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A Diamond Heels polar what-if

Finally, a fun little item for the baseball fans amongst us: New York Mets slugger Pete Alonso says he wanted to be a Tar Heel. “Originally, for the longest time I wanted to go to UNC,” Alonso said during a recent podcast when another of the sport’s biggest stars, L.A. Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts,...

By Ray Gronberg

June 10, 2025

More on that shower in Swannanoa

Gov. Josh Stein and other executive-branch officials are pushing back on State Auditor Dave Boliek’s report that said the state had spent $27.4 million keeping a “community care center” in Swannanoa running after Hurricane Helene. The chief criticism, voiced by GROW NC Director Matt Calabria and other officials, is that the auditor’s...

By Ray Gronberg

June 10, 2025

Helene-recovery advisory group wants additional money to fund landslide-hazard mapping

Gov. Josh Stein’s Helene-recovery advisory group wants legislators to put some money into the budget to fund additional landslide-hazard mapping and the creation of a landslide early warning system. Members of the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Western North Carolina Recovery approved the request Monday. They understood that it might be a struggle to...

By Ray Gronberg

June 10, 2025

Trump wants over-land supersonic flights legalized

You’ll recall that back on May 14, North Carolina U.S. Sens. Ted Budd and Thom Tillis joined colleagues from Utah and Montana in introducing a bill that would order the FAA to rewrite that rules that bar supersonic flight over the U.S. It’s since been overtaken by events. On Friday, President Trump...

By Ray Gronberg

June 9, 2025

Peebles Corp. projects stumble in Durham and Charlotte amid rising costs, delays

Local government leaders in both Durham and Charlotte are trying to figure out how to get a couple of long-stalled public-private redevelopment projects moving again. The common thread in both is the involvement of Florida-based Peebles Corp.. Charlotte officials have been working with Peebles since 2016 on the Brooklyn Village project, which targets...

By Ray Gronberg

June 9, 2025

An impasse with CVS Caremark?

State Treasurer Brad Briner and his aides say the State Health Plan’s relationship with its pharmacy benefits manager, CVS Caremark, has “reached an untenable impasse.” Things have deteriorated to the point that the plan’s management is “evaluating its options to recover money owed and to determine its future relationship with Caremark,”...

By Ray Gronberg

June 6, 2025

Another data center, this time in Madison

With Amazon announces plans for a $10 billion data center campus, a similar $1 billion project on the other side of the state can get overlooked. But Rockingham County officials are celebrating just as hard as their counterparts in Richmond County, thanks to data-center operator WhiteFiber’s decision to set up...

By Ray Gronberg

June 6, 2025

Boliek rains on a shower

State Auditor Dave Boliek’s staff estimates that it cost the state $27.4 million for a Texas-based contractor to install and operate a “community care station” in Swannanoa in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The station opened last Oct. 23 at Swannanoa’s Owen Pool, operated for 189 days and provided showers, restrooms, a...

By Ray Gronberg

June 6, 2025

Senate overhauls House Healthcare Bill, adds price transparency and limits AI in coverage denials

Today’s going to be an odds-and-ends kinda newsletter. There’s been a lot going on that’s gotten overshadowed by the House’s work to develop an energy-bill compromise. We start with healthcare policy. On Wednesday, the Senate passed House Bill 434, the House’s prior-authorization reform bill, after gutting and replacing it with the substance and...

By Ray Gronberg

June 6, 2025

A $10B data center campus for Richmond County

All of the afternoon’s discussion of energy policy followed the announcement that Amazon will invest at least $10 billion in building a new data center campus in Richmond County, near the South Carolina border 80 miles east of Charlotte. The Amazon Web Services project should come with at least 500...

By Ray Gronberg

June 5, 2025

NC House advances bill to let Duke Energy recover plant costs sooner

House leaders are shooting for a Tuesday floor vote on a bill that would make it easier for Duke Energy to recover power-plant construction costs before a facility’s ready to go on line. They’ve ditched the original Senate bill and come up with their own counter, rewriting Senate Bill 266, which...

By Ray Gronberg

June 5, 2025

House prepping a counter-offer on energy bill

So far, there’s been little obvious progress in the House on the consideration of Senate Bill 261, which proposes to make it easier for Duke Energy to pass along to customers the construction costs of new power plants before they go online. But that’s about to change. A draft rewrite of...

By Ray Gronberg

June 4, 2025

NC bill would limit labor inspectors’ role in private lawsuits

Legislators seem inclined to make it harder to call on N.C. Department of Labor inspectors to provide information to parties involved in private lawsuits. A Labor Department agency request, House Bill 568 passed that chamber in April on a 72-42 vote, and is now pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It could...

By Ray Gronberg

June 4, 2025

N.C. near tops in revenue gains from migration

North Carolina ranks third nationally in a study of the states that are benefiting the most from the movement of taxpayers and their dollars from state to states. The report from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation reckons that Florida gained $196 billion in net adjusted gross income over the past decade due...

By Ray Gronberg

June 3, 2025

NC Senate debates legal shield for herbicide makers

The issues surrounding raw milk have gotten most of the attention in the Senate’s debate about this session’s farm act, but there’s also a debate going on about herbicides and any legal liability associated with them. Senate Bill 639 includes a provision that says the manufacturer of a state-registered pesticide has fulfilled its...

By Ray Gronberg

June 3, 2025