The full House budget emerged Monday afternoon, and with it the full scope of the chamber GOP caucus’ disagreements with the Senate’s first draft of the spending plan for the 2025-27 biennium. These start with across-the-board salary increases for most state employees of 2.5% in fiscal 2025-26, versus the Senate’s 1.25%. In parallel with this, the House […]
Gov. Josh Stein has asked legislators to allot $845.2 million more to Hurricane Helene recovery, and to re-channel $45.6 million in spending previously earmarked to the effort. Other than setting aside money to match federal aid, the biggest line item in Stein’s request calls for sending $70 million to the Office of State Fire Marshal to help […]
Jennifer Berry Hawes/ProPublica In their last phone call before bed, Janicke Glynn tries to reassure her husband. He is away visiting a sick relative, and a Weather Channel forecast of Hurricane Helene’s imminent collision with the North Carolina mountains is leaving him uneasy. The storm, more than 400 miles wide, is expected to strike their […]
Paige Gross/NC Newsline A footnote in a budget bill U.S. House Republicans are trying to pass before Memorial Day is the first major signal for how Congress may address artificial intelligence legislation, as they seek to create a moratorium on any AI laws at the state level for 10 years. The measure, advanced Wednesday, May […]
Will Hofmann/Asheville Citizen Times Estimates indicate eight major transportation corridor projects in Western North Carolina will cost $2.6 billion as the N.C. Department of Transportation seeks to repair roughly 90 miles of road catastrophically damaged by Tropical Storm Helene. The projects were presented during the May 12 Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina meeting. […]
Gerard Albert III/Blue Ridge Public Radio Farmers in Western North Carolina are still hurting after Hurricane Helene. Between debris cleanup and lost crops, small farms throughout western North Carolina are on the hook for an average of $70,000, according to a study published this month. Most farmers had damage to their land and equipment – […]
Will Atwater/NC Health News People who have been struggling to clean up decades of industrial pollution in the lower Cape Fear River basin are expressing their dismay and anger at a federal delay announced Wednesday on a crackdown on so-called forever chemicals that have fouled their drinking water. That day, the Environmental Protection Agency announced […]
Liz Bell/EducationNC In the last 18 years, Wilkes County has lost 56 child care programs, 67% of its child care capacity. This year, thanks to a scrappy community effort, local leaders saved the county from losing another. Sharon Phillips and her daughter Katy Hinson, owners of PlayWorks Early Care and Learning Center, cut the ribbon […]
Max Tendler/WUNC Radio Some 148 acres of multi-use trails in Wake County’s most popular park close permanently June 1 to make way for an entertainment development from the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority. Trail users are devastated. “When I heard that they were closing, I was very upset, very sad,” said Tres Bruce, a mountain biker who’s […]
Jane Winik Sartwell/Carolina Public Press This summer, 5 million tourists will descend on 200 miles of remote North Carolina coastline. The Outer Banks are idyllic — and popular. But for both those visitors and the area’s 38,000 year-round residents, the vacation paradise has one serious problem: health care access. Dare County Emergency Management Services evacuates […]
Claire Cranford, Ana Despa & Ishita Vaid/The (Duke) Chronicle Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) sent a letter to President Vincent Price May 14 requesting Duke formally end its joint venture with Wuhan University — Duke Kunshan University. The Chronicle has reviewed several of the claims made and assessed their accuracy through […]
Jonathan Bym/The (Southern Pines) Pilot Paul Ross was tired of his weekly cross-country commute for work, so he’s moving his gun manufacturing company closer to where he lives. Ross, who lives in Moore County and runs his Carthage Cattle Co. with his wife, also is president of OA Defense, which has been based in a […]
The leaders of two U.S. House committees have urged Duke University to terminate its relationship with a partner campus in China. Duke’s joint venture with Wuhan University, Duke Kunshan University, has been up and running since 2018 but by facilitating technology transfer is a threat to U.S. national security, the congressmen say. The partnership “is […]
Neither the Senate nor the House has taken up their almost-parallel bills that would authorize another transit-tax referendum in Mecklenburg County, but that doesn’t mean the bills are dead, Senate leader Phil Berger says. “It’s still something that folks are interested in getting across the finish line,” Berger said. “We’ve just continued to have conversations […]
NCInnovation and the children’s hospital are not the only major budgetary and policy differences emerging between the Senate and House appropriators. The House plan, for example, agrees with the Senate’s that the governor’s choice to serve as adjutant general of the N.C. National Guard should receive legislative confirmation. But the Senate would reserve confirmation authority […]
