So I’m in the kitchen washing some dishes yesterday and the TV’s on and I hear that some guy named Bacots had been hired as superintendent of Durham Public Schools. Wash another dish. Heard the name again. Bacots? Couldn’t be, I thought. So I go into the living room and there he is on the […]
North Carolina’s own Mel “My Fat Wallet” Watt was one of only 15 esteemed members of Congress who this week voted to give themselves a de facto pay hike. A raise. When his state’s unemployment rate tops 11 percent and approval ratings for Congress are lower than a snake’s belly. Wonderful. Watt’s money grab came […]
Less than 48 hours after one of Mayor Anthony Foxx’s campaign boosters released the results of a sexual harassment investigation the city paid for her to conduct, questions abound regarding a key element of its findings. Specifically, why was former mayor Pat McCrory not interviewed as part of the investigation into allegations that Councilmember Warren […]
A majority of school board members seemed receptive to a pay-to-play proposal pitched Tuesday night to save middle school sports, while discussion was curbed over applying a similar fee-based structure for transportation services. The notion of having students pay for bus rides to and from school was floated by board member Trent Merchant, tangential to […]
From teachers and their assistants to students and their parents, people lined up Tuesday night to blast the Board of Education and Superintendent Peter Gorman over proposed budget cuts that could lead to what many speakers called unacceptable and disastrous consequences in classrooms next year. Faced with a potential budget shortfall that could top $75 […]
Charlotte-Mecklenburg got hit with conflicting doses of news on the economic front this month. While the N.C. Employment Security Commission last week announced that Mecklenburg’s unemployment had inched downward to 11.1 percent for March from 11.8 percent in February, the marginally good news was tempered by the release yesterday of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, […]
“This is a political lynching and the ones doing it, they ain’t wearing white hoods. They got black ones, if you know what I mean.” That was Warren Turner, from an interview with PunditHouse a few days after he was outed as the councilmember at the center of a sexual harassment allegation brought by a […]
The incessant braying and ballyhooing from Charlotte’s uptown lunch bunch over the purported success of the Lynx light-rail line is brought to task in a recently released Cato Institute policy report, penned by transportation guru and transit realist Randal O’Toole. While sleek trains and streetcars might look grand in full-color, glossy brochures distributed by local […]
Gotta love Gov. Bev’s math, or at least admire it for creativity. Perdue’s recommended state budget, released yesterday, prompted the obligatory headlines that focused on nearly $1-billion in savings proposed by the governor. The buzzword “slashed” was all the vogue. Odd thing, though, about those slashes: they result in a bottom-line spending increase of about […]
Talk of snatching $6.3 million from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ budget to help fill an overall county shortfall of $36 million in current-year funding has been floating for weeks. Commissioners made it official last night, when they unanimously approved the mid-year budget reduction. And despite recent howls that the fiscal correction would have dire consequence on CMS […]
