2011 Metro Mayors Winter Meeting February 24-25
The Metro Mayors will be meeting in Greensboro February 24-25. Registration is now open by clicking below. The agenda is posted below also.
While I Was Healing…. Big Changes in Raleigh
I have always thought if Hollywood made a movie about my life they would cast Sandra Bullock to play me. (Pause here to chuckle at my ridiculous ego for thinking I have that interesting a life or that I fancy myself resembling Sandra Bullock.) Reflecting on the last month in politics I think it would […]
Tom Apodaca: (See comments on annexation, eminent domain, and local sales tax) (Asheville Citizen Times)
State Sen. Tom Apodaca, who will head the Senate’s powerful Rules Committee when the General Assembly reconvenes in late January, said Republicans likely will consider controversial budget-slashing solutions such as mergers of county and city school systems and cuts in education system administrative positions.
That could have a direct impact on Buncombe and Asheville, which have […]
GOP gets jump-start on power in Raleigh (Charlotte Observer)
The legislature’s new leaders prepare for tough work to bridge the budget shortfall.
RALEIGH Republican lawmakers are busy preparing for their historic transfer of power, taking a series of steps aimed at both confronting a projected $3.5 billion budget shortfall as well as mastering the mechanics of running a branch of government that has been in […]
Gov. Perdue says universities must rely on private support (Wilmington Star News)
During a tour and discussion Monday afternoon at the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Marine Sciences building, Gov. Bev Perdue stressed that although the university system is still key to the state’s economic growth, the private sector is going to have to fill some of the budget shortfalls.
“We have to have the private sector come […]
Highway study: Work takes too long and costs too much
Gathered officials call for more regional coordination.
Regional transportation officials gathered Monday to find new ways to deliver projects as budgets shrink and state government turns to decentralized planning.
The basis of the meeting was a five-month study of the Charlotte region’s five transportation planning groups and similar organizations elsewhere. Centralina Council of Governments and the N.C. […]
Cities sweat funding as Congress picks at ‘earmarks’ (USA TODAY)
WASHINGTON — Cities are bracing to lose millions of dollars in funding for transportation and community projects, from subway lines to youth centers, because of a renewed push in Congress to ban lawmaker-directed spending known as “earmarks.”
With the incoming Republican majority in the House of Representatives committed to ending the practice and the Senate facing […]
NC legislators want to increase age for adult crimes (Asheville Citizen Times)
ASHEVILLE — A capacity audience Wednesday urged the North Carolina General Assembly to raise the age at which children can be tried as adults in the state.
Youths who are 16 and 17 years old are currently charged as adults in the state. The law is different than all the states that surround North Carolina. In […]
Fiscal Mission Isn’t Impossible (John Hood)
RALEIGH – The classic spy show Mission: Impossible was exciting, excellent – and misnamed.
At the beginning of each episode, the Jim Phelps character played by Peter Graves would receive a recording that laid out a seemingly impossible mission. After the tape famously self-destructed within five seconds, Phelps and his team would then show that the […]
GOP says too late to redistrict now (ENC.com)
A new Public Policy Polling survey shows considerable support for having an independent redistricting commission to redraw North Carolina’s political maps next year. A plurality even would support calling a special legislative session to set up such a commission.
However, Republican legislative leaders who had supported setting up an independent redistricting commission to redraw political maps […]
