Nope – in Detroit, the homicide rate is actually dropping, down 25 percent year-to-date for the first quarter through March; here in the Queen City, homicides have spiked more than 50 percent, year-to-date through April. Granted, Detroit brings the number of homicides down from the mind-numbing 80 the city recorded during last year’s first quarter, […]
A handful of Democrat county commissioners are pushing to hike a special law enforcement district tax paid by residents living in the county’s unincorporated areas, despite the county manager’s recommendation to avoid the tax increase and pull money from other parts of the budget to pay for the service. Since 1996 residents in the county’s […]
In the midst of two global wars on terror, Mecklenburg County is considering budget cuts that would completely eliminate funding for its Veterans Service Office, forcing the agency to shutter its doors and potentially leaving thousands of benefit claims filed by local veterans lost in a maze of bureaucratic red tape. “It couldn’t come at […]
Gov. Bev Perdue and Senate leader Marc Basnight, two of the state’s most powerful Democrats, again find themselves wallowing in a pit of ethical slime after being linked this week to about $150,000 in tainted money that had snaked its way into their campaigns. Heavy hitter Democrat fundraiser Rusty Carter entered an Alford plea to […]
Tuesday’s primary election yielded an abysmally low 7.3 percent voter turnout in Mecklenburg County, but spirits were soaring high at election night party headquarters for Corey Thompson, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher who had just aced his first big-time political exam. Thompson ran third in the GOP at-large commissioners race, behind top vote-getters Jim Pendergraph and […]
Don’t get me wrong: I like sports, even ones that require grown men to wear goofy-looking clothes and chase after a little white ball with a club. But it says something about our culture when the Quail Hollow Championship produces attendance numbers better than those projected for a pivotal Primary Election. There’s a lot at […]
In an emotionally-charged decision Monday night, the Charlotte City Council voted 6 to 3 against censuring one of its own members for allegedly sexually harassing city staff. The vote came after Councilmember Warren Turner defended himself against findings reported last week by an attorney the city had hired to investigate the harassment claim, which concluded […]
Less than 24 hours before the primary election to retain his seat as a state representative, the North Carolina State Bar suspended the law license of Nick Mackey. Yes, that Nick Mackey; the one who nearly hustled and conned his way into being named Mecklenburg County sheriff in 2008, until the results of a special […]
What else has Warren Turner done? Don’t know. Don’t know for even close to certain if he’s done what’s been alleged, but the fact that the list is growing is not a good sign. Turner, the District 3 rep on Charlotte City Council, was named as the councilmember that at least four city staffers accused […]
Mecklenburg County employees who thought their jobs were safe from the budget axe got a rude awakening this week, when County Manager Harry Jones distributed a revised schedule for department reduction-in-force plans. The original timeline called for Jones’s executive team to have the potential layoffs approved by the end of April. That apparently has been […]
