District Court Judge Pell Cooper of Rocky Mount thinks we got it wrong. We’ll let you, and others, decide. The judge, who’s the brother of Gov. Roy Cooper and has been on the bench since 1999, took issue with a recent Carolina Journal story by Don Carrington. It asserts that Pell Cooper’s role as the...
District Court Judge Pell Cooper, Gov. Roy Cooper’s brother, manages three businesses — a potential violation of state judicial rules designed to prevent conflicts of interest by judges. In 2009, state officials forced another district court judge who refused to leave two corporate boards to resign from the bench. [See editor’s note at end of...
Tracing the ownership of the land hosting a Nash County solar farm built on a former cow pasture is complicated business. [Editor’s note: The headline of this story was changed to reflect new information from Judge Pell Cooper. See correction below.] On his Statement of Economic Interest covering 2014, then-Attorney General Roy Cooper, in November...
The Carolina Connector, a $272 million Edgecombe County transit hub for CSX railroad, would receive taxpayer subsidies from the state of North Carolina of at least $700,000 for each of the 149 jobs the rail project is projected to create — for jobs that are expected to pay an average of $64,000 per year. That’s...
McClatchy’s papers (including suburban editions) account for about a fifth of the state’s total newspaper circulation.
RALEIGH — Republican Jeff Collins highlights the state’s fiscal problems. Incumbent Rep. Randy Stewart says “the sky is not falling.”
Politics should yield to practicality in the debate over a university's fate.
RALEIGH — Newspaper editorial writers across North Carolina and law enforcement officials reacted swiftly to a state auditor’s report Oct. 22 that confirmed U.S. Rep. Frank Ballance operated a personal and apparently political slush fund behind the facade of a nonprofit humanitarian organization. One newspaper called for Ballance to resign his Congressional seat, while others excoriated him for mismanagement, a lack of candor, or for "chiseling" the taxpayers. A federal investigation of Ballance is reportedly continuing.
RALEIGH — Missing from the state auditor’s report on the John A. Hyman Foundation last week was $140,000 the nonprofit group received from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. State Auditor Ralph Campbell’s critical report on the foundation headed by U.S. Rep. Frank Ballance listed a total of $2,115,000 in state funds it had received from the Department of Corrections since 1994. Meanwhile, a federal grand jury is reportedly scheduled to hear evidence from a criminal investigation of Ballance and the Hyman Foundation.
RALEIGH — A few months after being sworn in to Congress, Rep. Frank W. Ballance, Jr. (D-1st District) is trying to answer questions about accounting procedures of a nonprofit foundation of which he is the chairman. The foundation failed until recently to file financial statements required by the state and the Internal Revenue Service. The State Auditor and the IRS are investigating the organization and its substance-abuse program. In addition, the State Board of Elections is investigating Ballance for his failure to respond to requests that he explain discrepancies on his 1999 and 2000 Financial Disclosure Reports.
