A bill that would open disciplinary records of government employees is crawling through the Senate, and employee unions and Democrats are determined to kill it. Lawmakers filed Senate Bill 355, the Government Transparency Act of 2021, in late March, and it has been mired in committee…
A legislative bill that would allocate $750 million in federal relief money toward broadband growth has passed the House Appropriations Committee. That vote last week came a day after Gov. Roy Cooper unveiled his plan to spend $1.2 billion of $5.7…
A bill sponsored by Democrats in the N.C. House would pump billions of additional dollars into public education over the next few years toward meeting the requirements of a new remedial agreement in the ongoing Leandro lawsuit. House Bill 946…
That question is roiling Wingate, a small Union County town 30 miles southeast of Charlotte. It began with a phone call between two college presidents. Wake Forest University President Nathan Hatch reached out to the President of Wingate University Rhett Brown. Hatch informed Wingate that Wake…
An executive order issued by Gov. Roy Cooper on Friday, May 21, requires recipients of unemployment benefits to prove they are searching for work to continue receiving benefits. The move makes North Carolina part of a growing number of states to reimplement the work-search requirement. The…
Mason Via of Danbury is having a lot of fun. “So much fun,” Via, who had just boarded a bus for Florida, tells Carolina Journal. “It’s great. It’s killer.” Via, in his early 20s and a wildly talented string musician, has accomplished…
Lawmakers and the governor are moving bills and disclosing recommendations for using money from the American Rescue Plan, some $5.7 billion. The N.C. Senate on Thursday, May 20, passed Senate Bill 172, which would, for example, allocate money for education, child…
In anticipation of delayed results from the U.S. Census this year, N.C. lawmakers have introduced a bill that gives local municipalities the option of delaying their 2021 elections to 2022. The change would only apply to about 37 local jurisdictions — including Raleigh, Charlotte, Cary, Fayetteville, and Greensboro —…
When N.C. Rep. Brenden Jones, R-Robeson, Columbus, met with staff at the Division of Air Quality to try and resolve a permitting issue involving Active Energy, he quickly realized the project to manufacture wood pellets in Lumberton was in peril. “You could tell the Department of Environmental Quality had no…
North Carolina remains vulnerable to fuel shortages because it’s too reliant on a pair of pipelines for gas and energy, industry leaders and experts told lawmakers. The point is made even more crucial because of a recent rise in both the number and sophistication of cyberattacks,…
