avant Drive, Wilmington.
• James Loftin, 117 Avant Drive, Wilmington.
• Wayne Loftin, 521 Arlie Road, Wilmington.
• Karen Davis-Parker, who is only identified on the subpoena as being of Wilmington.

Not knowing Wilmington politics real well, I do not know who most of these folks are. If you do, feel free to use the comment link below.

I would expect there to be more subpoenas made public between now and the hearings, given that it doesn't look like anyone who might be related to Mary McAllister, who is also a subject of inquiry, is on the list yet. (Subpoenas only become public after they've been served.)

And you thought you paid too much for office supplies:

State Auditor Leslie Merritt released a performance audit of the Purchase and Contract Division (P&C) of the Department of Administration today. The audit found that P&C has not required permanent, corrective action for known pricing errors and product availability issues caused by its office supplies vendor, Office Depot. Effective February 1, 2006, P&C contracted with Office Depot as the sole statewide vendor for office supplies for State government agencies. As a result of this audit, Office Depot identified and credited State agencies for overcharges of $40,887.

Click here for the full audit.

From scheduled to run in Monday's paper:

RALEIGH - House budget writers want to make it more expensive for state officials to travel to athletic events on state aircraft, a provision apparently aimed at UNC-Chapel Hill's use of two state airplanes.

The Commerce Department owns two planes based in Raleigh...

[snip]

UNC-CH Chancellor James Moeser and other high-ranking officials also used the plane to travel to sports events 15 times in 2006, records obtained by the legislature's fiscal research division show.

For example, an entry on March 17 reads "Chancellor attending NCAA Basketball Championships."

Use of the state aircraft is "a time-management issue," a university spokesman said.

Click here to read the full story.

More after the jump.

Rockingham County reporter Gerald Witt gave me a heads up about this item on the Rockingham County Commissioners agenda:

"Consider adoption of Resolution - Impact of Jordan Lake Rules"

Click here for background. No, it doesn't sound like the commissioners are terribly enamored of the new rules. The resolution would ask environmental regulators to reconsider, Gerald says.

From a news release:

North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Carmen Hooker Odom today announced that she will become President of the Milbank Memorial Fund. The Fund is a New-York based foundation that conducts non-partisan analysis, study and research on significant issues in health policy.

She's staying on through the legislative session and isn't scheduled to start her new job until October.

Click here for the full release.

You ever have that feeling that we're not all that organized when the state throws money at new businesses? You are not alone.

From an audit issued by the State Auditor today:

"The Department of Commerce does not function as the lead agency for economic development activities in the State. The Department and the regional commissions/partnerships independently set their agendas to market the State on their regions."

Click here for the full audit, which includes responses from the Commerce Department.

So who is the lead dog. According to the audit:

"The Governor plays a key role in determining the economic plan for North Carolina. However, results from surveys of North Carolina's economic development players suggest that the Governor's visibility and leadership could be enhanced by more involvement with the local economic development community."

Or, indeed, being seen in public from time to time.

The Commerce Department's response?

"The Department of Commerce is the lead agency for economic development in North Carolina. However, the economic development system, as it has evolved, is a fragmented one.

As the audit correctly notes, the system consists of independent local economic development councils and chambers representing cities and counties, numerous niche-focused nonprofits, allied business like public utilities and banks, independent state agencies like the UNC and Community College Systems, and the seven regional partnerships."

From the lede of a story I wrote for today's (Sunday's) Paper:

RALEIGH - The Haw River sweeps pollution from sewage plants and rainwater runoff in the Triad downstream to Jordan Lake near Raleigh. Critics say hundreds of millions in tax dollars will soon follow in an effort to clean the 26-year-old reservoir.

Environmental groups say the cost of proposed state regulations - about $70 million just to make called-for upgrades to Greensboro's sewage treatment plants - are worth it to restore the lake, a key drinking water supply, recreation area and home to wildlife.

Communities in Guilford, Rockingham, Alamance and Caswell counties are upstream from the lake, which regulators say is impaired by overdoses of nitrogen and phosphorus.

Click here to link to the full story.

I should acknowledge up front that while I have a fairly good layman's understanding of the science here, I'm by no means qualified to referee the fight and say which side has god or the numbers supporting their cause.

But I do know what it looks like when boys and girls start choosing up sides for a political street fight. And friends, if this were West Side Story, the Jets and Sharks would be snapping away right about now.

Some linkage to other resources on this topic:

• The Piedmont Triad Council of Governments doesn't seem to be a fan of the rules, but has a lot of information on their site.

• The Haw River Assembly is an environmental group who think the rules are needed.

• The state parks and rec division has lots of info on Jordan Lake, including a brief history.

• The Army Corps of Engineers has a big ol' picture of the dam on their site. More from the corps.

• I guess it shouldn't surprise me (but it did) that there's a Wikipedia page on the lake.

• The N.C. Division of Water Quality has lots of info on Jordan Lake, but you sort of have to hunt for it on their site. I'd look here for water quality data and here for some good info on nonpoint source pollution.

• The N.C. Conservation Network also has some Jordan Lake information.
  

As always, the comment lines are open.

Last week's big freeze didn't do any farmer any favors. And if you were one of the farmers who, like those mentioned in Lex's story, didn't have irrigation and lost your crop well, bad is bad.

But relative to other parts of the state Guilford and Rockingham counties were bright spots on the crop report, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Of the $112 million in estimated damage reported statewide, Guilford had just over $79,000 and Rockingham about $150,000. (Stokes County, according to the Ag folks, was one of the few counties that have reported no damage so far.)

The reason the Triad may have escaped relatively unscathed is a matter of crop choice, says Brian Long, a spokesman for the Ag Department.

Down in the Sandhills area, the peach crop got blasted. Out west, it was the Apple trees that were done in. And anyone growing grapes pretty much saw their crop get ravaged.

While the Triad has its share of some of those fruit crops, our farmers are still more into tobacco, soy beans and such, crops that aren't out yet.

"The Triad Region fared far better than most," Long said.

Still, that's small consolation to someone's whose blueberry patch won't produce enough "to make a cobbler out of them."

Still, expect to see state officials moving as fast as their farm-vote-loving-selves can move to get help to those affected.

If I had a big interest in coastal issues, this release from the state auditor's office would have my attention:

While the report found that the State acquired the Gallant’s Channel property well below its current fair market value, it also found that State Departments of Agriculture and Cultural Resources violated State regulations, and that the State Property Office failed to take title to Gallant’s Channel after the State provided funds for its purchase in 1997 and 1998. In addition, the State Property Office failed to inform the Council of State in 2006 of $190,000 in liens attached to the property.

“My biggest concerns are whether the State has failed to take title on other properties purchased with taxpayers’ money and who might be using those properties as collateral for new loans,” said State Auditor Leslie Merritt. “I think the State Property Office needs to go back and research all property acquisitions to resolve any unknown ownership issues, in addition to correcting the process moving forward,” added Merritt.

Click here for the full report.

I haven't had time to eyeball this thoroughly, but this latest audit report regarding the DMV doesn't look real good:

The Office of the State Auditor released a strategic review of the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles today. The purpose of this review was to identify any invalid social security numbers (SSNs) used to acquire North Carolina Drivers’ Licenses. This review found that out of the 8.1 million SSNs provided to DMV, just under 27,000 were invalid. This number does not include the 1.7 million driver’s licenses in the DMV database that do not contain SSNs.

Click here for the report itself.

My friend and colleague Taft Wireback has done some reporting along these lines in the past. (More here.)

So a couple weeks ago, Forbes took aim at State Treasurer Richard Moore, claiming he’s not doing a good job managing the state’s pension fund and oh-by-the-way takes campaign contributions from the folks he does business with.

For local background on this, let me recommend the Charlotte Observer’s Richard Moore page.

Then, this week, the Wall Street Journal says North Carolina has one of the best managed pension funds. From a Moore press release:

The fund, managed by State Treasurer Richard Moore, is one of only five in the nation with a positive funding ratio – the necessary resources to cover promised benefits. North Carolina’s pension fund has a funding ratio of 106.5 percent, compared to a national average of 81.8 percent. Since 2000, the national average has dropped from just over 100 percent to around 82 percent, while North Carolina has retained its strong funding status.

Will the real Richard Moore please stand up?

Well, in fact, Moore did do a presentation with us scruffy media types today and basically said that the Forbes story was a load-of-you-know-what and did his best to prove it. Notes, slides and audio from the news conference:

• Click here for the slides from Moore’s presentation. (PDF)
• I’m not going to try to upload audio of Moore’s whole presention, but click here to get his overview and a taste of the first few minutes.
• So . . . did Forbes get it wrong? Moore’s answer: “Absolutely. . . In my opinion, Forbes had an axe to grind.” Click here for audio of that answer. (2 minutes)
• So what about limiting campaign donations to the state treasurer’s office, as proposed by a House committee? “I would be open to it, but I would want it to be more inclusive. I see absolutely no reason for singling this office out.” Click here for audio of that answer. (2 minutes)
• Okay, your investments seem to doing well enough. But one could say you’ve expanded the number of fund managers, at the same time expanding the number of folks who give to your campaign. “My response to that is $4.2 billion.” Click here to hear that question asked and answered.
• So explain the fact that a lot of your donors are folks you do business with. Click here to hear that question asked and answered. “You campaign contributors are people you are in contact with in many instances . . . I think all politicians raise money from the environment that they’re in.”
• So, why doesn’t North Carolina’s annual report on its pensions system have more detail? “We simply have not had the resources to do it?” Click here to hear that question asked and answered.
• “We drive a very hard bargain on our fees.” Click here to hear more about that.

Update: Gov. Mike Easley has been reading to grade-school kids today and stopped to visit a class in Greensboro. Our education reporter, Morgan Josey, got a chance to ask him a few questions, including one about the Moore. She reported that Easley said he had heard about the stories but not read any of them.

“I don’t have enough information to see whether there’s any kid of a conflict,” Easley said.

Following up on yesterday’s post re: Richard Moore:

• Laura updates her dealings with the Treasurer’s office.

• Charlotte’s David Ingram includes the “pen-and-pad” scuffle in his follow-up story today.

So, just to set the stage: A bunch of media types are going to show up at Moore’s 11 a.m. news conference today. From those I’ve talked to, they plan to largely ignore the instruction to leave cameras, recorders and what not behind. So we wind up with one of two things happening:

• The treasurer’s office gives up on all this, everyone gets invited in and we all have a lovely time hearing about the state’s investments.
• The treasurer’s office sticks to its guns, throws people out, and the story becomes one about how he won’t deal with the media.

Of course, maybe this is all some Machiavellian plan to get lots of media really interested in this shindig and show up on a Friday.

N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper held a press conference this morning laying out ways in which he thinks the General Assembly should crack down on child predators. (Press releases here; and a more detailed folio here.)

I don’t think anyone will argue with the intent of those bills and if I had to handicap them, I’d say the package in part or full will probably have a relatively easy time getting through the General Assembly.

A couple notes:

• Cooper wants MySpace and other similar services to “get parents’ permission before children can join.” He also calls for parents to have greater control/oversight over what their children posts. As a parent who still has a few years to go before my oldest starts posting anything to the Internet, I appreciate the intent, but I wonder about the enforceability.

• Cooper also called for making lying to an SBI agent a felony. How he pitched it Monday:

  Making lying to an SBI Agent a felony would provide a critical incentive for sex offenders to tell investigators where the child is so that the SBI can rescue the child and prevent further exploitation.

  SBI agents know witnesses withhold information or lie outright. When an FBI agent is present, a dishonest witness can be charged with a crime, since federal law makes it a felony to lie to federal agents.

  This is not the first time that Cooper has called for the General Assembly to grant SBI agents that power. He did it last year under the banner of fighting public corruption. It was part of a package of legislation he sent to the General Assembly during the height of the furor surrounding then-House Speaker Jim Black.

Welcome to those of you finding your way here after reading this story on the Polo.com incentives.

A couple notes:

• Once the deal is done with an incentives package, the Commerce Department and other agencies have to make with the records, which is a relatively recent addition to the state’s open records laws. Incentives are an area where the public’s right to know about how their government chooses to spend tax dollars is in conflict with the objectives of the business and government agencies. Having the records available after the fact doesn’t balance out this equation in my mind – it doesn’t, for example, let taxpayers who oppose a particular deal get organized far enough in a advance to stop it – but it does give folks a window into the workings of the incentives process.
• The Commerce Department is one of the few agencies I’ve been to where officials won’t let you into the office area. This is not because they think you’re dangerous, but because you might hear some over-enthusiastic employee espousing about some pending deal that’s not ready for daylight…at least that’s what they told me. I’m betting they just don’t want anyone around all those gold shovels they use for groundbreakings.
• The folks at Polo.com didn’t respond in any meaningful way for this story. Heck, once you get $4.4 million in taxpayer money, there’s really no reason to explain why or how you made your decisions is there?

As always, the comments link is open.

From the governor’s office today:

Gov. Mike Easley today announced a series of proposals that will make neighborhoods near hazardous waste storage facilities safer and improve the ability of state and community emergency workers to effectively respond in the event of an emergency. The proposals are from the Governor’s Hazardous Materials Task Force he formed after the Oct. 5 fire at the EQ storage site in Apex.

Click here for the full release.

Update(12/8):Click here for Friday's story on this.

We’ll have more on this in Friday’s paper. But the headline is not wrong: the state says it has a $23.8 billion liability for its health plan that is, at this point, unfunded.

Part One: What does this mean

The North Carolina State Health Plan is the branch of state government that provides health insurance for teachers, other public workers and retirees.

Not too long ago, the Government Accounting Standards Board told states that they would have to account for their pending health care liabilities, such as the health plan.

This came as quite the shock to the system, since no one had ever figured out exactly how much the benefits that we promised all those public workers and retirees would cost.

The numbers are in, and I'll upload the report as soon as I can.

Update:

• Press release here.
  
• Report here.

So what does a $23.8 billioin unfunded liability mean? The $23.8 billion figure is a cost calculate out over a matter of decades. No one expects that taxpayers would have to set all that money aside in a matter of one year.

So why is this important? A few reasons:

• Bond rating agencies will look at that liability and may start looking for states to start setting some money aside to meet the anticipated demand. That will be one more strain on a state budget that was looking kind of tight next year anyway.
  
• Seeing the number in black and white might cause lawmakers to re-evaluate how generous we are to state workers. That in turn would make state workers grumpy and prompt a show down at the General Assembly.
  
• All governments are going to deal with this. Look for Greensboro, Guilford County and your home town to be calculating this number and then struggling with what it all means.

This is something that government leaders are first going to struggle to understand, and then struggle to figure out exactly what they should do about it.

Update: I’ve chatted with a few of the honorables since posting this.

Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, says there are a number of possibilities that have been discussed. Among those, she said, has been asking state employees to contribute some to the health plan, which they don’t do now.

According to the actuary’s report, the state would need to play about $849 million a year to make up the ground that has been lost. Hagan say there’s no way the state would do that much, but it might start setting aside more money to take care of some of the future payments.

And, she said, the state needs to more vigorously pursue a wellness plan for workers. The logic here is that healthier workers will mean fewer health care costs in the future.

“We need to have better nutrition, we need to have better exercise, we need to make our state employees healthier.”

Sen. Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, was also of the opinion that the state needed to set aside more money. He also said the state may consider shifting to a health savings account-type scheme, such as the one pushed by the Locke Foundation.

Berger said that this is a case where the General Assembly is planning short term when it makes its budget deals but should be looking further down the fiscal road.

“A lot of times, the fiscal horizon we’re looking at is two or three years,” he said. “There’s not a practice a looking at something asking what this does to the next generation and we need to start doing that.”

Part two, after the jump.

The N.C. Wildlife Resource Commission essentially took a non-position today on allowing hunting on Sundays. (Click for story.)

Now, I did a fair bit of target shooting and a little fishing when I was younger, but never got much into the hunting side of the sport so I don’t really have a good gauge on all this. Is Sunday hunting really all that in demand? And are the downsides really that dire?

E-mail me at mbinker@news-record.com or comment via the link below.

It is the Veterans Day holiday today, and downtown Raleigh is quiet…too quiet… with state offices closed in observance.

Click here for some history of the holiday.

And Click here for this year’s presidential proclamation.

The Institute for Constitutional Law, a conservative-leaning legal nonprofit, is suing to stop Amendment One from becoming part of the state’s constitution.

What’s Amendment One?

Amendment One was the title of a constitutional amendment put to voters in 2004 that would allow cities and counties to use what’s broadly known as Tax Increment Financing. I wrote in a 2004 story:

Currently, cities and counties must ask voters' permission before issuing bonds repaid by property tax dollars. Amendment One, so named because it is the first of three constitutional amendments on the ballot, would allow government to bypass voter approval in some of those cases.

Specifically, it would allow local governments to designate certain areas as particularly in need of redevelopment help. A business looking to relocate or expand in that area could get government help with everything from clearing environmental problems to repaving streets. To pay for those improvements, governments could issue bonds without taxpayer approval.

Ideally, the value of the property in question will go up, meaning the taxes charged on that property will go up. The increase in taxes collected would then be used to repay the bonds.

Proponents argue that there are sufficient safeguards in place to keep local governments from overspending and that cities and counties have this ability in 48 other states.

But detractors caution that if the government-funded projects fail, taxpayers will be stuck paying the debts, a line that draws objections from advocates.

It was a hard fought campaign and groups that backed the idea, like the N.C. Association of Realtors and Blue Cross Blue Shield, dumped something to the tune of $1.6 million into the effort. That money produced widely broadcast commericials that basically said voting for Amendemnet One would produce more jobs. Although there was an opposition movement, it didn't have the same kind of backing.

The amendment passed.

The Institute is alleging that the way lawmakers went about putting Amendment One on the ballot violated the state and federal constitutions. Specifically, the suit will allege:

the Text of Explanations adopted by the State to summarize the amendment was misleading and confusing, and that neither the ballot question nor the Text of Explanations clearly informed voters that Amendment One, if passed, would abolish their constitutional right to vote on certain types of local bond issues. The complaint further alleges that the submission of Amendment One to the voters violates the Voting Rights Act in that the State did not properly preclear the proposed amendment and resulting changes to voting procedure with the Attorney General as required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I don't know whether the legal arguments will hold up, but it should be an interesting ride.

Neither Greensboro nor Guilford County has taken their new Amendment One powers for a spin. However, at least one North Carolina city (Kannapolis) is making noise like it plans to issue bonds under the Amendment’s authority.

More to come.

The state fair begins today. If you go, check out the local kids showing off their cows, goats and other critters.

Yes, I’m serious with that header and I’ll explain in a moment.

I’ve been spending the day reporting a story to coincide with the opening of the N.C. State Fair on Friday.

My colleague Taft Wireback will be writing about this audit report (PDF warning) for tomorrow’s paper. The intro from the report:

The Office of the State Auditor received a number of allegations concerning a State of North Carolina term contract for tire retreading. The tire retreading contract was written and administered by the North Carolina Department of Administration–Division of Purchase and Contract. The allegations primarily concerned the contractor, White’s Tire Service, Inc., (the Contractor), and the procurement of retread tires for local school districts, which are referred to as Local Education Authorities (LEAs). Allegedly, the contractor violated provisions of the contract regarding charges for repairs, tire casing identification, and price adjustments.

On a quick read through, the report seems to say that there are some things that need to be changed with how this contract works.

Click here for one of Taft’s prior stories on the topic.

Gov. Easley on Tropical Storm Ernesto this morning:

"North Carolina was prepared and it appears that the state has been spared any large-scale damage," said Easley.

However, do look out for and stay out of streams that are above normal, flooded roadways and the like. In other words, try to avoid any sentence/action that begins with the phrase "Hold my beer and watch this..."

More from an Easley news release:

Those traveling on roads in the eastern part of the state need to be particularly cautious. A portion of U.S. 70 near Goldsboro, a major route for weekend travelers headed to North Carolina’s beaches, has been closed due to the flooding. The section of U.S. 70, between N.C. 581 and U.S. 117 Bypass, was closed because of a pond dam breach, according to the state Department of Transportation. The eastbound lanes will be closed and that traffic will be shifted to N.C. 581.

While there are isolated roads closed in some low-lying areas of the eastern part of the state, all interstate highways are open. Maintenance crews are working to clear debris that is blocking roads.

Click here to read the whole release.

Greetings to those of you arriving to chew the fat about this story, which says – to no one’s surprise – that we are a state and nation of over-weight folks.

Click here to link to North Carolina’s program.

Now let’s all go take a walk or something.

Local office supply stores, including at least on in Greensboro, will be happy about this:

RALEIGH – After a thorough review of the evidence, Britt Cobb, Secretary of the Department of Administration, today rejected the recommendations of the administrative law judge and cited an ambiguity regarding the E-Procurement terms in the Request for Proposals to procure office supplies for state agencies. As such, he will terminate the current contract and solicit bids for a new one.

More after the jump.

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

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

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

Click here for today's Inside Scoop column, which has a bunch of state news in it, including House Speaker Jim Black heading to town later this month.

As promised in an earlier post, it’s time to talk about strip clubs, so let’s not dance around the issue:

You may remember Joe Sinsheimer, who is on a mission to drive House Speaker Jim Black out of office. It hasn’t worked so far, but Sinsheimer seems undaunted in his quest to find stuff in Black’s campaign finance reports that folks might find unsavory.

Click here to see his latest effort, sent around Jan. 10, (or click here for a word file if you're reading this long after this posts publication date, since his releases aren’t indexed). It reads in part:

I last wrote about the idea of holding a special session to debate lowering the recent 2.8-cent jump in the gas tax here and here.

Others weigh in here, here, here and here.

My latest reading of the landscape here is that North Carolinians should (Eds note: 8p.m., I thought that I had fixed this ages ago but apparently it didn't take. So I'm fixing it again.) not expect to see the honorables trucking back to town any time soon. If for no other reason, there aren’t enough Democrats in the Senate willing to put their name to a call for a special session.

Plus, the latest 25-cent jump at the gas pump seems to have drowned out the tax increase. I guess it’s trendy to be mad at the oil companies over fuel prices again rather than the government.

That's not to say there isn't some entertainment to be had out of this affair.

While my slacker behind has been writing about pretty flowers, my colleague Taft Wireback has been committing some real journalism. From a report he published last Friday:

School districts in parts of North Carolina are struggling with buses from High Point-based Thomas Built Buses that have such weak heating systems they leave students and drivers shivering whenever the weather turns cold.

Click here for that story.

Apparently, the state has taken notice. From today’s paper:

State officials expect to decide soon whether Thomas Built Buses should pay to improve ineffective heaters in hundreds of buses the High Point company made for school districts across the state.

Officials in the state Division of Purchase and Contract plan to meet with their counterparts in the Department of Public Instruction to discuss a solution, said Ralph Edelberg of the state contract office.

Click here for that story.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I want to be Taft when I grow up.

I have a blog backlog to get to – one entry which will even use the phrase "strip club" – caused in part by working an editing shift Friday night. Also contributing was one of those stories that I started out thinking, "Hey, this will be a cute little quick-hit and take no time at all." I should know by now, whenever that thought crosses my mind, I'm sunk.

At any rate: go read about the pretty sunflowers and what the state is doing to preserve them.

I'm going to dose up on coffee and will be right back to share the latest doings here in Cap City.

There should be a short story in tomorrow's (Wednesday's) paper that is pegged to N.C. Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Meek urging local boards of elections to go with optical scan equipment. I need to give a tip o' the hat to the person who originally e-mailed me the letter, but don't know if that person necessarily wants the recognition.

I have no idea whether others have reported this - the letter is dated Dec. 8 - but I hadn't seen it until last week. Meek's letter is interesting to me because you don't see a whole lot of other high profile political types weighing on this around here.

See a PDF of the letter by clicking here.

Meek said that issues surrounding voting machines were by far the issue upon which rank-and-file constituents contacted him the most since he took office in the Spring.

-----

Cap beat is taking an end-of-year break but will be back on Friday. In the mean time, lottery watchers should keep an eye out for stories out of Wednesday's N.C. Lottery Commission meeting. The commission had cancelled the remainder of its meetings for the year, so it will be interesting to see what they felt the need to teleconference about.

See y'all back here on Dec. 30.

Voting machine maker Diebold has withdrawn its bid to sell voting machine in North Carolina. This letter from Charles Owen, division counsel for the company, outlines why. This paragraph essentially sums it up:

On December 1, 2005, the SBE publicly announced that every vendor certified faced issues with respect to the escrow of third-party software. At that time, the SBE proposed a solution to the escrow requirements for third-party software. However, after further analysis, we believe the proposed solution is inconsistent with state law. Moreover, the proposed solution fails to address the requirements imposed on vendors to identify all programmers responsible for creating the third party software to be placed in escrow.

If that doesn't make sense to you, click here for background.

Why do you care? Well, Diebold's withdrawal leaves ES&S as the last voting machine vendor standing in North Carolina. Earlier this year, election officials were saying they thought any one vendor could handle about half the state's business. If any one company tried to handle more than 3/4 of the counties in North Carolina, they'd probably be stretching their resources too thin, the thinking went.

ES&S now has to handle every county - all 100 - in North Carolina. As of this writing I haven't talked to anyone at ES&S who can give me a good idea of what they're capabilities are or what they're plans might be.

Update: (6:25 p.m.) I just got this e-mailed to me from a ES&S company spokeswoman:

We have a long history of helping election officials conduct statewide elections. And we are certainly looking forward to helping North Carolina in 2006. Given that this development just happened, we are currently reviewing the situation and we will be working with the state and local election officials to determine exactly what is needed. Because of our industry leadership and longstanding relationships with many North Carolina counties, we are confident we can provide safe, accurate, and reliable voting systems to North Carolina voters and ensure they comply with the Help America Vote Act.

Keith Long, a contractor working for the state on deploying new voting machines, said he's unsure what the impact of all this will be until state officials talk more with ES&S.

"We probably won't have any meaningful discussions until Tuesday," he said, meaning Dec. 27.

There will be a story in Friday's paper about all this. Now for more background material:

Along with his letter, Owen sent this e-mail to N.C. Election Director Garry Bartlett:

Good afternoon, my name is Chuck Owen, and I am the Division Counsel for Diebold Election Systems, Inc. ("DESI"). Attached to this e-mail you will find a letter in a PDF format for your reference. The substance of the attached letter is to advise you that DESI cannot comply with Session Law 2005-323 as currently drafted, and moving forward to a formal contract would place DESI in a position of violating State law. Therefore, DESI will be unable t o move forward in this procurement process, and we want to advise you of this fact sooner than later. DESI does however want to work with the State Board of Elections for the State of North Carolina in getting the current Session Law revised, so that all vendors will be able to comply with the State Election Law. Furthermore, DESI desires to continue to provide support to DESI's loyal customers in the State of North Carolina; however, until the Session Law is revised DESI will not be able to provide such support to its customers. The foregoing is more specifically addressed in the attached letter.

Please do note hesitate to contact me should you have any questions with regard to the attached letter.

Cordially,
Chuck Owen

As a result of all that, the state board sent this message to counties today:

The State Board felt it was important that you received the information below as soon as possible.

The effect of the following message is that Diebold has withdrawn from the RFP process for the state of North Carolina. You are reminded that the State Board meeting on December 1st, 2005 decertified all equipment in use within the state. This means that equipment currently being sold and/or serviced by Diebold no longer meets certification requirements and cannot be used.

If you need to contact us, please remember that the State Board office will be observing the Christmas holidays of Dec. 23rd and 26th.

I may have more to say on this later. For now, have a happy whatever it is you're celebrating this time of year.

A couple quick updates re: voting machines:

• Here's my quick and dirty story from today's paper on yesterday's court ruling that threw out a lawsuit challenging how North Carolina certified companies to sell voting equipment here. There's more I could report on the topic, but other stories that need to get filed for this weekend have to take priority for the moment.
• Why do we keep writing all this stuff about voting machines? I mean aside from last year's problems in Carteret County? Because of things like this.

For more voting machine posts: click here.

For those of you following the disagreement over whether the state properly certified voting machine vendors:

The judge in the case threw it out today, finding that the state Board of Elections had complied with the law when it certified Diebold and ES&S to sell voting equipment in the state.

More on this in tomorrow's paper.

I got copied on this letter (MSWORD Doc) from the Warren County GOP this morning. It reads in part:

The Warren County Republican Party respectfully asks that no taxpayer money be appropriated for the purchase of electronic voting machines from Diebold, or any other provider, until such time as all questions regarding the certification process and the relationship between Chairman Leake and Diebold's representatives have been satisfactorily answered.

I know squat about local politics up in Warren County, but this is interesting. I haven't heard of any other party organizations getting involved in this debate.

The reference to Leake and Diebold can apparently be traced back this article, which says that Leake and Diebold lobbyist Steve Metcalf have a long-standing friendship. I can vouch for none of the information in that story except to say that Leake's name does show up on a 1998 finance report for a Metcalf-run political committee.

For prior coverage: click here.

Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens got a crash course in voting machine laws and computer science Wednesday afternoon as he tried to sort out whether the state Board of Elections examined the state's new crop of voting machines as carefully as the state legislature wanted.

His education will continue next week. Stephens wasn't prepared to make a ruling Wednesday but sounds like he wants to come to some sort of decision before Dec. 23, which is the date voting machine companies given the "OK" by the state can start selling their wares to counties.

By way of background: The state certified two voting machine makers - Diebold and ES&S - as meeting all the requirements laid down by federal and state laws.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, on behalf of Winston-Salem based advocate Joyce McCloy, sued, saying that the state did not go about that certification process correctly.

Hence Wednesday's hearing. Adding to the fun is a strong and probably not unfounded fear that no matter how quickly the state moves, the 100 counties won't be able to deploy new voting equipment quickly enough.

I'm not going to try right now to do full justice to the arguments on both sides of the case. But:

The EFF argues: the State Board of Elections did not hold Diebold and ES&S to the strict standards set forth by North Carolina. Specifically, the foundation argues that the state didn't properly examine the computer code that runs the machines. They further argue that the state should have required the voting machine makers to escrow their code BEFORE granting them certification.

The State Board argues: that they have required the voting machine makers to escrow their code by Dec. 22 and that's perfectly fine under the law. They further say that the code that tabulates votes got a thorough checking out by an undisclosed panel of experts. Further, they argued that state law does not require them to examine the source code for off the shelf produces such as Microsoft Windows.

Who's right? Hey, if the guy with a law degree and a gavel ain't saying, I'm not either. But Judge Stephens did ask both sides to submit more briefs. Stephens seemed bothered by the fact that if he granted what the EFF was asking, he could end up costing the state some money (North Carolina could be asked to hand back some federal funds if a hand-full of counties fail to meet a Jan. 1 deadline) and he could bollix up what's already a process running on a pretty tight time frame.

"I do believe what you are asking me to do is dramatic and could place some financial burden on the state," Stephens said. The EFF and McCloy will be asked if they're willing to post some sort of bond in case things go to trial and they turn out to be wrong.

The next hearing in this case is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 21 at 2 p.m.

Related voting machine vendor news:

• Sequoia, an other major voting manufacture, has withdrawn its application for certification in North Carolina. SBOE officials said they expected the company to re-apply in January. The problem Sequoia may run into, however, is that counties will have to make decisions on which voting systems to use pretty fast. By the time they get certified by the state, a lot of those decisions could already be made.

• Diebold has had a rough week. First the company's CEO resigned. Then it got hit with a lawsuit which alleges "the voting-machine maker lacked sufficient internal controls, was unable to be confident in the quality of its voting machines and made misleading statements about its condition."

The Department of Cultural Resources
How can it be is podcasting. Does this make podcasting more or less hip? (And have I just proven that I'm completely unhip for using the word "hip" in a sentence without even thinking about it?)

Anyway, go listen if you like. The first edition features the six folks who recently received the North Carolina Award. (One of those was Joseph M. Bryan Jr., for his public service work.)

You may remember a post and story I wrote last week saying that state election officials were worried about being able to deploy a whole new network of voting machines in time for the May primary.

Well, they aren't the only ones.

The North Carolina Association of County Commissioners says the state hasn't come through with enough funding to help the counties buy and deploy the new machines. From association director David Thompson:

“It is unreasonable to expect that all 100 counties can review the approved equipment and then decide which to order by Jan. 20,” said Thompson. “In addition, funding provided by the federal and state governments under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) is insufficient to meet the increased state requirements under the General Assembly’s Public Confidence in Elections Act. The General Assembly’s decision to require a paper trail is essentially another unfunded mandate on counties.”

Click here to read the whole release.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, on behalf of Joyce McCloy of Winston-Salem, said today that it has sued the state for improperly certifying voting machine manufacturers to sell equipment in North Carolina.

Click here for the press release.

Click here for the legal brief.

Click here for links to prior posts on this topic.

Readers at this blog have seen a lot about voting machines over the past few weeks. Are you curious to see what all the fuss is about? Well here’s your chance.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which helped intervene in the Diebold lawsuit earlier this week, is none to impressed with the SBOE's certification of the company to sell voting equipment in North Carolina.

In case you missed it, here’s my story on election folks worrying that they might not be able to roll out new voting systems in time for the May primary.

You may think that four months and change (early voting begins in April next year) is a lot of time to get something like this done. But governments are not known for moving with alacrity. And there are still a few details to be nailed down before the voting machine vendors that were certified yesterday can legally begin selling their wares.

Bottom line: We may not know where. We may not know exactly what. But the folks who are responsible for running the state’s elections say that North Carolina residents should be prepared for problems next spring.

Excuse me while I reach for an aspirin, but this is the sort of thing that gives me a headache.

You may remember that voting machine maker Diebold last month went to court asking to be excused from part of the state's brand spanking new voting law.

Earlier this week, the judge, in effect, said "no, obey the law as written."

During and after the court heading Monday, Diebold's lawyers said they would be unable to bid on the state's voting machine contracts without the change to the law. They would withdraw from consideration, the lawyers said.

So who was approved as one of the three vendors allowed to sell voting machines in North Carolina next year?

Diebold.

And no, the law hasn't changed since Monday.

Those who remember the controversy over certification of teachers and Easley's veto will be interested to know there is apparently a compromise in the offing.

Read the Associated Press story by clicking here. (Some registration may be required. I'm sending you off site because I can't find the story in our own system.)

The summary of the compromise from the story:

Under the plan, middle school and high school teachers from other states who have less than three years of experience will have to meet several existing conditions to get a permanent license in North Carolina. Those include completing a third year of teaching, earning a recommendation from the local school district and any other professional development work.

The final step for a state license has been passing a standardized test or completing a standardized evaluation program. Monday's recommendation would create a third option: receiving a positive evaluation from a supervisor addressing the teacher's ability to "impact student learning." The evaluation also would have to say the school district has offered to continue employing the teacher.

The third option would give local districts more control over hiring, supporters said.

A couple days ago (Monday if the electronic voodoo machine here in front of me is correct) this story regarding identity theft protection and other new laws going into effect Dec. 1 ran.

I've gotten a couple questions since then, all of which surround how to go about freezing one's credit report as the law now allows.

To avoid cluttering up the newspaper version of the story, I had just included one link to the NC Department of Justice's website. That site links to a couple tip-sheets on protecting yourself from identity theft such as this general primer on how to protect yourself and this one that lays out specifically how to freeze one's credit. Both of those are in PDF format.

But the DOJ's web page can be a bit difficult to navigate (and if your internet connection is slow like mine, PDF files can cause you fits) and some people weren't able to find what they were looking for.

So despite the best efforts of my computer to crash and burn on me this afternoon, I'll steal what the AG has up re: credit freezes and post it here after the jump:

Update: For the newspaper story on the Diebold suit, click here.

For those who haven't been following, I'm updating this post.

The judge in the case brought by Diebold Election Systems against the state dismissed the suit.

Diebold had asked that the court clarified what the law meant.

The judge, in essence, said that the law was pretty clear and that without some sort of ongoing controversy (someone getting arrested or sued for damages) there wasn't anything for him to rule on anyway.

Diebold's lawyers said they expected their clients to withdraw from the state contracting process as a result of the decision.

More on this in tomorrow's paper.

I spent the morning watching our legal system in action. Sadly, it wasn't acting on the case that I (and maybe you) are interested in.

For those who have missed prior coverage on the voting machine topic, click here, here, or here.

The real short summary: voting machine makers are trying to get themselves exempt from parts of the state's newly written law governing computerized voting machines. The crux of the matter has to do with how much (or how little) of their source code they have to fork over for inspection should something go wrong.

The Judge (who is hearing a bunch of motions today) finally took mercy on those interested in the voting machine matter and set 2 p.m. as the time for that hearing. (If you're in Raleigh, why not head on down to courtroom 10-B of the Wake County Courthouse. Come for the legal arguments, stay for the hind-end-numbing seats in the courtroom.)

I'll write something for tomorrow's paper and blog a bit about the outcome today, time permitting.

There were a couple stories from me on Sunday and Monday regarding the state's efforts to update its network of voting machines.

Update2: Click here for the Monday story.

Update1: Click here for the Sunday story.

If you were paying any attention at all to politics last year long about this time, you knew something wasn't quite right. A voting machine in Carteret County had gobbled up more than 4,000 votes, enough to turn the tide in the statewide Commissioner of Agriculture race. (There were enough other glitches as well, but the Carteret problem has become emblematic of the lot, at least around Raleigh.)

Update: Click here for the story related to this post.

Since 2000, the state has given day care centers and other child care facilities ratings of one through five stars, five stars being the best. It a rating that a lot of parents look at before choosing a day care.

The system was the first of its kind in the nation and has become a model for others to follow. However, some said the program gave day cares too much credit for doing basic things that they should be doing anyway. The argument went that a day care that had a mediocre teaching program might get a prestigious three, four or five star rating by virtue of meeting basic "compliance" requirements.

The General Assembly took that criticism to heart this spring and changed the law. While day cares will still have to meet certain criteria for health and safety, those scores no longer count towards a day cares' star rating. The changes go into effect in 2006 for new day cares, in 2008 for existing ones.

Update: My story in Sunday's paper details some of the concerns that day care owners have about the new scoring system.

For those of you interested in finding out more, some links:

• An overview of the star rating system, from the state Division of Child Development.
• Look up info on your child's day care or find day cares in your area that match certain criteria, including on star rating.
• Information on what's changing in the day care licensing system.

Good morning.

For those who missed the dead tree version of the paper, check out this story on a recently released audit of the N.C. prison system.

And Click here to read the report itself. (Warning, this is a pretty big PDF file.)

The most remarkable thing to me about the report is not that they found problems. But one of the chief problems they found - overpaying prison workers - is ongoing and something that prison officials don't seem to think they can stop.

I've been getting a pretty steady stream of e-mail (okay, it's about one-a-day, but it's a nice break from the spam and people telling me what an ignoramus I am) about House Bill 706, which would allow North Carolina school districts to more easily recruit teachers from other states.

Click here for prior coverage.

As of right now, the most definitive thing I can say is that it's on
the list of bills awaiting action by the governor.

Gov. Mike Easley doesn't like this bill and the local punditry has posited that he will veto this thing. Of course, that's not his only option.

While the General Assembly is in session, the governor has 10 days to decide whether to sign or veto something. If he does nothing during that time, the bill becomes law without his signature.

Nine days had ticked off that clock for HB 706 when the General Assembly adjourned a couple weeks ago until May. That started a new 30-day clock ticking. Similarly, if the governor does nothing during this time period, the bill becomes law without his signature.

The clock expires at midnight on Sunday, Oct. 2.

When folks in Easley's office are asked about this bill, the response has been that Easley is "still reviewing the bill." The rough translation of that phrase is something like: "He may have decided but we're not telling what that decision might be yet." Easley has Ophelia (the hurricane) on the brain this week, so I wouldn't hold my breath to see anything on this soon.

It's a pretty good bet Easley won't sign HB 706 given the amount of venom he's unleashed on it. That would leave two options:

• As discussed above, he could let is pass into law without his signature. That would be a reasonable option, especially given that the bill passed unanimously twice in the House and by a 45-4 vote in the Senate. Those sorts of numbers would handily over-ride a veto any day.

• If he does veto it, the state constitution requires the governor to call the General Assembly back into session to consider an over-ride. It takes a three-fifth vote in both the House and Senate to over-ride a veto. That's a 30 of 50 votes in the Senate and a 72 of 120 votes in the House. (Would-be constitutional scholars can click here for all the nitty gritty.)

So which will happen? I don't know. Which should happen? You can discuss that in the comments section below.

From N.C. Agriculture Secretary Steve Troxler’s office:

RALEIGH – Dr. George Chambless of Lexington has been named director of the Emergency Programs Division at the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler announced.

Just a few notes to get you through your Friday:

I'm about to clear out of the office, but before I jet here are a couple of things that are of interest:

And just because a lot of state tax money went into it, the High Point furniture market folks are pretty darned excited about their new transportation terminal. Look, they even sent a picture of where the thing will be... ...once they build it.

Of those three, the release on the immigrant tuition is the most significant. There was a huge row when that bill was proposed, with resistance mainly coming from folks who said that those who enter the country illegally should not be rewarded for doing so. The other side of the argument said that children were being unjustly punished for the sins of their parents. Don't be surprised to see the issue come up again.

I'm about to clear out of the office, but before I jet here are a couple of things that are of interest:

And just because a lot of state tax money went into it, the High Point furniture market folks are pretty darned excited about their new transportation terminal. Look, they even sent a picture of where the thing will be... ...once they build it.

Of those three, the release on the immigrant tuition is the most significant. There was a huge row when that bill was proposed, with resistance mainly coming from folks who said that those who enter the country illegally should not be rewarded for doing so. The other side of the argument said that children were being unjustly punished for the sins of their parents. Don't be surprised to see the issue come up again.

I've been contemplating a short story on a state program that certifies roadside fruit and vegetable stands as selling locally grown produce. Has anyone out there used this Dept. of Ag website to find a fruit or vegetable stand near you? Anyone have a particular roadside stand in Davidson, Guilford or Rockingham counties?