News & Views

Alexandra Sirota (Photo: NC Budget & Tax Center)

Ever since North Carolina Republicans took control of the state legislature in 2011, they’ve pursued a sustained and aggressive effort to remake the state’s tax and budget systems. Repeatedly, they’ve enacted big cuts to progressive levies like the personal and corporate income taxes that primarily impact the wealthy, while slashing spending on core public structures like public education. So, what’s been the impact of this sea change? What impacts will the new state budget proposals currently under discussion at the General Assembly have? And what will the future hold if legislative leaders stay on the path they’ve charted?

Recently NC Newsline got a chance to pose those questions to an expert who’s been observing and chronicling the changes since they got underway, the executive director of the nonpartisan North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, Alexandra Sirota.

In Part One of our special extended conversation with Sirota, we took a look back at the past dozen or so years of fiscal policy changes that have been implemented by Republican legislators at the North Carolina General Assembly, and the impacts they’ve had on our state tax and budget systems.

In Part Two, our conversation shifted to the details of the latest budget bills under consideration at the Legislative Building as well a new proposed state constitutional amendment that would lower the cap on the state income tax, and according to Sirota, serve only to further undermine the health of an already inadequate tax code.

Melissa Price Kromm

If there’s been a most controversial bill to wend its way through the North Carolina General Assembly this spring, right now it has to be House Bill 237 – a proposal that would change state laws governing the wearing masks in public, the rights of public protesters and the complex rules that govern contributions to political campaigns.

The bill has drawn sharp criticism from a host of advocates and experts and one of the most persistent and insightful has been veteran good government watchdog Melissa Price Kromm of the group North Carolina for the People Action. As Price Kromm explained when NC Newsline caught up with her recently, the legislation poses a threat to the First Amendment and public health and threatens to flood state elections with huge sums of unaccountable and corrupting dark money.  Learn more about the bill that earned the latest veto from Governor Roy Cooper.

Erica Palmer Smith (File photo)

For several years now, researchers at the national Annie E. Casey Foundation have measured and documented how well each U.S. state is doing when it comes to the well-being of its children. The annual KIDS Count report looks at several important indicators in fields like economic well-being, educational achievement and health, assesses whether states are progressing or falling behind, and then ranks them one to fifty.

In North Carolina, the state group with which the Casey experts coordinate is the children’s advocacy organization, NC Child, and recently NC Newsline caught up with the group’s executive director, Erica Palmer Smith to learn more about how our state is faring. And the verdict, sadly, is well below par.

Click here to view the 2024 report for North Carolina.

Christina Baal-Owens (Courtesy: Public Wise)

It’s been well over three years since Donald Trump’s lie about the 2020 election was thoroughly debunked, but tragically many American politicians – even some who participated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection – continue to hold elected office or to seek it as candidates in 2024.

For Christina Baal-Owen, executive director of the national voting rights nonprofit, Public Wise, this reality and the threat it poses to our democracy is something of which all Americans should be made aware in the run-up to the November election. To that end, her organization has published what it calls an Election Threat Index that tracks and monitors the politicians who continue to promote Trump’s lie and who participated or supported the insurrection. Recently Newsline caught up with Baal-Owens to learn more.

House Democraic leader Rep. Robert Reives (Photo: NCGA)

North Carolina Republican legislative leaders sprang a big surprise on their Democratic colleagues and just about all legislative observers recently when they suddenly unveiled a new, out-of-nowhere and extremely complex proposal to rewrite state campaign finance laws.

The legislation, which would provide wealthy individuals with new ways to give unlimited amounts of cash to support North Carolina candidates while keeping their identities hidden, emerged as an add-on to a controversial bill on the wearing of masks in public. The proposal quickly raised the ire of Democratic lawmakers and good government groups who objected to both the substance of the bill and the questionable tactics used to advance it.

NC Newsline sat down with House Democratic leader, Rep. Robert Reives, to get his take on the bill as well as some other high priority decisions that face state lawmakers in the coming days.

Virginia Kase Solomón (Photo: Common Cause)

If there’s a most troubling issue facing our nation and its elected leaders at the dawn of the summer of 2024, many observers believe it is the state of our democracy. In the aftermath of the failed January 6, 2021 insurrection and subsequent widespread threats of violence and retribution from politicians and activists on the political right, many caring and thinking people are deeply concerned – both about what might happen come this November, as well several other recent developments in which basic norms of law and politics have been under attack.

Fortunately, at this potentially harrowing moment, the nation is not without an array of strong and committed defenders of democracy – watchdogs that closely monitor events and speak up loudly and clearly for honest and ethical laws and policies. And recently we were fortunate enough to have a conversation with the leader of one of those watchdog organizations, the President of the national good government advocacy nonprofit, Common Cause, Virginia Kase Solomón.

In Part One of our special extended conversation, we discussed the state of American democracy and the threats that confront it with a look at the pernicious phenomenon of gerrymandering – the rigging of election outcomes by drawing districts to discriminate against certain classes of voters for racial and political reasons.

In Part Two of our conversation, we surveyed several other challenges to honest and representative government, including the issue of Supreme Court ethics, potential threats to election workers in the fall elections, mis- and disinformation in political campaigns and accountability in the media.

Rep. Marcia Morey (Photo: NCGA)

In 2019, North Carolina was the last state in the union to modernize its criminal justice system by ending the practice of automatically treating 16 and 17-year-olds accused of criminal offenses as adults. Now, however, state lawmakers are considering a proposal to backtrack on that progress. Under a bill moving through the General Assembly, the Raise the Age law would be, in effect, repealed for several classes of felonies.

One lawmaker who has deep concerns about the move is Durham County Representative (and former chief district court judge) Marcia Morey. Recently, NC Newslinecaught up with Morey to learn about her concerns – as well as to get her thoughts on the state’s impending childcare crisis and the troubling attacks on our justice system that have followed in the wake of Donald Trump’s conviction for falsifying records.

Gene Nichol (File photo)

In recent years, the North Carolina Supreme Court has undergone a radical transformation. Since Republican justices assumed control of the court after the 2022 election, they have moved swiftly – not merely to chart a more conservative path, but to quite literally redefine the court’s role in state government.

And as Gene Nichol, a veteran law professor and constitutional scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill details in a new law review article, nowhere is this shift more apparent than in the realm of voting and elections, where in a trio of rulings, the court effectively decreed that the legislature is free to gerrymander electoral districts and erect obstacles to voting for disfavored groups to its heart’s content. And recently, NC Newsline’s Rob Schofield caught up with Prof. Nichol to learn more about this shift and what it means for our state.

Erin Carey (Courtesy photo)

Over the last several decades, North Carolina has been transformed from a largely rural state covered with forests and farms into an ever more urban place plastered with vast swaths of concrete and asphalt.

And it’s in light of this reality that Gov. Roy Cooper’s recent decision to veto a transportation bill approved by the legislature that would have opened the door to expanded highway tree cutting to allow more room for billboards has been lauded by environmental advocates. Of course, sustaining gubernatorial vetoes is tough these days in the Republican-dominated legislature, and recently NC Newsline caught up with Erin Carey of the North Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club to learn more about the substance of the bill and its prospects going forward.

Dr. Rachel Jensen (photo: Clayton Henkel)

This month marks the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling that ended the constitutional right to abortion care. It’s also been just over one-year since the Republican-controlled General Assembly in North Carolina’s enacted our state’s 12-week abortion ban.

Abortion access will likely be a critical issue for some voters this year, and it’s already having an impact on the medical community. Doctors are reassessing residency programs especially in states where there are strict abortion bans. While other doctors –not in the obstetrics field — are questioning what they can and can’t tell their pregnant patients, based on North Carolina’s abortion restrictions.

Recently, News & Views producer Clayton Henkel sat down with Dr. Rachel Jensen, a North Carolina OB/GYN and abortion provider, to discuss how North Carolina’s restrictive new law has changed her training over the past year, the care she’s able to provide to her patients, and her hopes for the November election.