Carolina Journal News Reports | 2004 Archive

CHARLOTTE — Project Homestead, a Greensboro nonprofit that has received millions of dollars in government grants to help low- and middle-income families buy homes, is being investigated by a variety of law enforcement agencies after allocations of financial improprieties were reported by the News & Record of Greensboro. A roundup of other local-government stories includes stories on regulating Wal-Mart, a “worthless" Cumberland program on tuberculosis, and Charlotte’s train troubles.

RALEIGH — Rep. Frank Ballance’s state-funded charity to help youths apparently has failed to file IRS tax forms required for nonprofit organizations. After inquiries by Carolina Journal, the John Hyman Foundation did eventually file the returns for 1994 through 1997, but no more recent reports are available. Based on IRS guidelines, the foundation’s fines for 10 years of not filing may be as high as $100,000. Ballance has refused to answer media questions on the Hyman matter during a recent tour of his 1st Congressional District.

RALEIGH — Two recent reports sound warnings about freedom on campuses. A report by the American Association of University Professors centers on threats to academic freedom since 9/11. And a report by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education finds a lack of knowledge of the First Amendment protection of religious liberty. A majority of students said they would allow religious individuals to spread their religious beliefs only if they did not give offense in doing so. Administrators were split on the issue.

RALEIGH — Have you ever had a mentor? Most of us associate this idea with something we experienced as children. Gov. Mike Easley proclaimed January “National Mentoring Month,” and is encouraging support of state-sponsored screening, training, and assignment programs for mentors. Through the NC Commission on Volunteerism & Community Service and the North Carolina Mentoring Partnership, the governor’s office recruits prospective mentors. PSAs remind listeners of the benefits — volunteer opportunities for them — that will also benefit children.

RALEIGH — State Rep. Russell Capps has asked State Auditor Ralph Campbell to investigate the Opportunities Industrialization Center of Wilson, a nonprofit organization largely funded by the state. Capps cited reports by the Wilson Daily Times and Carolina Journal that documented OIC’s role in a 10,000-piece mailing for the Wilson County Democratic Party. Three former students of the OIC claim that as students, they helped OIC staff members prepare the mailing Oct. 31, 2002 just before the general election. The students were let out of class early and paid to help with the project.

RALEIGH — A study released several weeks ago by an accounting firm and recently touted by North Carolina politicians as evidence of the state’s attractiveness to business is fundamentally flawed and offers little useful information to policymakers considering tax changes, according to a new report published today by the John Locke Foundation. Small businesses, Cordato wrote, are particularly affected by the taxes left out of the study, and account for about half of employment in North Carolina and have generated 80 percent of net job growth in recent years.

RALEIGH — This semester the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill received approval to start a semester abroad program in Cuba. The university teamed with the University of Havana. A leading critic of the Castro dictatorship said the program implies legitimizing the present Cuban regime. UNC officials, however, point to Cuba as a nation “on the brink of transition” and said that “whether there is going to be a peaceful transition or a violent transition there is of great importance to us.”

RALEIGH — North Carolina offered Boeing more than $534 million — “probably” the state’s largest incentives package, officials said — if the aircraft manufacturer would build its new 7E7 jetliner at the Global TransPark in Kinston. Information about the state’s 20-year proposal was released Monday by the Commerce Department after Carolina Journal prepared to file a lawsuit and other newspapers requested documents about the package. Included in North Carolina’s incentives were 539 acres of land, valued at $10.8 million, and $280 million in tax-exempt bonds for a building provided by the state and “a third party.”

RALEIGH — The federal No Child Left Behind law required that school improvement programs be grounded in “scientifically based research.” Such studies must take consideration student demographics, testing design, the time period for the trial program, and methods of collecting data. Children participating in the research study should be assigned the control or the program group via random selection. The control group is key — the results of pre-and-post tests alone don’t generate adequate scientific research, officials say.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK — Kay McClanahan wishes she could scan the horizon around her South Carolina farm and blissfully enjoy the green pastures and beautiful horses. But under the guise of preserving open space, local “smart growth” activists and politicians have used rural down-zoning to deny infrastructure to the area outside a new urban growth boundary. It also imposes large-lot zoning, buffer zones, and other restrictive rules. McClanahan and others who live in the area fear their land will be rendered worthless to buyers or legally manipulated away from them altogether.

RALEIGH — The State Auditor’s Office has delivered to the General Assembly and the Easley administration a new report detailing grants to nonprofit organizations by state agencies last year. The annual report catalogues all grants made by state agencies to nonprofits such as Smart Start partnerships, economic development groups, and community service agencies. Legislators last year set a deadline of Jan. 31 for compiling the report as part of an effort to increase oversight of nonprofit agencies. Most of the nonprofits met the reporting requirements in time, but a few did not.

RALEIGH — The North Carolina Court of Appeals has overturned a ruling absolving the N.C. Department of Transportation of liability in the deaths of two women in a car crash on Interstate 85. The women’s estates had contended that the NCDOT should be held liable for not installing median barriers on I-85, something the agency did do, after four years of inaction, in response to the accident. In returning the case to the N.C. Industrial Commission for reconsideration, the appeals court required that it consider the risk of injury against cost and budget considerations to determine whether the NCDOT's actions were negligent.

RALEIGH — CBS News President Andrew Heyward, in response to a complaint by Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-7th) and 32 other congressmen alleging that news reports last year reflected poorly on homeschooling, defended the network's stories that connected child abuse to the growing educational movement. “it is unfortunate that few of you actually saw the reports in question,” he wrote. “Despite what your constituents may have told you, this was not an attack on home schools.” McIntyre was the only Democrat to sign the letter.

RALEIGH — CBS News President Andrew Heyward, in response to a complaint by Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-7th) and 32 other congressmen alleging that news reports last year reflected poorly on homeschooling, defended the network's stories that connected child abuse to the growing educational movement. “it is unfortunate that few of you actually saw the reports in question,” he wrote. “Despite what your constituents may have told you, this was not an attack on home schools.” McIntyre was the only Democrat to sign the letter.

RALEIGH — Last summer, as UNC-Chapel Hill was assigning Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America to all incoming freshmen, sophomore Matthew Pulley was experiencing, for the first time, living on his own, with only a small income to sustain him. Rather than feeling lied to about the American Dream, Pulley left his experience puzzled about Ehrenreich’s published difficulties. In fact, as he wrote in Carolina Review, he has “a hard time seeing how [Ehrenreich] could have failed, other than the fact that she set herself up for failure from the start.”

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK — Rail transit systems proposed for NC metropolitan areas are destined to fail because they conflict with demographic trends, high auto usage, and complex driving patterns, experts said at a recent Center for Local Innovation conference. In Charlotte, the cost of the proposal to build less than 10 miles of rail is estimated at $371 million. Yet proponents concede it will reduce auto traffic by just one-tenth of 1 percent, concentrate traffic around rail stations, and create new congestion. In the Triangle, estimates on the reduction of congestion are slightly better but still minuscule — perhaps 1 percent.

RALEIGH — Recent polling hinted at, and two studies now confirm, the public’s intuition about school spending: Americans aren’t getting the achievement “bang for the bucks” their governments are spending. One national report found that increased spending doesn’t necessarily lead to better test scores. In NC, two professors found that school policy factors account, at most, for 10 to 20 percent of the variation in student achievement. The authors concluded that NC might want to focus on socioeconomic problems rather than putting so much emphasis on education spending.

RALEIGH — The N.C. Court of Appeals on Tuesday declared unconstitutional as applied the state's cruelty-to-animals law. The context for the ruling is a pigeon shoot. John Malloy holds invitation-only shoots twice a year in Granville County. Concerned that the state might seek to prohibit the events under its law, Malloy sought an injunction barring enforcement. Specifically, Malloy contended that the law was unconstitutionally vague as applied to him. The appeals court agreed.

RALEIGH — On Nov. 10, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington derecognized the student group the College Republicans. The issue, according to the university, is discrimination — the university does not want student fees to go to student groups that will not include the university’s own antidiscrimination clauses in its bylaws. The issue, according to the CRs and the conservative group, Students for a Stronger UNCW, is their First Amendment protection of freedom of association as well as the equal protection of the law.

RALEIGH — Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie visited Raleigh on Monday in a hastily prepared, but well-attended luncheon for the state GOP faithful. He said he considered North Carolina “a very important state in 2004,” not only for the re-election of President Bush, but to increase the GOP majority in the Senate and to replace Gov. Mike Easley. While Gillespie bristled at Democrats’ barbs toward the president, he did not address recent criticism from conservatives in the Republican Party, who have complained about dramatically increased government spending and growing deficits on Bush’s watch.

RALEIGH — State officials botched the recruitment of a biotechnology company because of a power struggle between the Department of Commerce and an economic development agency in northeast North Carolina, officials of the company say. Documents also show that rather than helping the company in negotiations, North Carolina’s Northeast Partnership continued a practice of seeking equity in the companies it recruits. Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight appears to wield strong influence over the Partnership, sometimes determining whether and how businesses get state incentives.

RALEIGH — Fragmentation of leadership and responsibilities has diminished the effectiveness of North Carolina’s publicly funded economic development agencies, says a private developer who once had dealings in the northeast area of the state. The developer said "that region is controlled by [Senate President Pro Tem Marc] Basnight and by R.V. Owens (III)." Owens is Basnight’s nephew, chief fund-raiser, and a powerful influence in the Northeast. "Everybody has to stay in line and stay in step," the developer said, "or there are negative ramifications held over their heads."

RALEIGH -- In early May 2002 Ernie Pearson, the N.C. Northeast Partnership lawyer, informed Rick Watson about legal expenses from the CropTech deal, including costs "to assist in overcoming concerns raised by Commerce Secretary Jim Fain and to finalize the [agreement]." Watson also requested that Pearson bill the Northeast Partnership for future services related to the deal, though it never went through. Watson sought Tobacco Trust Fund funds to cover these tens of thousands of dollars in cost.

RALEIGH — CropTech Corporation, which negotiated with NC for more than a year in an effort to relocate to the state, instead decided to move to South Carolina in May 2002. A company official blames the time spent dealing with NC for draining its finances, leading to bankruptcy. "We were told there was no one more powerful in the state of North Carolina than Senator Basnight," he said. "It was understood that this was an exceptional situation because of the involvement of the Tobacco Trust, and Senator Basnight had the key to that resource. His key to opening that door was accommodating his interests — that’s what we were led to believe."