News & Views

Rep. Carolyn Logan of Mecklenburg County (Photo: NCGA)

State lawmakers returned to Raleigh in late September for a brief stay, and in the aftermath of a horrific killing that had occurred just weeks before on a Charlotte commuter train, legislative leaders made criminal justice and their stated intention of “getting tough on crime” the central focus. Among the law changes sent to Gov. Stein for his review were provisions that would make it easier to hold people accused of crimes without bail pending trial and jumpstart the state’s death penalty law.

Despite its rapid approval, not everyone on Jones Street was convinced that the “get tough” approach is the answer, and one of those people was State Rep. Carolyn Logan of Mecklenburg County, who told Newsline that she believes the state needs a more creative and comprehensive approach to making her community safer.

Click here to listen to the full interview with State Rep. Carolyn Logan of Mecklenburg County.

Jake Sussman

The North Carolina General Assembly was back in Raleigh in late September to enact legislation that leaders say will quote “get tough on crime” by limiting access to bail and pre-trial release for more criminal defendants and jump-starting the state’s long un-used death penalty.

Shortly after lawmakers departed the capital, Newsline caught up with an attorney who has studied this kind of legislation and its impact on crime in several states — the Chief Counsel of the Justice System Reform team at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Jake Sussman. And sadly, Sussman says there’s no evidence that lawmakers’ “get tough” approach will make a meaningful difference. To do that, he says, lawmakers will finally need to muster the courage to engage with complex and expensive policy solutions like fixing the state’s desperately underfunded mental health system.

Click here to listen to the full interview with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice’s Jake Sussman.

N.C. Budget & Tax Center policy analyst Alex Campbell

North Carolina is now into the second year of Hurricane Helene recovery and as we discussed in a special edition of News & Views last week, while there have been many encouraging and inspiring aspects to this story, the hard truth is that we have a very long way to go. And as Newsline learned recently in a conversation with policy analyst Alex Campbell of the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, the main reason for the slow pace of the recovery is funding – or more precisely, the lack of it from both the federal and state governments. Indeed, Campbell believes unless elected officials do something soon to inject billions of additional dollars, western North Carolina is in for many more tough years.

Click here to listen to the full interview with BTC policy analyst Alex Campbell.

Matt Calabria (Courtesy photo)

This past week marked the one-year anniversary of Helene – a deadly hurricane-turned tropical-storm that wreaked unprecedented havoc in western North Carolina. Helene caused widespread and massive flooding that killed scores of people and caused more than $60 billion dollars in damage to North Carolina’s mountain west.

In the year since, clean-up and recovery have been ongoing – sometimes seemingly never-ending — tasks for the communities affected and state leaders. Indeed, since he took office just a few months after Helene, Gov. Josh Stein has made Helene recovery his administration’s top priority and recently Newsline was lucky enough to get a snapshot of where things stand when we caught up with the Governor’s point person in that effort, Matt Calabria.

Click here for the full interview with Matt Calabria, the Director of Governor Josh Stein’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina.

Chris Joyell (Courtesy photo)

As with virtually all natural disasters, public funds and programs are at the heart of the ongoing recovery effort from Hurricane Helene. That said, federal relief from the Trump administration has been maddeningly minimal and slow, and that hard reality has helped force local private actors to display unusual resiliency and creativity in helping to keep the recovery up and running.

One group that’s been making a real impact is a nonprofit known as Mountain True. Not only have Mountain True staff and volunteers played an important role in the massive debris clean-up that continues to this day, but its experts are also developing strategies and plans to better prepare western North Carolina for future natural disasters, and last week NC Newsline I spoke with the Healthy Communities Director of Mountain True’s Appalachian Design Center, Chris Joyell.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Chris Joyell. 

Matt Raker (Courtesy photo)

If western North Carolina is going to fully rebuild and recapture the economic vitality it enjoyed prior to Helene, small businesses will be at the heart of the effort. And make no mistake, the challenges are enormous.

Surveys show that 96% of small businesses in the region were impacted by the storm, and while the majority have reopened, revenue for most is still more than 20% below pre-Helene levels.

Fortunately, some smart and energetic nonprofits are working energetically and successfully to help revive small business and one such group is the community economic development nonprofit, Mountain BizWorks, and recently Newsline caught up with the group’s executive director, Matt Raker.

Click here for he full interview with Mountain BizWorks’ Matt Raker.

Jared Bernstein (Courtesy photo)

Over the last couple of decades, few if any American economists have played a more prominent role in the national debate over the economy or in actually crafting economic policy than Jared Bernstein. Bernstein served as chair of the national Council of Economic Advisers under President Biden and is currently a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

And recently Bernstein was kind enough to join NC Newsline for a conversation about the current state of the U.S. economy and, among many other things, how the ongoing rise in inflation combined with growth in unemployment signals the arrival of the dreaded phenomenon known as stagflation, and how President Trump’s chaotic policies – most notably the imposition of tariffs on imported goods and services – are fueling what could well be a very destructive and hard-to-reverse economic trend.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Jared Bernstein, the former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Senator DeAndrea Salvador (Photo: NCGA)

It’s almost impossible to turn on one’s computer, phone or TV these days without hearing about or, indeed, experiencing the impact of AI – artificial intelligence. The rapid rise of this remarkable technology is reshaping our world in many important ways – some that provide grounds for great hope and others that give rise to profound concerns.

Not surprisingly, AI’s rapid rise is also spurring discussion of a raft of ethical and public policy issues – from questions of privacy and consumer protection to the need to regulate so-called deepfakes, to the very question of how humans assure that they retain control over the technology. Thankfully, some smart leaders have begun to pay close attention to the policy implications of AI, and here in North Carolina, one of those leaders is Mecklenburg County State Senator DeAndrea Salvador. And recently Sen. Salvador joined NC Newsline for a special two-part conversation in which we discussed some of these issues, and how for her, AI is a deeply personal matter.

In Part One of our extended conversation with State Senator Salvador of Mecklenburg County, we dove into a discussion of AI – artificial intelligence – the hopes and fears to which it’s giving rise and, in Senator Salvador’s case, how AI allowed an online talk she had given a few years’ back to be excerpted and manipulated for use in corporate advertising without her consent.

In Part Two of our chat, we dug deeper into some of the important policy implications of AI’s rapid rise, some of the legislation that she and others have introduced to help steer things in what they hope will be a healthy direction, and a new AI leadership council that Gov. Josh Stein has established (and on which Salvador serves) that will try to keep AI working for North Carolinians rather than the other way around.

Click here to listen to the full interview with State Senator DeAndrea Salvador.

Rep. Pricey Harrison (Photo: NCGA)

North Carolina state government continues to operate without a budget for the fiscal year that commenced July 1. Thanks largely to a disagreement between Republican leaders of the House and Senate over whether the state should plow ahead with a series of scheduled tax cuts – even as fiscal analysts warn of big impending budget shortfalls – the state is operating on a makeshift continuation budget that’s leaving a host of core public services inadequately funded.

What’s really behind this stalemate and what are some of the impacts it’s producing for state residents? Recently, as part of a special extended interview, Newsline posed these questions and several others to one of the North Carolina General Assembly’s longest serving and most widely respected members, State Rep. Pricey Harrison of Guilford County. And as Harrison explained, the hard truth is that the budget failure and its myriad impacts are likely the result of the political fears of one very powerful state Senator who faces a Republican primary challenger in 2026.

In part one of our extended conversation with Harrison, we discussed the ongoing failure of Republican legislative leaders to reach agreement on a state budget for the fiscal year, as well as GOP proposals to enact new, significant and worrisome changes to our state’s voting laws prior to the 2026 elections.

In part two of our interview, we turned our attention to an area to which Harrison has long been recognized as one of the General Assembly’s best informed and most impactful voices – environmental protection – and in particular the damage that continues to result from new state and federal laws that hamstring environmental regulators. In addition, we also chatted about the massive and negative impacts that President Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act will have on our state’s social safety net unless state lawmakers step up to fill the huge gaps that will soon be created.

Click here for the full the full interview with state Rep. Pricey Harrison. 

Kris Nordstrom (Courtesy photo)

It’s an interesting fact that while North Carolina’s population continues to steadily increase, enrollment in public schools is trending in the opposite direction. Part of the explanation for this is to be found in demographic shifts, but as Newsline learned in a recent conversation with veteran education policy analyst Kris Nordstrom of the North Carolina Justice Center, there are other factors involved as well – things like the state legislature’s ongoing expansion of private school options and its failure to adequately fund traditional public schools.

Nordstrom has authored a new report on this subject – it’s entitled “Navigating Declining Enrollment: How smarter state policies can help schools thrive” – and in it, he details some of the policy changes that could help slow or reverse the trend, as well as steps state and local officials could take to lessen the negative impacts when they’re forced to close schools.

Click here to listen to the full interview with veteran education policy analyst Kris Nordstrom.