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Monday's lead editorial.

State Rep. Dale Folwell has called for a $62 million bond for Forsyth Technical Community College to be removed from the Forsyth ballot. He thinks the economic crisis should preclude a project that would increase taxes.

While Folwell may be well-meaning, his call for the bond’s removal seems like grandstanding. In Guilford County, removing items from the ballot at this late date isn’t an option. Guilford’s ballot was approved months ago by the State Board of Elections and the U.S. Justice Department. It’s too late to revise it. Also, many absentee voters already have sent in their ballots.

If voters don’t think it’s the right time for bond projects, they can easily show that by voting against them.

Still, it’s unwise to think bad economic times mean that all bonds should be rejected. Projects should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

In Greensboro, voters will decide on $205 million in bonds. An owner of a $200,000 home would face an annual property tax increase of about $50 if all four initiatives passed. Today’s economic conditions shouldn’t be the deciding factor on these bonds. The city’s long-term needs should be.

If passed, the bonds wouldn’t all be issued immediately and thus subject to higher interest rates often found in troubled economic times. The proposed issue plan, says city finance director Rick Lusk, is “four bond issues over the next eight years.” He adds that “bonds approved by voters have an initial seven-years authorization period that can be extended to 10 years.”

Also, voters should keep in mind that local governments in North Carolina are in better shape to handle bond issues than cities in many other states. That’s because of a system of state oversight put into place during the Great Depression. During the Depression, more North Carolina local governments defaulted on debt than in any other state except Florida, says government consultant Mayraj Fahim. That led, in 1931, to the creation of the N.C. Local Government Commission.

“The LGC has been careful in making sure localities are able to sustain their debt burden,” says Fahim.

Lusk agrees: “The oversight provided by the N.C. Local Government Commission has been very beneficial for North Carolina local governments for decades. The LGC approves all bond
referendums and the terms of all debt issues.” Lusk says the state’s conservative financial laws for local governments and the LGC’s work have resulted in higher bond ratings for governments here versus other states.

Higher bond ratings benefit taxpayers because they lead to lower interest rates. Of the nation’s cities with populations of 100,000 or more, only 23 are rated AAA (the highest), with six of them (Greensboro, Raleigh, Charlotte, Durham, Winston-Salem and Cary) in North Carolina.
The prudence of North Carolina’s Depression-era leaders gave us a valuable legacy. Voters can help sustain that legacy by evaluating bond projects individually.

Monday's No. 2 editorial.

Sue Burch was 33 and only five years out of Wake Forest law school when she was elected as a Guilford County District Court judge in 2000.

Tabatha Holliday, 38, completed law school at N.C. Central only six years ago. She’s running against Burch now.

Five or six years isn’t much time in legal practice to prepare a lawyer for the bench. The difference between Burch and Holliday today, however, is Burch’s judicial training and on-the-job experience. Now 41, she’s worked hard to become one of Guilford County’s most skilled and knowledgeable judges.

Burch wins high praise from some observers, who say she’s a leader in drug court and mental-health court; on the “cutting edge” in domestic court; handling the “lion’s share” of complex equitable distribution cases; willing to help other judges with their caseloads; “never bamboozled by a lawyer.” She even learned to speak Spanish to facilitate communications in increasingly multicultural courtrooms.

Burch is regarded as fair, not playing politics on the bench, but tough. “Sue’ll drop the hammer now and then,” an observer said.

Holliday is an assistant district attorney who’s nevertheless well-liked by defense lawyers. The latest campaign finance reports show she has raised more money than Burch, $23,000 to $4,000, much of it from local attorneys. Holliday came up through the court system, having been an assistant clerk before earning a degree in accounting from UNCG and going on to study law. She’s smart and personable.

Twelve of Guilford County’s 14 District Court judicial seats are up for election this year, but only five are contested. Burch adds greatly to the local bench strength. Holliday might be able to match her expertise someday but certainly not for many years. It’s better to keep Burch, who’s already an effective judge.

Will you vote early? Why or why not?

Sunday's editorial.

Pat McCrory’s stump speeches and debate performances make a good case for his candidacy. But his record as the longest-serving mayor of North Carolina’s largest city makes an even better one.

McCrory, 51, a Republican who grew up in Jamestown, has won seven consecutive terms as Charlotte’s mayor.

You don’t receive that many votes of confidence without doing something right.

In a city, which unlike Greensboro, holds partisan elections for its leaders, McCrory has worked effectively across party lines to get things done on a majority-Democratic city council. Also unlike Greensboro, where the mayor is merely one of nine equals, Charlotte’s mayor wields veto power to go with the title.

On McCrory’s watch, Charlotte’s downtown has become a model for other cities. On his watch, city voters resoundingly backed a sales tax increase to create the first light-rail system in the state. McCrory has favored mass transit for years, as well as sidewalks and green spaces.

Success in Charlotte
Obviously, McCrory can’t take all the credit for Charlotte’s prosperity. It has had many champions over the years, among them a formidable banking industry.

But he has helped keep the city moving forward and reaching higher. And he has remained front and center as Charlotte copes with the uncertain future of one of its major employers, struggling Wachovia Bank.

McCrory also was the founding member of the N.C. Metropolitan Coalition, which unites mayors from towns and cities to work on common issues, including street gangs.

McCrory’s Democratic rival, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, 61, points to her own impressive resume as an educator and a legislator.
Before becoming lieutenant governor, she spent two terms in the state House and five terms in the N.C. Senate. During the latter part of her Senate tenure, she served as one of the state’s chief budget writers. As lieutenant governor, she lobbied to keep North Carolina’s military bases open and was chairwoman of the state’s Health and Wellness Trust Fund.

She has been a relentless advocate for public education.

But McCrory is steadier and more assured on the issues. He takes a more meat-and-potatoes approach to leadership, a pattern that has played out more often than not in Charlotte. That’s what the state needs in its next governor.

McCrory pledges to bring Democrats and Republicans to the table. That definitely won’t be as easy to manage in Raleigh as it has been in Charlotte. But so many of his proposals make sense that it should be hard for either party to say no.

For instance, McCrory calls for a 50-year state transportation plan and rightly suggests that North Carolina’s transportation projects should be based on need, not politics. Even though he pressed hard for Charlotte’s nearly 10-mile-long new light-rail line, he rightly adds that such a system isn’t the solution for every North Carolina city.

He recognizes the wisdom of fighting gangs not only with tough enforcement, but with preventive efforts.

He favors lower corporate and income taxes over incentives and sees a more assertive role for the governor in business recruitment.

And he questions whether the state’s community colleges are straying from their core mission of vocational education, a fair question.

Forward-thinking and forthright
McCrory is willing to step forward and defend his positions. Even as Perdue chose not to take part, he debated the issues last week in a televised forum with Libertarian candidate Mike Munger, 50, chairman of Duke University’s political science department. This was the second time Perdue bypassed a debate with her two opponents.

Not that we agree with everything McCrory has to say. For instance, he overshadows the crying need for alternative energy with an almost single-minded focus on offshore drilling. And his message on immigration reform is too shrill and alarmist.

But the governor is rarely a cultural warrior in North Carolina, nor should he be one. McCrory’s skills and experience are best suited to provide what Raleigh needs most right now: a broad view, a clear plan and an ambitious vision.

This week's column.

The Godfather of Soul wasn’t very impressed at the state of the dressing rooms in War Memorial Auditorium. And neither were we.

James Brown last performed at the auditorium during his “Living in America” concert tour in 2001. We last appeared there two weeks ago, for just a plain tour.

The 49-year-old facility looks its age, and then some. As dank and Spartan as they are, the dressing rooms are only the beginning.

Parts of ceilings are pocked with peeling plaster and brown circles from water leaks.

The air conditioning comes and goes.

The acoustics are bad.

The sight lines are bad.

You can hear the wind howl through a loading-dock door backstage.

And, well, you get the idea why Brown didn’t feel so good on July 6, 2001.

In fact, the Godfather got to see the building age before his eyes. He appeared 13 times at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex.

That’s why the facility is back for a return engagement of its own, in a bond referendum, after failing in 2006. There’s no disputing the big, fat price tag of the project, at $50 million. That makes it the single most expensive project among all of the Nov. 4 city bonds, which total $205 million.

But at least the auditorium gets to face voter scrutiny on its own, without the cover of other projects. In two other cases, high-profile items have been wedged into packages with numerous others, much in the way Congress tends to lard popular bills with juicy add-ons. The most glaring example is a $12 million regional swim center, a late addition to the Parks and Recreation package.

Continue reading "Bond dilemmas" »

Saturday's lead editorial.

As North Carolina’s top cop, Roy Cooper made national headlines in 2007 when he stepped into the infamous Duke lacrosse case and dropped all charges.

Cooper was scathing in his assessment of former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong’s shameful and willful mishandling of the case of three Duke athletes falsely accused of rape by an exotic dancer.

Small wonder that Cooper, a Democrat running for a third term as attorney general, reran the moment in his first campaign commercial. As sad an occasion as it was for Nifong, it was one of Cooper’s finest, the culmination of a thorough, 12-week investigation that his office handled coolly and professionally.

But his record in office neither begins nor ends with the lacrosse case.

Cooper’s Republican challenger, lawyer Bob Crumley, 51, blames Cooper for “clogged courts,” an “explosion of gang violence” and “backlogged crime labs.”

That’s debatable. Cooper, 51, actually worked with local law enforcement to establish an SBI crime lab for the Triad in Greensboro. The 10,000-square-foot lab opened in July, serves 12 counties and is expected to handle 6,000 cases per year.

Crumley argues that the lab should have been equipped to process DNA evidence, which is still sent to Raleigh.

But Cooper says that would have significantly delayed the local facility’s opening and he leaves open the possibility for DNA analysis there in the future.

Cooper also has done a good job stemming the epidemic of meth labs in the state, a cause he aggressively took on several years ago.

He has added his office to a national electronic database of information about gangs.

He has taken an aggressive look at charges of price-gouging by gas stations throughout the state.

And he has increased arrests of online sexual predators.

Crumley, who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate in 2002, has built a thriving law practice and has served in previous jobs as Randolph County manager and county attorney.
He says he won’t use the office as a political stepping-stone, as others have done.

He also advocates “a more common-sense approach to reviewing and implementing regulatory practices which affect our business community.”

There’s no doubting Crumley’s impressive resume in business and government.
But Cooper is the clear choice based on the breadth of his experience and the quality of his record.

Saturday's No. 2 editorial.

In North Carolina, the job of lieutenant governor primarily is defined by the person who holds it. And the three men seeking the state’s second-highest elective office have distinctly different views on how to do it.

Two, Democrat Walter Dalton and Republican Robert Pittenger, have legislative experience. Libertarian Phillip Rhodes is a first-time candidate.

Based on experience and his vision of the job, the nod goes to Dalton, 59, a 12-year state senator from Rutherford County. He’s forcefully guided state legislative initiatives dealing with economic development, education, job retraining and health care.

Pittenger, 60, also served in the state Senate, representing Mecklenburg County. But as a member of the minority party, he had less of an opportunity to play a decisive role. While his focus commendably was on eliminating government waste, a sometimes-quixotic agenda failed to attract much support.

Rhodes, 35, a Chapel Hill resident, echoes his party’s call for a smaller, less-invasive government and doing away with what he describes as corporate welfare. He hasn’t been a major factor in the campaign.

As a senator, Dalton has shown leadership in helping resolve appropriations issues, funding programs like Earn and Learn, lobbying for affordable health care for kids and seniors and attracting new industry.

While some of his time will be taken presiding over the Senate, Dalton has a better take than his opponents on how to promote initiatives that could prove beneficial to state residents. As lieutenant governor, he can play a leadership role on both the State Board of Education and the Board of Community Colleges.

Dalton also takes aim at what he calls “two North Carolinas” — economic disparities between rural and urban counties. Besides rural job recruitment, he wants to make broad-band Internet more accessible in those areas.

Although Pittenger is a formidable and competent opponent, Dalton’s proactive approach and emphasis on accountability make him the best choice to carry out the many facets of a very nebulous job.

Friday's lead editorial.

It’s still nearly 2,000 miles from Las Vegas to High Point, but in another sense the distance is decreasing.

For High Point’s furniture market, Las Vegas is getting too close for comfort and needs some pushing back.

The World Market Center in Las Vegas announced Wednesday it will change its schedule of shows from February and July to February and September starting next year. The September date puts the Las Vegas event only one month before the High Point Market’s fall show each October. High Point’s spring market is in April.

The shift to September is an aggressively in-your-face move that intensifies the Las Vegas-High Point rivalry. It will be harder for exhibitors to show in Las Vegas and High Point each fall with so little time in between, and more buyers will reconsider their own plans. Las Vegas seems to be forcing the industry to make a choice.

The challenge is right in character for the western upstart, which initially proclaimed a desire merely to become a top regional market but lately has revealed the goal of achieving market pre-eminence, the position held by High Point for decades.

“No one could have imagined that in three years we would be at this point,” World Market Center President Robert Maricich said after the summer show. “At a time when people are looking at the glass being half empty, we are playing to win.”

High Point’s attitude must be the same. Tough times in the furniture industry threaten to depress business and attendance at every market, but that just raises the stakes. Gambling is the stock-in-trade in Las Vegas, and the World Market Center is making a play to survive by grabbing a larger share at High Point’s expense.

High Point Market leaders probably are right that, despite claims to the contrary, the Las Vegas summer show wasn’t doing as well as promoters hoped. But they’d be foolish to take this move lightly. If the industry has to choose between markets, High Point must work harder than ever to influence that decision in the right direction. High Point still has a huge advantage in sheer size, but Las Vegas is steadily building up to match it. And, it consolidates its showrooms on a single campus while High Point’s are spread across several downtown blocks. Las Vegas naturally also touts its superior hospitality and entertainment attractions.

High Point should not change its own market dates, but it must continue to make improvements in accommodations, transportation, entertainment and the overall visitor experience. Every market must be more customer-friendly than the one before. And, promoters must sell the strengths of the High Point Market to a worldwide industry.

That requires commitment, creativity and resources. Responsibility rests not just with High Point, but with Triad neighbors and the state. If Las Vegas is crowding High Point, it’s crashing the whole neighborhood.

Friday's No. 2 editorial.

N.C. Court of Appeals Judge Jim Wynn isn’t shy about letting colleagues know when he thinks they’ve gone in the wrong direction.

“Judicial prudence requires us to leave these policy questions to our legislative and executive branches of government. ... Our role is to apply the law, not to make it,” he wrote in a dissenting opinion to a ruling issued this summer.

Even when taking the minority position, Wynn commands respect. There may be no more distinguished member of the North Carolina judiciary — or one who’s experienced bigger disappointments.

First elected to the Court of Appeals in 1990, Wynn was appointed to the N.C. Supreme Court in 1998. He lost election that November to a full term by fewer than 4,000 votes.
The next year, he was nominated to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals by President Clinton but was denied a confirmation hearing by Sen. Jesse Helms. Another nomination before Clinton left office was returned by President Bush.

Nevertheless, Wynn has served admirably on the state Court of Appeals over a span of nearly 18 years. In addition, he’s been a top military judge in the U.S. Navy and serves as chairman of the American Bar Association’s Judicial Division.

Wynn, 54, also holds a master of laws degree in judicial process from the University of Virginia. He’s a national leader in his profession, a creative thinker, clear writer and champion for the rule of law. Without question, he’s the strongest candidate for re-election of any judge on the statewide ballot.

His opponent is Greensboro attorney Jewel Ann Farlow, 50, who, despite practicing law for 20 years, has garnered little support locally. There’s no call for a dissenting opinion in this case: Wynn should be re-elected.

Thursday's No. 1 editorial.

It may be a far piece down the road, but a proposal to replace gas taxes with a road-use tax is worth a test drive.

And 200 volunteers in the Triangle will join drivers in five other states to get a handle on how a new approach to raising money for road repairs and construction might work. For their efforts, they’ll be paid $895 each.

Before the experiment begins, global positioning units that cost about $50 will be installed and track how far and where each test vehicle has been driven. Once a month, participants will get fake state and federal bills for their accrued mileage, based on the EPA fuel-economy ratings for their vehicles.

For the sake of fairness, the tax rate will be higher for large trucks than for hybrids. And the test compensates by including a credit for fuel purchases based on vehicle miles per gallon.
Sounds complicated and a bit contrived, but a new taxing system to raise money for highway costs is inevitable, although it could be 20 years away. Gas-tax collections already feel the pinch as new cars get more miles per gallon and high gas prices impact miles driven.
The outlook becomes even cloudier as more hybrids with smaller engines take to the nation’s highways. Should plug-in electric cell cars and fuel-cell models reach their potential, the situation could get even dicier.

But fairness is critical if a road-use tax is to gain traction. First, federal and state governments must carefully set rates for different vehicles. Also, drivers must be assured that governments don’t use global positioning devices as an excuse to track their whereabouts. Proponents say exact times and locations won’t be recorded.

One positive result is that under a user plan, road taxes go to the state where the miles are logged. For example, an out-of-state tourist headed to the North Carolina coast would be taxed on miles driven here, no matter where fuel was purchased.

A new approach must be found because revenue necessary to shore up the nation’s transportation infrastructure lags far behind what’s needed.

There are other options. Toll roads can be a revenue source, but they amount to double taxation if motorists have paid a fuel or road-use tax. And impact fees directed at those who develop land or live in areas served by new roads can stunt development.

On the downside, mileage taxes don’t address environmental issues such as air pollution or road congestion. Single-occupancy car use, in all probability, will continue to prevail.

Even so, a taxing alternative for highway needs will have to be found as gas-tax revenues decline. While there may not be a simple solution, tests like the one set for December should help provide answers.