RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK — Gov. Pat McCrory on Wednesday hinted that after voters decide the fate of a $2 billion bond referendum on March 15, he might push for more bond money, this time for roads. McCrory called for more than $! billion in borrowing for transportation in his initial bond proposal Lawmakers opted not to include any money for transportation in the bond package voters will consider.
RALEIGH — Josh Howard, the chairman of the State Board of Elections, has announced that he will step down effective Jan. 1, 2016. He made the announcement Tuesday during a board meeting. Howard told Carolina Journal he was stepping down because the unpaid job was taking about 20 hours weekly, and he wanted to manage his health better, saying his cholesterol levels had been rising to uncomfortable levels.
RALEIGH — In what is evolving into a war of words and political philosophies, Gov. Pat McCrory said he would pursue what Attorney General Roy Cooper would not — formal opposition to a Virginia transgender student’s lawsuit that could force North Carolina to allow both sexes to use the same K-12 public school bathrooms and locker rooms.
RALEIGH — The Obama administration has issued a directive ordering school authorities in North Carolina and around the country to allow transgender students to use sex-specific bathrooms designed for students of the opposite sex, “and is threatening resistant schools with legal action and loss of federal funding,” Gov. Pat McCrory said in a news release asking Attorney General Roy Cooper to intervene in opposition to the directive.
RALEIGH — Late Monday, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, announced that Cooper would not file a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit filed by a transgender student in Virginia, challenging the school district’s refusal to let the student use public bathrooms assigned to students of the opposite biological sex. Meantime, Cooper's campaign for governor called McCrory a bully for attempting to participate in the lawsuit.
RALEIGH — Lawmakers spent two hours Wednesday grilling the state budget director and the public safety secretary over the extension of a prison maintenance contract by a contractor who kept mentioning that, as a campaign contributor, he thought he should get something from the state in return.
RALEIGH — Crediting budget reforms made by the recent session of the General Assembly, Gov. Pat McCrory announced on Thursday the acceleration of four major transportation projects, including the final leg of the eastern section of the Winston-Salem Northern Beltway, the Asheville Connector, The I-485 and Weddington Road interchange, and the Mid-Currituck bridge.
RALEIGH — Voters in five municipalities passed all 16 bond referendums on Tuesday’s ballot, mostly by wide margins, but some political observers caution against reading too much into those results as a way of predicting the passage of a pending $2 billion state bond package, noting that local voters often translate the promises of direct benefits to their communities as reason to support a borrowing measure.
RALEIGH — A nearly eight-year-long legal battle between the state of North Carolina and Alcoa Power Generating Inc. over four hydroelectric dams the company owns and operates on the Yadkin River may be coming to an end. The state last week issued a water quality permit to Alcoa, one of the final impediments preventing the company from receiving a new license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
RALEIGH – State GOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse on Thursday called on Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper to support legislation passed by the General Assembly prohibiting local governments in North Carolina from establishing sanctuary cities that restrict enforcement of immigration laws. Cooper is expected to seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 2016.
RALEIGH — Even though Alcoa Power Generating Inc. has won two more legal battles against the state of North Carolina dealing with the company’s efforts to relicense its four hydroelectric dams on the Yadkin River, the state plans to continue fighting to gain control of those facilities, says a spokesman for one of the agencies involved in the legal battle.
