News

Perdue vetoes NC death penalty bias law rollback

(SF Gate via AP) Gov. Beverly Perdue on Thursday vetoed legislation that rolls back a landmark North Carolina law allowing death row inmates to prove their sentence resulted from racial bias.

The Racial Justice Act directs judges to reduce a sentence to life in prison if they find race was a significant factor in a convicted murderer receiving a death sentence or in the composition of jurors hearing a case. Only Kentucky has a similar law.

“As long as I am governor, I will fight to make sure the death penalty stays on the books in North Carolina. But it has to be carried out fairly — free of prejudice,” Perdue said in a statement.

The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the bill by margins that would appear to be enough for an override of the Democratic governor’s veto. Legislative leaders said they would try to push the legislation into law over Perdue’s effort to block it.

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CBS: Roberts switched vote on health care

(USA Today) The decision by Chief Justice John Roberts to uphold President Obama’s health care law will be studied for years — and now details are emerging from the normally leak-proof Supreme Court itself.

Jan Crawford of CBS News, citing “two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations,” reports that Roberts indeed switched his vote after siding with four other conservative justices who supported striking down the law.

“Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said,” reports Crawford.

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Legislature makes Asheville airport independent

(Asheville Citizen Times) The state House on Thursday approved a bill that makes Asheville Regional Airport an independent government agency as of Sunday, the last step needed before the measure becomes law.

The impact of the widely expected move will be mostly behind the scenes, and passengers and other area residents will “see no differences,” said airport Director Lew Bleiweis.

The bill moves ownership of the airport from city government to an independent authority, changes the board that governs the airport to give Henderson County more representation, strips city government of zoning control over the airport and streamlines some administrative procedures.

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N.C. Senate’s inaction could give feds control of state’s health exchanges

(Raleigh News Observer) North Carolina risks losing control of the health insurance marketplace it has to establish under the federal law the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Thursday if it hesitates to authorize it much longer.

The state is also assessing the financial impact of adding more than half a million people to the Medicaid program as a result of the court’s ruling.

States have a deadline of Jan. 1 to have their insurance exchanges certified by the federal government. Those that don’t will be required to have federally run exchanges, although they can apply to transition to state-run programs in subsequent years.

The benefits exchanges are supposed to begin operation in January 2014, providing people without insurance and small businesses a regulated marketplace to shop for coverage

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Audit: DOT employees in Haywood wasted thousands

(Asheville Citizen-Times) State Department of Transportation employees in Haywood County and other mountain counties wasted thousands of dollars through poor management of equipment, questionable purchases and other means, the Office of the State Auditor said this morning.

An investigative report by the office says:

– A project to improve roads in Maggie Valley originally estimated at $1.8 million cost $5.5 million in part because DOT workers did not follow proper procedures for use of rental equipment.

– A DOT employee based in the Division 14 office in Jackson County who was responsible for rental equipment contracts did engineering work on the side for the company that got about half of Division 14’s rental business.

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Work on new sex-ed curriculum moves ahead

(The McDowell News) In July, a select group of educators will join forces and start putting together a sex-ed curriculum guide that follows the requirements of the Healthy Youth Act.

During June’s Board of Education Meeting, Assistant Superintendent Becky Pearson reviewed her plans for creating the curriculum with board members.

Pearson’s strategy to create a new sex-ed curriculum comes after a specially called meeting in May on the schools’ former sex-education plan, Proud Choices. At that meeting, board members decided to seek an alternative to the Proud Choices program, which some said did not conform to the community’s beliefs.

“As you all know, I brought you up to date on these plans at the last board meeting,” said Pearson. “Since then, we’ve moved forward with our plans to hold training to create the new curriculum during the week of July 9.”

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Local Room Tax To Be Increased, State Senate Bill Wants to Earmark The Tax Money For The Flat Rock Playhouse

(WHKP) State Senate Bill Says Flat Rock Playhouse To Receive Money From An Increase In County Occupancy Tax

The North Carolina General Assembly has been putting the finishing touches this week on giving authority to the Henderson County commissioners to raise the “occupancy” or motel/hotel room tax by a penny. The tax is used to finance Travel and Tourism in Henderson County, but the state SENATE bill authorizing the tax increase earmarks the money from the increase for the Flat Rock Playhouse for a period of three years. The Playhouse is already receiving taxpayer’s money allocated by Hendersonville city council and by the Henderson County commissioners.

The state HOUSE bill, introduced by Representative Chuck McGrady, re-structures local Travel and Tourism and makes it more an independent local “authority” and authorizes the county commissioners to raise the room tax a penny.. Even though there are difference in the state house and senate bills, those differences are expected to be resolved this week and the room tax increase to is expected to become law.

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High court upholds key part of Obama health law

(AP) The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the individual insurance requirement at the heart of President Barack Obama’s historic health care overhaul.

The decision means the huge overhaul, still only partly in effect, will proceed and pick up momentum over the next several years, affecting the way that countless Americans receive and pay for their personal medical care. The ruling also hands Obama a campaign-season victory in rejecting arguments that Congress went too far in requiring most Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty.

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Witnesses: Woman trying to eat salad when she crashed in Swannanoa

(Asheville Citizen-Times) Law enforcement officials say distracted driving is a growing problem in the area, as evidenced by a fairly bizarre crash: A woman wrecked her SUV while trying to eat a salad, witnesses told the N.C. Highway Patrol.

“What we’re finding is more and more collisions are being caused by inattention and drivers that are distracted,” 1st Sgt. Pat Staggs said. “Speed has always been the No. 1 collision cause factor in North Carolina, but we’re finding driver inattention is really beginning to become a serious issue in collision-causing factors.”

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Facebook pulls location-tracking feature

(CNN) Following a period of freak-out on the Internet on Monday, Facebook appears to have pulled a controversial feature that let the social network’s users get a digital list of other Facebookers nearby.

The “Find Friends Nearby” feature was not accessible in a CNN test on Tuesday morning, and other media outlets, including CNET, reported that Facebook had pulled the service.

In a statement e-mailed to CNN, a Facebook spokeswoman declined to elaborate.

“This wasn’t a formal release — this was something that a few engineers were testing,” the spokeswoman wrote. “With all tests, some get released as full products, others don’t. Nothing more to say on this for now — we’ll communicate to everyone when there is something to say.”

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States consider raising fines for distracted driving

(USA Today) Growing concern over the continued use of cellphones by drivers has some states reviewing laws against the practice and exploring stiffer fines and harsher penalties.

A 2010 study by the Highway Loss Data Institute, an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, found that current texting bans are not reducing the risk or amount of crashes. But some question whether tougher punishment is the answer.

Justin McNaull, director of state relations for auto club AAA, says seat belt studies show that when states impose higher fines, more motorists obey the laws.

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Bill expands real estate agents’ ability to analyze properties; appraisers unhappy

(Raleigh News Observer) A bill that would expand real estate agents’ ability to perform market analyses of properties could be approved by the General Assembly as early as Tuesday.

The bill is being pushed by the N.C. Association of Realtors, which says it is needed to assist banks in dealing with the wave of foreclosures they’ve taken back in recent years. But aspects of the bill are raising concerns among appraisers, who fear it will blur the lines between what they do and a product that is less rigorous and less expensive.

Senate Bill 521 would allow brokers to perform broker price opinions, also known as comparative market analyses, for a fee for clients and third-party lien holders. Under current North Carolina law, brokers can only perform BPOs when they have a reasonable expectation of getting a listing.

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Law violation reveals flaw in Jackson County email system

(Smoky Mountain News) A public records request for Jackson County Sheriff Jimmy Ashe’s emails doesn’t tell much of a story — that’s because most of them are missing.

In violation of state law, Ashe deleted all but a few messages from his email accounts.

A few media outlets requested the sheriff’s emails after the American Civil Liberties Union alleged that Ashe used traffic checkpoints to find possible illegal immigrants, which led to the racial profiling of Latinos. Ashe has denied that his department setup checkpoints for anything other than the limited reasons allowed by law.

The allegations by the ACLU came just days after the sheriff found himself in the spotlight over alcohol permits. Ashe systematically delayed many businesses attempts to get an alcohol permit in the wake of a countywide alcohol vote.

Ashe was later relinquished of the responsibility of giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down opinion on alcohol permit requests. But, the matter prompted several records request for Ashe’s emails and other related documents as well.

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Study: Sea rise faster on East Coast than rest of globe

(USA Today) From Cape Hatteras, N.C., to just north of Boston, sea levels are rising much faster than they are around the globe, putting one of the world’s most costly coasts in danger of flooding, government researchers report.

U.S. Geological Survey scientists call the 600-mile swath a “hot spot” for climbing sea levels caused by global warming. Along the region, the Atlantic Ocean is rising at an annual rate three times to four times faster than the global average since 1990, according to the study published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

It’s not just a faster rate, but at a faster pace, like a car on a highway “jamming on the accelerator,” said the study’s lead author, Asbury Sallenger Jr., an oceanographer at the agency. He looked at sea levels starting in 1950, and noticed a change beginning in 1990.

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Media sue Asheville, Buncombe DA office for police evidence-room audit’s release

(Carolina Public Press) Five Western North Carolina news organizations filed a lawsuit today calling on the city of Asheville and the Buncombe County district attorney’s office to release an audit of the Asheville Police Department’s evidence room.

Filed by the Asheville Citizen-Times, Carolina Public Press, Mountain Xpress, WCQS and WLOS in Buncombe County Superior Court, the lawsuit argues that, under North Carolina open records law, the audit, produced by a private contractor hired by the city of Asheville, is a public record.

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