7:30
Brief
In this issue:
For privacy reasons, Policy Watch has identified the homeowners only by last name, or by their request, withheld their name altogether.
Ms. Johnson’s toilet has sat, unconnected to any plumbing, in the middle of her master bathroom for more than a year.
Mold is blooming in her master bedroom closet, caused by a leaking shower. The water pressure is low, and her floors are uneven.
Her contractor, Persons Services has not fixed the issues since 2021, Johnson said. And the NC Office of Recovery and Resiliency, also known as ReBuild NC, has failed to hold Persons accountable.
“They haven’t done anything,” Johnson, who survived both Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence, said. “I’m just getting the runaround.”
Multiple hurricane survivors told Policy Watch that after they moved into their homes, the structures began to fail: [Read more…]
One of the most hopeful developments to occur in decades with respect to the public services, systems, and structures provided and maintained by the state of North Carolina was the recent seminal state Supreme Court ruling in the landmark Leandro education funding case.
By directing the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars currently squirreled away in savings accounts on the state’s long-neglected public schools, the high court struck a powerful and vitally important blow for basic human and constitutional rights and the simple premise that government should not be permitted to deny those rights simply because elected officials stubbornly choose to spend money elsewhere, or not at all.
And one party that deserves a special measure of credit for helping to bring the Leandro case to a head after decades of maddening inaction is Gov. Roy Cooper. Though effectively a defendant in the case, Cooper recognized from early on in his administration that the state’s incessant delays and failures in providing all the state’s schoolchildren with access to the sound basic education to which they’re constitutionally entitled was, effectively indefensible. [Read more…]
3. ‘We are sinking’: More anxiety, more violence, and a shortage of NC healthcare workers
State lawmakers get an earful during mental health town hall
“Folks, we have a huge problem with mental health,” state Senator Jim Burgin (R-Harnett) told a room full of people at a town hall in Kannapolis last week.
Sharing the stage with North Carolina Health and Human Services Secretary Kody Kinsley and three other Republican legislators, Sen. Burgin said lawmakers wanted to hear directly from the public about mental health and substance abuse challenges in advance of the upcoming legislative session.
The percentage of American adults with symptoms of anxiety or depression nearly quadrupled during the pandemic.
“Usually in a given week, one in nine people would say ‘I feel lonely, low or I feel a bit anxious.’ During that period of time, that number went to one in three, disproportionately among younger individuals,” Kinsley told the audience.
The 2022 Mental Health America report ranked the state 21st in adult mental health, but 42nd in youth mental health and 38th in access to care. [Read more…]
4. Future of U.S. election law at stake as Supreme Court hears North Carolina case
WASHINGTON — North Carolina Republicans appeared to have at least three of the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices on their side Wednesday in a case that could determine the future of elections nationwide, and leave decisions about federal elections in the hands of state legislatures and beyond the reach of state courts.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an appeal of a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling that threw out congressional districts drawn by the Republican-led legislature. The state’s high court decided in February that the redistricting plans constituted a partisan gerrymander that violated the state constitution.
North Carolina Republicans base their case on something called the “independent state legislature theory,” which holds that the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause makes legislatures the sole authority over federal elections.
“It is federal law alone that places substantive restrictions on state legislatures performing the task assigned them by the federal constitution,” said David H. Thompson, the lawyer representing the GOP legislators, during Wednesday’s arguments. [Read more…]
5. North Carolina LGBTQ community struggles with more threats, violence as visibility grows
Days before two Moore County power stations were shot in a targeted attack, plunging 45,000 people into a nearly a week of cold and darkness, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Terrorism Advisory System warned of a heightened danger of ideologically driven attacks against infrastructure.
“Targets of potential violence include public gatherings, faith-based institutions, the LGBTQI+ community, schools, racial and religious minorities, government facilities and personnel, U.S. critical infrastructure, the media and perceived ideological opponents,” the national bulletin read.
North Carolina’s LGBTQ community didn’t need to be told they were a target — particularly in Moore County. Shortly before the attack on the substations, there had been threats and protests against a drag show at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines on Dec. 3, — the latest in a series of incidents in which sometimes masked and armed far-right protesters have attempted to break up LGBTQ related events at public libraries, book stores and other businesses across the state.
[Read more…]6. Marriage equality bill heads to Biden’s desk following bipartisan U.S. House vote
Despite Senate efforts of Tillis and Burr, all eight NC Republican reps vote ‘no’
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House overwhelmingly approved a marriage equality bill Thursday that would ensure same-sex and interracial couples continue holding many of the rights they have now, should the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the cases that established those constitutional protections.
The measure now heads to the desk of President Joe Biden, who plans to sign it.
The 258-169-1 vote included the backing of 39 Republicans, though many GOP lawmakers argued during debate there was no reason to pass the legislation since the justices have not agreed to take up any cases that would end legal marriages for interracial or same-sex couples. [Read more…]
7. On second attempt, proposed Wake charter school gets ‘improbable‘ green light
The leaders of Heritage Collegiate Leadership Academy of Wake County sailed through a second-round interview Monday to win improbable, but unanimous support from the Charter School Advisory Board to open a K-8 school in northeastern Wake County.
Why improbable?
In 2020, the charter board roundly rejected the school’s application, citing concerns about projected enrollment numbers and budget projections.
And several years earlier, Kashi Bazemore, the chairperson of the school’s board of directors and its likely principal, had been on the losing end of a contentious and messy State Board of Education-sanctioned takeover of a charter school. Bazemore founded and led that school, which operated under the same name — Heritage — in Bertie County. [Read more…]
State Court of Appeals weighs the power of constitutional protection against double jeopardy
A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals published a pair of opinions Tuesday holding that two people can be charged with murder for brutalizing a child 25 years ago — even though they had already been convicted of child abuse for the same act of violence in the late ‘90s.
David Tripp, Jr. was dating Robin Noffsinger on April 12, 1997 when David Cody Rhinehart, Noffsinger’s 15-month-old son, was taken to Columbia Brunswick Hospital. The baby’s skull, spine, limbs and ribs were fractured; he had second- and third-degree burns on his buttocks and genitals. He was missing hair; and he had multiple cuts, bruises and punctures all over his body.
A pediatrician at the hospital said Rhinehart suffered from “Battered Child Syndrome” and would never be able to function on his own, since “the entire part of his brain that involves learning, thinking, maturing [and] developing normally had[d] been destroyed.” [Read more…]
9. Weekly Radio Interviews and Daily Radio Commentaries:
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