On Friday, Governor Josh Stein’s office announced a new round of appointments to boards and commissions across North Carolina.
NCI approved $5.2 million in pilot grants for eight research projects at seven NC public universities.
North Carolina taxpayers are paying Merck, the $210 billion dollar pharmaceutical company that produces Viagra, among other drugs, some $12.5 million in tax incentives to build in Durham. North Carolina has a robust history of giving targeted tax breaks to encourage particular businesses. The state’s Job Development Investment Grant Program alone will need $71.6 million...
RALEIGH — N.C. air quality officials bankrolled a new national nonprofit that seeks to persuade companies, organizations, and state and local governments to report their greenhouse gas emissions in hopes of curbing climate change.
Doing a sales job on a biodefense lab in Granville County hardly qualifies as legitimate expenditure of Golden LEAF funds.
The Easley administration has little time left to repair its legacy of hoisting taxes and a curtain of secrecy around government.
The NC Department of Commerce chose not to retain a UNC-Chapel Hill professor to evaluate its main tax-incentives program. Surely this had nothing to do with managing the state’s PR.
Gov. Easley's modest proposal for a cap on state debt has pro-spending interests seeing red — primarily because they want to see North Carolina government more in the red in coming years.
The Raleigh News & Observer is sounding the alarm about a commission to sell state-owned land. But they apparently have little concern about the state buying up private land.
RALEIGH — A workshop conducted in late March, led by experts in getting economic development incentives from state and local governments, shows that large companies are now banding together to learn how to extract as much public money as possible from elected officials. The seminar taught dozens of corporate government-relations executives how to “Turn Your State Government Relations Department from a Money Pit into a Cash Cow.” It urged companies in part to “involve elected officials in press announcements;” to “thank everybody a zillion times;” and to “be mindful of the election and legislative cycle.” Two NC lawmakers criticized the presentation and what it signified.
An incentives grant made by state officials last month may have violated a key clause of its authorizing legislation. And so the state's response is, essentially, so what?
