The Associated Press A veteran North Carolina Republican legislator announced Wednesday that she will run next year for the state Supreme Court, seeking the seat currently held by Democratic Associate Justice Anita Earls, who is already preparing for a reelection bid. Rep. Sarah Stevens of Surry County said in a news release posted on social […]
Inside UNC Charlotte With a new gift of $24.9 million, The Leon Levine Foundation is expanding its enduring support for the Levine Scholars Program, UNC Charlotte’s signature merit-based scholarship that attracts top-tier high school students from across the country. “This program continues to reflect the very best of what higher education can offer — opportunity, […]
Chantal Brown/Education NC During a hefty House K-12 Education Committee meeting on Tuesday, lawmakers discussed bills ranging from math reform and school performance grades to publishing the salaries of district central office staff. Not every bill advanced unanimously or without discussion, but 14 education bills did move forward in the House on Tuesday. Here’s a […]
Becky Johnson/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer When Haywood County Schools Superintendent Trevor Putnam got a call asking the school system to be featured in a commercial promoting the N.C. Education Lottery, he couldn’t believe his ears. Lottery promoters wanted school systems to share stories about how helpful lottery funding is. “The commercial had folks saying ‘Golly, we […]
Coastal Review Online An area branch of the NAACP has joined the fight to keep Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont from shielding thousands of pages of documents from the public eye. The Southern Coalition for Social Justice on Tuesday filed a motion on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People […]
Rep. Jimmy Dixon’s drive to repeal a property tax break for solar-power farms cleared its first committee hurdle on Wednesday, after he offered a compromise to critics of the move. As endorsed by the House’s Agriculture and Environment committee, House Bill 729 now proposes to phase in the repeal over four years, starting in fiscal […]
Former state Rep. Paul Tine is set to become the next commissioner of the Division of Motor Vehicles. N.C. Department of Transportation officials announced the appointment on Wednesday, saying that Tine will start work on May 6. He replaces incumbent Commissioner Wayne Goodwin, a former House member, labor commissioner and state Democratic Party chairman. Goodwin’s […]
Johnston County’s senator is pushing a bill he says could simplify his county’s water-resources planning. Senate Bill 605 surfaced in the chamber’s Agriculture Committee on Wednesday and is likely to receive further review there next week. As amended, Sen. Benton Sawrey’s bill would make it considerably easier to transfer water between some tributaries of the […]
House members have approved and sent to the Senate a bill that would allow North Carolina’s treasurer to place up to 5% of the state’s investments into cryptocurrency-based exchange-traded funds. Wednesday’s 71-44 vote on a scaled-back version of House Bill 92 followed a 24-minute floor debate that saw opponents maintain that crypto is simply too […]
House members voted 106-9 on Tuesday to pass their chamber’s version of a bill that would put some new restrictions on pharmacy benefits managers like CVS Caremark. Included in House Bill 163 is a ban on spread pricing, the practice of a PBM billing insurers for a drug anything else than what the PBM pays […]
Last year’s deannexation of a portion of Summerfield may prompt a broader review of the state’s minimum-services “paper towns” originally founded to avoid annexation by larger cities. House Bill 801 cleared the chamber’s State and Local Government Committee on Tuesday and, pending a stop in Rules, appears headed to a floor vote. If passed, it […]
But it remains to be seen whether one of the session’s potentially most significant and controversial pieces of legislation, House Bill 765, will make it through the chamber by the (nominal) May 8 deadline. This is the bill that would revamp the state’s land-use laws, to address housing shortages by among other things setting density […]
State Auditor Dave Boliek reports that the state treasurer’s office was managing $172.8 billion in cash and investments for the state at the end of 2024, just as Brad Briner was taking over from former Treasurer Dale Folwell. This is the fruit of a statutorily mandated check whenever the treasurer’s office changes hands, “to determine […]
A Michigan-based interest group says a poll it commissioned found widespread opposition to the idea of allowing companies like Duke Energy to bill customers for the cost of new power plants while they’re still under construction. Opposition to “construction work in progress” provisions like the one embedded in Senate Bill 261 cuts across party lines, […]
My boss, Dave Mildenberg, took a look last week at Wolfspeed’s problems, which include a widely-shorted stock and a $575 million balloon payment to note-holders that’s due next year. Oh, and the country’s new president doesn’t like the CHIPS Act, which is supposed to help underwrite the cost of Wolfspeed’s new wafer factory near Siler […]
