Voter ID Under Microscope At Raleigh Forum

(Carolina Journal) Is adopting a law requiring photo identification for North Carolinians to vote a common sense solution to voter fraud that has become – unnecessarily – highly politicized?

Or is it an effort that would put an undue burden on North Carolinians’ right to vote, a burden that would disproportionately affect the poor and minorities?

Both views were put forth Wednesday during a panel discussion on voter ID sponsored by the Raleigh Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society.

Two proponents of voter ID laws – John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky – took the position that such laws protect the integrity of the ballot and do not pose an undue burden on a citizen’s right to vote.

Two opponents of such laws – Bob Hall and Allison Riggs – disagreed, questioning the need for such a law and arguing that it, along with other changes to voting laws, would make voting less accessible.

Hall is executive director of Democracy North Carolina. Riggs is a voting rights staff attorney for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

Fund is a national affairs columnist for National Review. Von Spakovsky is senior legal fellow for the Civil Justice Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation.

The Republican majority in the General Assembly is expected to push through a voter ID bill this year. Two years ago, a voter ID bill was vetoed by then Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue. Now, Republican Pat McCrory sits in the governor’s office.

“I think this issue of voter identification … sadly has become far more politicized and far more partisan than it needs to be,” Fund said. Fund noted that in some states, voter ID bills have been sponsored and championed by Democrats and by African-American legislators.

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N.C. starts ‘Tax and Tag Together’ program

(Charlotte Observer) Paying your vehicle property taxes late will be a thing of the past after the middle of this year – unless you want to drive with expired license tags.

The N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles is rolling out a new program in which vehicle taxes will have to be paid at the same time as registration fees.

The “Tax and Tag Together” program was approved by the General Assembly in 2005, but has taken state and county officials eight years to coordinate tax collection processes.

Currently, vehicle owners receive their registration bills from the DMV several weeks before tags expire. Then the property tax bill arrives from the county a few months later.

That allows vehicle owners to delay paying taxes, although they incur a penalty when the bills become overdue.

The new program will begin in May, for registration fees due in July.

DMV officials say they hope a web page will help vehicle owners become more familiar with the program.

“The division is working with all 100 county revenue offices to make this new web page available,” said Eric Boyette, the DMV’s commissioner.

The DMV says the notice mailed to vehicle owners will list the tax bill and registration fee separately, but they will be paid together. Tax money collected by the DMV then will be forwarded to the respective counties.

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NC bill would create new vocational HS diplomas

(Star News Online) A bill working its way through the North Carolina legislature would create new high school graduation requirements focused on vocational training intended to help students not headed to college find jobs.

The measure backed by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory sailed through a legislative committee Wednesday without opposition and appears headed for a quick vote in the Senate. The bill directs education officials to develop curriculums with increased emphasis of career and technical courses. High school diplomas will carry new seals endorsing the graduate as “career ready,” “college ready” or both, depending on the courses they complete.

During his campaign for governor, McCrory derided the state’s education system as broken and failing to prepare students for the work force. A spokeswoman for McCrory said Wednesday that his staff is working closely with the legislators shepherding the bill to his desk.

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666 on tax form causes Christian worker to quit his job

(Tennessean) A Clarksville man said that he quit his job last week in order to save his soul.

Walter Slonopas, 52, resigned as a maintenance worker at Contech Casting LLC in Clarksville after his W-2 tax form was stamped with the number 666.

The Bible calls 666 the “number of the beast,” and it’s often used as a symbol of the devil. Slonopas said that after getting the W-2, he could either go to work or go to hell.

“If you accept that number, you sell your soul to the devil,” he said.

Bob LaCourciere, vice president of sales and marketing for the Revstone Corp., which owns Contech Casting, said that Slonopas’ W-2 was labeled with 666 by the company that handles Contech’s payroll. It refers to the order in which the forms were mailed out, he said.

This isn’t the first time that the satanic number has caused Slonopas trouble at work.

During his first day on the job in April 2011, Slonopas was supposed to be assigned the number 668 to use when he clocked in. But the human resources department gave him the wrong number — 666 — instead.

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New bill: ‘Opossum Right-to-Work Act’

(Asheville Citizen Times) With North Carolina’s legislature taking up a bill involving the fate of captive marsupials, a pair of lawmakers figured they might as well have some fun.

The “Opossum Right-to-Work Act” introduced Wednesday in the state Senate is identical to a House bill introduced earlier this week—except for the tongue-in-cheek title.

The measure gives the state Wildlife Resources Commission the explicit authority to permit the organizer of a New Year’s Eve Possum Drop to display a wild-caught animal. By tradition, the trapped opossum is suspended in a tinsel-covered box and gently lowered to the ground at midnight, then released.

A judge agreed in November with lawyers for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that issuing such a permit is improper under current state law, so legislators are changing the statute.

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State’s new Pre-K chief opposes pre-K

(WRAL) Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Aldona Wos announced Tuesday that Dianna Lightfoot has been appointed the state’s new director of Child Development and Early Education.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education, or DCDEE, oversees the state’s child-care program as well as NC Pre-K, which was moved into Health and Human Services from the Department of Public Instruction last session.

From the DHHS news release:

“Ms. Lightfoot is a strategic and tactical top tier policy executive with extensive healthcare, child welfare and education expertise,” said Secretary Wos. “Her leadership will ensure we meet the State’s longstanding commitment to protect and serve our young children.”

Lightfoot has served as president of the National Physicians Center, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that supports and promotes healthcare public policies and education, a post she has held since 2001. … She holds a master’s degree in psychology and community relations, a counseling license and a secondary teaching credential.

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Iredell commissioners split vote on call for guns in schools

(Hickory Record) The Iredell County Board of Commissioners was cruising toward one of its shortest regular meetings in recent years Tuesday night.
Then the guns came out.

Two commissioners, Renee Griffith and David Boone, both introduced matters involving firearms.

Griffith called on her colleagues to support a proclamation declaring Feb. 19 as “Right to Bear Arms Day in Iredell County.” And Boone offered a resolution urging the North Carolina General Assembly to amend state laws to allow for the carrying of concealed handguns on public school grounds.

In introducing her proclamation, Griffith noted that she was the owner of concealed gun permit and said, “I carry my gun.”
In the proclamation, she referred often to “our God-given rights to keep and bear arms,” which she initially – and mistakenly – ascribed to the North Carolina Constitution, where the phrase “God-given” does not appear in reference to the bearing of arms.

Griffith also pointed to recent comments made by President Obama on the matter of gun control and wrote, as part of her proclamation, that Obama “(went) so far as to bypass Congress and our God-given rights to keep and bear arms…”

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Board to seek deputies for local elementary schools

(The Sylva Herald) Local school officials will ask Jackson County commissioners to pay for four additional school resource officers in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

“We need to look at expanding, particularly for some of our schools that may not have the coverage we need,” Superintendent Mike Murray told school board members on Tuesday (Jan. 22).

The school system currently has three deputies working as school resource officers at the high school level. Four additional deputies would allow one each for the elementary schools.

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First Amendment meeting discusses first draft of policy

(Hickory Record) Close to 300 people attended a meeting to discuss the first draft of the revised First Amendment Policy Monday night.

Representatives from the McDowell County Board of Education’s Policy Committee, several county teachers, members of the community and local religious leaders all gathered in the Marion Elementary gym as the fallout from school officials’ decision to remove the word “God” from a student’s poem for a Veterans Day program at West Marion Elementary continues.

The incident has received national attention.

Those appointed to speak from these groups sat in the center of the room so that members of the community present at the meeting could filter questions to the officials through them.

When a question or suggestion was received, the group would discuss the suggestion and then make an adjustment to the first draft of the policy if it was deemed appropriate.

Committee Chairman Terry Frank started the meeting by addressing the public and introducing the officials, who sat at the four designate tables.

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Hall Fletcher reacts to new year-round calendar

(Asheville Citizen Times) After 20 years of the same conversation about student achievement gaps, Principal Gordon Grant says his school is ready for a change, and so far parents seem ready to change with it.

Hall Fletcher Elementary will shift to a new year-round calendar in 2014, and the school could lead the district in becoming only the second in the state to implement the measure aimed at reducing the achievement gap and “summer loss.”

The city Board of Education unanimously approved a pilot program Monday night that will place Hall Fletcher on a “balanced” calendar for at least the 2014-15 school year. The school’s 300 students will be in class for nine weeks and off for three throughout the year.

“We’re really excited to move forward with this, and I think for the most part from what I’ve heard today, parents are excited about it, as well,” Grant said Tuesday. “When I came into the school system 20 years ago, we were having exactly this same conversation of ‘how do we resolve these inequities?’ and I think this is an opportunity to address that.

“Generally, I think all great innovation comes with some data and a big leap of faith,” Grant said. “I think we should take that leap.”

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2 Scouting families; opposite views on gay ban

(Blue Ridge Now) Despite a shared affection for Scouting, the Tessier family in Maryland and the Comers in Tennessee hope for opposite outcomes this week as leaders of the Boy Scouts of America ponder whether to move away from a national no-gays membership policy.

Wes Comer, his wife and children belong to an Apostolic Pentecostal church near their Knoxville home that considers homosexuality sinful. Comer says he will pull his eldest son out of the Scouts, despite a positive experience with them, if the BSA modifies the policy to allow some troops to accept gays.

The Tessiers, who live in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Kensington, have two sons who enjoyed Cub Scouts, progressed to Boy Scouts, and continued to thrive there even as many in their troop became aware that each boy was gay. The family is grateful for that, but fervently hopes the BSA’s top leaders officially scrap the ban so that open acceptance becomes the norm for Scout units nationwide.

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Saunders: Obama’s gun photo ill-advised

(Raleigh News Observer) “Say, what’d we ever do to you?”

That’s the question a generation of skeets is asking President Barack Obama after the White House released a photo of him blasting away at one.

The question the rest of us want answered is, “Why release a photo of the president firing a shotgun at anything?”

Sure, the picture of the president firing was released in response to skepticism of his claim that he goes skeet shooting “all the time” while chilling up at Camp David. Releasing it, though, was an ill-advised, unnecessary concession to critics.

Whether or not he hit the clay disc at which he was shooting, he ultimately missed the target.

With half the nation seemingly still in mourning over recent gun murders and massacres and the other half pondering where it, too, can get a Bushmaster AR-15, do we really need to see the president in that posture – leveling off at an obviously low-flying skeet with smoke billowing from his shotgun?

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USA TODAY survey: More Republicans in Congress own guns

(USA Today) Republicans in Congress are much better armed than their Democratic counterparts — a fact that helps explain the deep partisan divide as Congress gears up for its first major votes on gun control in a decade.

One hundred nineteen Republicans and 46 Democrats declared themselves as gun owners in a USA TODAY survey of lawmakers.

There is no uniform public record of gun ownership by members of Congress, and it is not part of the information lawmakers are required to reveal in their annual financial disclosure forms. So USA TODAY and the Gannett Washington Bureau contacted every congressional office to ask: Does the lawmaker own a gun

The results show a partisan — and regional — divide. Only 10% of Republicans who responded said they do not own a gun, while 66% of Democrats said they are not gun owners.

Michael Hammond, legislative counsel of Gun Owners of America, said he’s not surprised. In Republican districts, a gun “is a campaign accoutrement,” he said.

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Duke Energy seeks 9.7 percent rate hike

(Charlotte Observer) Typical residential bills would go up by about $14 a month under a rate increase Duke Energy Carolinas sought for its North Carolina customers Monday.

The overall 9.7 percent rate hike would be the utility’s third since 2009 to bill customers for billions of dollars spent to build and upgrade power plants, install pollution controls and update transmission lines.

Company leaders have said they expect this to be the last N.C. increase Duke Carolinas seeks for several years, but it’s not likely to go down easy among its 1.9 million customers in the state.

“What I’m most concerned about is what it means to people who are trying to live on a small budget,” said Douglas Dickerson, state director of AARP North Carolina. Utility bills are the most sensitive topic among the group’s 1.1 million members, he said.

“When a (typical bill) goes up $14, that’s a squeeze. When you try to budget that against the fact that food and prescription drug prices are also going up, it just makes it that much of a tighter squeeze.”

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Senate GOP seeks to sweep oversight boards

(WRAL) Senate Republican leaders are moving quickly on a proposal to fire all current members of key oversight and advisory boards.

Introduced in Senate Rules Committee Tuesday morning, Senate Bill 10 would effectively fire all members of the Utilities Commission, Environmental Management Commission, Coastal Resources Commission, Lottery Commission and Wildlife Resources Commission.

Gov. Pat McCrory and Republican lawmakers would then be able to reappoint board members who agree with their philosophy, essentially clearing out Democrats and other dissenters whose terms haven’t yet expired.

The bill would also abolish several other boards and commissions, including the Charter School Advisory Committee, the Lottery Oversight Commission, the Turnpike Authority and the Board of Correction.

Another provision would have added two justices to the North Carolina Supreme Court, appointed by McCrory, which would essentially allow the governor to stack the court without an election. That provision was dropped from the bill in committee after it reportedly failed to gain support in the House GOP caucus meeting Monday.

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