NC terror suspect killed in overseas drone strike

(Raleigh News & Observer) The Obama administration confirmed Wednesday that a Raleigh man wanted on federal terrorism charges was killed in an overseas drone strike.

Jude Kenan Mohammad is one of four Americans confirmed as being killed by drones in either Pakistan or Yeman since 2009, according to a letter sent to Congress by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Holder’s letter gave no details about exactly when or where Mohammad was killed.

Mohammad was one of eight Raleigh Muslims indicted by federal authorities in 2009 as part of an alleged homegrown terror plot to attack the U.S. Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va. Federal authorities said Mohammad, then 19 years old, fled the country before he could be arrested to join jihadi fighters in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Mohammad’s mother and four sisters back in North Carolina had occasional contact with Mohammad through phone calls and Facebook, but those messages stopped in late 2011.

Elena Mohammad said Wednesday she had heard her son was dead more than a year ago, though she wouldn’t say how she received word. There was no notification of her son’s death from federal authorities, she said.

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House Finance chair gives up gavel, blasts Speaker

(WRAL) Longtime House lawmaker Rep. Robert Brawley, R-Iredell, handed back his Finance gavel Wednesday afternoon with a blistering public letter against fellow Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis.

In his letter, read aloud during Wednesday’s House session, Brawley says Tillis pressured him over House Bill 557, Brawley’s bill to increase the territory area for local broadband provider MI Connections in Mooresville.

“You slamming my office door shut, standing in front of me and stating that you have a business relationship with Time Warner,” Brawley wrote. “MI Connections is being operated just as any other free enterprise system and should be allowed to do so without the restrictions placed on them by the proponents of Time Warner.”

H557 was referred to Government, which didn’t take it up before crossover.

Brawley also blames Tillis for blocking House Bill 245, his “little bill” to de-annex 23 acres near Troutman.

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Group home residents facing possible crisis again

(WRAL) Residents of group homes for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled could find themselves without somewhere to live come July 1, a repeat of a crisis they faced earlier this year, and lawmakers crafting a new state budget say they are stumped for a long-term solution to the problem.

Federal and state regulators changed the rules for who is eligible for so-called “personal care services” last year in an effort to keep from running afoul of laws that require those with mental illness to be kept out of institutions if at all possible.

That change change in rules meant many residents of group homes, settings where workers ensure people take their medicine, brush their teeth and carry out other activities of daily life, lost funding for those services. Operators of group homes say without that personal care service money, they won’t be able to continue serving those residents.

“If we don’t get some movement from the federal government, that’s where we’re heading,” said Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell.

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NC demonstration against GOP lawmakers grows

(Raleigh News & Observer) The crowd inside the state North Carolina Legislative Building has grown larger each Monday as has the number of demonstrators arrested by General Assembly police.

The Rev. William Barber, the head of the state NAACP and chief architect of the weekly Moral Monday demonstrations in the capital city, watched from behind the police line on Monday evening as demonstrators united in message to the GOP-led General Assembly waited to be walked out by the approaching officers.

The chanting, songs and political speeches that had rumbled through the second-floor rotunda were muted by the repeated zip, zip, zip of General Assembly police pulling out plastic ties to bind the wrists of the protesters.

Rep. John Blust, a Republican from Guilford County, peeked in on the demonstration and had words for the organizers within earshot.

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FBI: Man fatally shot in Boston bombing probe

(Asheville Citizen-Times) The FBI is leaving open the question of who fired the fatal shot that killed a man being questioned by authorities in the Boston bombing probe.

The bureau initially said that an FBI agent fired the fatal shot when the man being interviewed, Ibragim Todashev, initiated a violent confrontation.

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Asheville Tea Party protests IRS

(Asheville Citizen-Times) Tea party supporters protested in front of the Internal Revenue Service building downtown on Tuesday with signs calling for an end to the agency as it continues to weather criticism for targeting conservative groups.

“The IRS is absolutely out of control,” said Jane Bilello, chairwoman of the Asheville Tea Party. “They are targeting conservative groups and it is an attack on our First Amendment rights.”

Her group attempted to get nonprofit status in 2009 as a 501(c)(3), the designation for a charity, but the government told her it disagreed with the request, she said.

She then asked the IRS to send her the paperwork to file as a 501(c)(4), which is a nonprofit status that allows for political activity. Contributions would not be tax exempt like they would be for a charity.

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NC Senate ups conservation dollars

(Asheville Citizen Times) On the heels of an announcement of a new state forest in Western North Carolina, conservation groups are cautiously applauding the state Senate’s proposed budget, which more than doubles the conservation funding levels from those in the governor’s budget

The funding, however, is still a mere fraction of original levels, and one WNC lawmaker said the GOP-led General Assembly is “abandoning the environment.”

The Senate is expected to vote on the budget this week.

Land for Tomorrow, a statewide coalition that supports land and water conservation, says it is in favor of the proposed budget, which would consolidate two of the state’s four existing conservation trust funds — the Clean Water Management Trust Fund and the Natural Heritage Trust Fund — into one fund, called the Water and Land Conservation Fund.

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Berger ousted from New Hanover board

(Star News Online) In a history-making move, Brian Berger has been removed from the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners.

Following a four-hour-long amotion hearing Monday afternoon, the commissioners voted to remove Berger from the five-member board. The vote was 3-2, with Berger and Commissioner Jonathan Barfield dissenting.

This is the first time an amotion has been successfully used to remove a North Carolina elected official in nearly a century, making the Berger case the new precedent for the state.

The amotion hearing was approved by Berger’s fellow commissioners in April after calls for his resignation went nowhere. Monday’s hearing took place immediately following the commissioners’ regularly scheduled board meeting at the county’s Historic Courthouse.

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NC budget would close WNC prison, treatment center

(Asheville Citizen-Times) A local prison and a drug and alcohol abuse treatment center in Black Mountain would be closed under the state Senate’s proposed budget.

Closing Buncombe Correctional Center, a minimum-security facility off Riverside Drive with a capacity of 182 inmates, would save $2.4 million a year and eliminate 48 jobs, according to the Senate budget proposal released late Sunday night.

Buncombe Correctional is located next to the much larger Craggy Correctional Center, a medium-capacity prison that would remain open.

Julian F. Keith Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Center is an inpatient facility with 80 beds on Tabernacle Road in Black Mountain.

The state says the center has 214 employees. Detailed budget figures were not available Monday, but the Senate proposal says closing it and the two other state treatment centers, which also have 80 beds each, would save $50.6 million a year.

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NC Senate proposes defunding Rural Economic Development Center

(Raleigh News & Observer) In their quest to dismantle commissions and organizations created by Democrats in past years, N.C. Senate Republicans are taking aim at the granddaddy of them all: the state’s Rural Economic Development Center.

The proposed Senate budget defunds the Rural Center, which received about $16.6 million in the state budget last year. It also creates a new division with the Department of Commerce to oversee rural economic development.

The fight is over money, who gets to spend it, and who gets credit for spending it.

The Rural Center commands considerable power, doling out grants in 85 counties it classifies as rural, almost a third of which are no longer considered rural by the federal census authorities.

It has paid out more than $600 million in aid for sewer, water, building rehab and other infrastructure projects, and estimates it has created 33,000 jobs since 1987.

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Senate Budget Would Require EV/Hybrid Drivers To Pay More

(Carolina Journal) Drivers of some of the most fuel-efficient cars in North Carolina would be hit with extra license registration fees under the proposed Senate budget.

It’s an effort by senators to recoup money from motorists who are not paying the same amount drivers of traditional vehicles pay in gasoline taxes.

“They’re using the highways; gas tax is funding highway maintenance and highway construction,” said Sen. Neal Hunt, R-Wake, co-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “All the electric vehicles are using the highways. They are currently not paying anything. So we are trying to have them contribute to the maintenance and upkeep of the highways.”

The proposed Senate budget would add $100 annually for electric vehicle registration and $50 annually for hybrid vehicles.

The surcharges would be in addition to the $28 annual fee already charged to motorists.

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Hendersonville City Taxes Won’t Go Up In New Fiscal Year, But Fees Will

(WHKP) Hendersonville City Council decided in a budget workshop on Friday there will be NO property tax increase for city taxpayers in the new fiscal year that starts July 1st. Lee Galloway, the interim city manager, had recommended a three cent tax increase to raise about $480,000 in revenue to pay for the final phase of the Main Street project, to build the new fire station on Sugarloaf Road, and to pay for a new fire truck. City Council opted instead to take the money out of the city’s savings, or fund balance.

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NC Community colleges, high schools emphasize training for manufacturing jobs

(Raleigh News & Observer) Momentum is building in North Carolina to better train workers for more sophisticated manufacturing jobs to erase a so-called skills gap in the workforce.

At a Raleigh summit Friday hosted by the N.C. Community College System, business, government and education leaders brainstormed ways to pump up training and education programs to meet the state’s reawakening manufacturing sector.

Meanwhile, at a separate event in Apex, a Triangle consortium of businesses and private schools launched an engineering apprenticeship program for high school students.

North Carolina’s unemployment rate finally dropped below 9 percent in April, but it is still stubbornly high compared with other states; at the same time, some employers can’t find workers with the right kind of skills to fill today’s increasingly technical jobs.

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NC General Assembly police defend arrests of demonstrators

(Raleigh News & Observer) Retired Methodist minister Vernon Tyson of Raleigh was among the 200 demonstrators at the Legislative Building last week for the weekly Moral Monday demonstration, protesting new initiatives from the GOP-led General Assembly.

Many of the demonstrators went into the Legislative Building clapping, singing, chanting, hoisting placards and raising their voices with expectations of arrest. But Tyson, 83, said he entered quietly and reflectively to show support and witness the effort to change political course.

Tyson sat on the same bench he had the week before. When that was moved, he stood against the wall, watching and listening. Then General Assembly law enforcement officers asked him to move or risk arrest.

“I said ‘Why?’,” Tyson told filmmaker Eric Preston hours later on a video posted to YouTube. “They said, ‘Well, you’re trespassing,’ and I said, ‘Well, I’m a tax-paying citizen and this is the people’s house and I don’t see how I can trespass in a house that I helped to build – and I’m not blocking anybody and I’m not demonstrating. I’m not singing. I’m not clapping my hands. I’m not making any noise. The only people I talk to are you.’ ”

The officers came back minutes later and again urged Tyson to move, then issued one more warning before arresting him along with 48 others.

As protesters gear up to assemble again Monday to highlight concerns about welfare cuts, health care funding, voting rights, racial justice, tax reform, environmental deregulation, workers rights and more, legal analysts are raising questions about whether the General Assembly police are within their power to arrest the nonviolent demonstrators.

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In General Assembly, push continues to conceal gun data

(Charlotte Observer) One of the only surviving bills in the N.C. General Assembly related to gun control would close permit information to the public, making it nearly impossible for groups to watchdog how the government issues licenses to buy hundreds of thousands of handguns.

At many as 14 other bills concerning guns died last week when they failed to pass at least one chamber of the legislature before Thursday’s deadline.

The bill to seal the permit records, however, passed the House nearly two months ago and seems headed for approval in the Republican-controlled Senate, lawmakers said.

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