A number of key election reforms moved through the N.C. House this week. Included on that list is a bill that switches up the deadline for absentee ballots and another measure that bans outside private money from flowing to county boards of elections. According to sponsors, the bills are designed to shore up voting integrity...
Leadership or staff from the company contracted to operate the state’s liquor warehouse and delivery system won’t meet with lawmakers to explain why N.C. ABC stores around the state have so many empty shelves. The state warehouses are stocked with popular products such as Jack Daniel’s and Tito’s vodka, yet those same products aren’t showing...
Gov. Roy Cooper says he will sign the first budget from the General Assembly since he took office in 2017. The announcement came in a news conference Tuesday, Nov. 16, and before the first vote from the Senate on Tuesday afternoon. The General Assembly released the $25.9 billion budget plan Monday, Nov. 15. Senate lawmakers...
The N.C. General Assembly is expected to being voting Tuesday on the newly-released 2021-23 conference budget. The 2021-22 budget plan, out on Monday, represents a 4.3% increase over the previous plan with $25.9 billion slated to be spent. The fiscal 2022-23 portion of the biennial plan is $27 billion, and the state’s rainy day fund...
It has been a long time since I lived on Hillock Drive, which runs off North Hills Drive near Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh. My parents moved there with their two children, Joy and Brad, in 1971. I came along two years later as, my mom says, their “postscript.” It was a great, safe neighborhood to grow up in, and I spent my entire...
A retired Union County judge is trying to leapfrog the Republican-led N.C. General Assembly by ordering a $1.7 billion transfer from the state’s coffers to fund public education. The transfer would bankroll two years of a remedial plan in the long-running Leandro school funding case that dates back to 1994. The price tag for the...
A note from the editor: When Carolina Journal Investigative Political Analyst Dallas Woodhouse pitched this groundbreaking story to me, and Carolina Journal publisher Amy Cooke, it frankly seemed unbelievable and unlikely. His scoop was that that the 4-3 Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court was considering forcibly removing two Republican colleagues, putting a thumb...
A controversial environmental program controlled by North Carolina’s attorney general and funded by hog farm proceeds returned today to the N.C. Supreme Court. The court must decide whether the AG can maintain control of the funding moving forward. Among the most interesting revelations in oral arguments Tuesday: Plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that the attorney general has...
Former N.C. congressman Mark Walker, a Republican candidate for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2022, has taken numerous calls urging him to shift gears and try instead to return to the U.S. House. Walker has taken those calls from elected officials in North Carolina and from former House colleagues in other states. Walker...
An involuntary recusal, in the teeth of a Justice’s own judgment that recusal is not necessary, is in effect a public declaration that the Justice has engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. It is difficult to imagine a procedure better calculated to poison the deliberations of this body and its ability to...
Social media is buzzing about Virginia’s Republican Lt. Gov.-elect Winsome Sears. Her story bears a striking resemblance to North Carolina’s Republican N.C. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. Sears became the first woman and woman of color to be elected to that office in the state’s history on Tuesday, Nov. 2. She beat Democrat Delegate Hala S....
