State lawmakers voted to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of their $23.9 billion General Fund budget for the new budget year that starts July 1. Becki Gray, John Locke Foundation senior vice president, shares highlights from the new budget. Gray discusses key components of the spending plan and how they reflect legislative priorities. A new N.C. State University study shows that North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program demonstrates “positive, large, and statistically significant” benefits for low-income students. That’s good news to Brian Jodice, interim president of the group Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina. Jodice assesses the significance of the researchers’ findings and looks ahead to future assessments of the Opportunity Scholarship vouchers. N.C. legislators have been considering multiple ways to improve public school safety. Rep. Larry Pittman, R-Cabarrus, has been disappointed to see them ignore his proposal. During a recent news conference, Pittman and Paul Valone of the gun-rights group Grass Roots North Carolina touted potential benefits of a bill that would have allowed some school teachers to carry concealed handguns to protect students. It’s hard to gauge the state’s economic health without paying attention to its businesses. Dane Huffman, managing editor of the Triangle Business Journal, spends his working day talking to business people about their challenges and success stories. Huffman shares his insights about business leaders’ assessment of current N.C. economic conditions. North Carolina has good laws against civil asset forfeiture abuse, but a federal process called “equitable sharing” helps local law enforcement agencies get around the state law. Jon Guze, John Locke Foundation director of legal studies, says “equitable sharing” represents a significant threat to property rights.
Carolina Journal Radio No. 788: Veto override puts $23.9 billion General Fund budget in place
Related
Politics should be less important
It might sound odd to hear this from someone who’s been writing a syndicated column on politics for nearly four decades, but politics has become vastly more important in our lives than it should be. Virtually every decision we make in our ostensibly free society is now subject to review, refinement, and reversal by some...
VinFast changes gears again over size of assembly building
In what might be called a case of whiplash, Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast has once again changed plans for its $4 billion electric vehicle factory in Moncure, Chatham County.
CATS gold line streetcar beset with financial woes, federal data reveals
A federal report finds that the cost incurred to move a single passenger one mile is $18.71 on the Charlotte’s Gold Line streetcar. This comes in addition to logistical problems faced by CATS Gold Line rail over the past three years.
State gets pleasant April surprise
I’ve never been more delighted to be mistaken. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column observing that, over the first eight months of the 2023-24 fiscal year, the state’s General Fund revenue was down slightly from what was collected during the first eight months of the previous fiscal year. North Carolina faced no...