A little more than two years ago, a clean energy record was broken. For the first time, a regional transmission organization met more than 90% of its electric demand, called load, with renewable power. But if you don’t follow the electric industry closely, you might be surprised where it happened....

On a near-perfect spring afternoon, a crowd of mostly Black retirees and senior citizens poured into Martin Street Baptist Church in Southeast Raleigh to learn about strategies to lower property taxes through Wake County’s appeals process. In their neighborhoods, higher property values have brought higher property taxes. That, in turn,...

Norfolk Southern shareholders delivered a split verdict today, sparing CEO Alan Shaw while electing three of activist investor Ancora Holdings’ insurgent director candidates and ousting its independent chair, Amy Miles. Investors sent a clear message that ends the bitter proxy fight. They backed Ancora’s desire for change but sought to...

Republican primary voters are headed back to the polls next Tuesday for a rare statewide runoff election for lieutenant governor and state auditor. Until last week, most of the attention in this month’s runoff was focused on the 13th Congressional District. But after former President Donald Trump endorsed former federal...

Interstate 95 is the busiest highway on the east coast, running from Miami to Maine straight through North Carolina. For 50 miles, I-95 runs through Nash County. So far in 2024, deputies there have stopped over 1,000 people for various reasons on the interstate and U.S. 64 and 264. Most...

A Catholic school in North Carolina had the right to fire a gay teacher who announced his marriage on social media a decade ago, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday, reversing a judge’s earlier decision. A panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, reversed a...

In North Carolina, annual state funding for public schools totaled $11.6 billion in 2023-24. Federal funding, not including COVID-19 relief funding, provided another $1.10 billion. Local appropriations and supplemental taxes brought in $3.58 billion. That should count as big business. The K-12 education industry includes our state’s Department of Public...

Randy Abbott lost his daughter to a drug overdose in 2015. No one called for help in time. Diannee Carden’s son died from a heroin overdose in 2012. No one called for help in time. As North Carolina continues to lose more people to overdoses every year — a record...

Pactiv Evergreen, owner of the shuttered papermill in Canton, has been working to clean up two separate seeps leaking toxic substances into the Pigeon River under an administrative order of consent (AOC) with the Environmental Protection Agency. While the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) has been working with...

A key environmental board controlled by Republican appointees is stalling efforts to regulate chemicals that have contaminated North Carolina drinking water supplies, including forever chemicals and an industrial solvent that is a likely human carcinogen. North Carolina does not have enforceable surface water standards for the chemicals despite scientific evidence...

Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan, who was first elected to that job in 2013, announced at the very end of the Greensboro City Council meeting on Tuesday, May 7, that she would not be seeking another term as mayor next year. Vaughan prefaced her announcement by speaking passionately about the accomplishments...

After facing a lawsuit related to alleged wrongful detentions and arrests, several defendants have been dropped from the case against them. eCourts is a $100 million software overhaul for the North Carolina court system. It launched more than a year ago, with Wake, Johnston, Harnett and Lee Counties as the...

Private groups, including many aligned with conservative Christian churches and activists, have received hundreds of millions of dollars in state government funding in recent years. But they aren’t being transparent about their operations, Democratic state senators said during a press conference Wednesday. It’s an accusation strongly denied by some of...

The chair of Henderson County’s Republican Party has been charged with assault on a female after a fellow GOP county officer said he grabbed her forcefully. Brett Callaway, 63, the head of Western North Carolina’s most prominent county GOP organization, was charged with the misdemeanor after summons issued on behalf...

North Carolina’s charter school board voted Monday to let two low-performing schools in Charlotte expand dramatically next year. The votes were a test of new powers granted to the charter board last year. Until last year, charter schools that had been designated low-performing couldn’t expand by more than 20% a...