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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

Student visas and North Carolina

The Trump administration’s crackdowns on student visas affect a sector that as of the 2023-24 academic year was bringing 24,468 international students and $914.5 million to North Carolina’s economy. According to the annual “Open Doors” report from the Institute of International Education — also funded by the U.S. State Department — more than three-quarters...

By Ray Gronberg

June 2, 2025

Dueling strategies for addressing DMV’s problems

Gov. Josh Stein and new DMV commissioner Paul Tine are pledging to work with legislators and State Auditor Dave Boliek to improve the operations of the beleaguered agency. “We are tackling this problem head-on,” Stein said, even as his aides noted that his budget proposal and the House’s agree DMV...

By Ray Gronberg

June 2, 2025

Energy study targets 2026 report

As for UNC Chapel Hill’s energy study, campus officials say they’ve hired Irvine, California’s Salas O’Brien to help them figure out the institution’s need’s and a road map for achieving them. UNC Chapel Hill’s energy services chief, Tony Millette, says the engineering firm “will give us the big picture” and has already “worked...

By Ray Gronberg

May 30, 2025

Trustee questions dorm-construction process

Speaking of dorm space, UNC Chapel Hill trustees this month gave Roberts’ team permission to permission to demolish a building to make way for a new dormitory and hire a construction manager at risk to run the project. The goal, University Architect Evan Yassky said, is to have “just over 700 beds”...

By Ray Gronberg

May 30, 2025

UNC’s enrollment plans spark unusual town-gown harmony

If you’re at all familiar with how town-gown politics usually roll in Chapel Hill, the lack of public dispute about UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee Roberts’ hopes of boosting the flagship university’s enrollment is … unusual, to put it mildly. But there might be a reason for that. Namely, hope....

By Ray Gronberg

May 30, 2025