February 9, 2010
A report focusing on state government's debt level ought to grab leaders' attention like a repo man banging on the door. The state has "substantially exhausted" its general fund debt capacity until 2011, a statement issued last week by State Tre...
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In an overdue stroke for common sense and the common good, the state will call on energy companies to keep closer watch over their coal ash ponds. The N.C. Division of Water Quality will require Progress Energy and Duke Energy to monitor groundwater near...
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February 8, 2010
Armed and loaded People who hunt while drunk pose a "widespread problem" in Rockingham County. That's the assessment of Commissioner James Kallam, and it ought to light a fire under state legislators. There are quite a few things people shouldn......
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February 7, 2010
The new luxury hotel planned for the heart of downtown Greensboro isn't the only local project seeking low-interest federal stimulus financing. In fact, it isn't even the only hotel on the list. Dr. Don Linder's project is targeted for northeast Greensbor...
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February 6, 2010
Since the murder nearly two years ago in Chapel Hill of UNC-CH student body president Eve Carson, there's been an alarming lack of progress in efforts to reform the state's poorly performing probation system. Two young men, who had fallen through the crac...
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February 5, 2010
As painful as it may be, tough questions need to be asked in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of a knife-wielding 17-year-old Tuesday by a Guilford County sheriff’s deputy. Following standard procedure, State Bureau of Investigation agents will c...
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North Carolinians knew their governor from 2001 to 2009 as Mike Easley, former crime-fighting prosecutor and crusading attorney general. Few could have suspected the governor had a secret identity: Nick Danger, who traveled on secret flights and communica...
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February 4, 2010
Greensboro’s government won’t work better without changes, City Manager Rashad Young said Wednesday after announcing the creation of a new administrative position.The assistant city manager for public safety will supervise the police and fire...
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Later this month, the N.C. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that Gov. Bev Perdue has turned into a heated political showdown. The justices should make their decision based on the law, not public passions. At issue is whether criminals sentenced...
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February 3, 2010
Nearly 700,000 passengers boarded trains in North Carolina last year, the state Department of Transportation reports. That number needs to grow, and it will -- when rail travel becomes faster and more reliable. The state has been working for years to help...
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In a new twist on the old adage, apparently it's necessary to spend money to get money -- at least when the federal government is involved. Greensboro City Manager Rashad Young proposes that the city set aside $60,000 to 80,000 in a tight budget for a Wa...
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February 2, 2010
In his invocation Monday morning, the Rev. Jesse Jackson thanked God "for the fullness of time." On the 50th anniversary of the Woolworth lunch-counter sit-ins, with the opening of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in the same b...
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February 1, 2010
His moment of power What does the lieutenant governor do? That's a tough one. But current North Carolina Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton came in handy Friday when Gov. Bev Perdue wanted to issue an executive order to "temporarily suspend motor carrier regulat...
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January 31, 2010
In the early weeks of 1960, F.W. Woolworth store in downtown Greensboro didn't look like a battlefield. Outside the five-and-dime on South Elm Street was the bustle of a city whose heart pulse still was its downtown, with orange Duke Power buses coming an...
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January 30, 2010
City Manager Rashad Young is no stranger to difficult budgets. "In our community, we were so much more challenged fiscally than we are in Greensboro," Young once said of his previous job as Dayton, Ohio's, manager. He may have spoken too soon. T...
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January 29, 2010
Greensboro is on the right road but stuck in the slow lane. The state of the city “remains less than robust,” the authors of an annual report produced for the Greensboro Partnership say. The assessment is based on population growth, wage...
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Another minute, another day, another year. One year ago this week, N.C. A&T student Dennis Stewart Hayle was shot and killed outside of his apartment off Homeland Avenue near campus. Students remembered him by wearing purple and gold in honor of his f...
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January 28, 2010
Darlene Garrett delivered a jolt of reality to fellow Guilford County school board members during an emotionally charged meeting Wednesday: “All my principals said they need the SROs there,” she said. The board “needs to think about that...
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The owner of two pit bulls that bit and mauled a Raleigh first-grader last spring received a withering lecture from an angry Wake County Superior Court judge last week. Then he was let go.The judge obviously wanted to do more, but North Carolina law does...
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January 27, 2010
Last week's 64-page federal indictment of Ruffin Poole contains a bracing note of irony: "On November 8, 2005, the Governor gave a speech in which he proposed making the state's ethics regulations stricter ... ." Poole, an attorney who served as...
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When there's a fight over who gets water, the upstream landowner usually holds the upper hand. And if it involves states, the fuss can get nasty. A few years ago, Georgia and its battling neighbors were about to call up their militias. Out west, Californi...
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January 26, 2010
For one brief, unsettling moment, the perfectly reasonable debate over the merits of a proposed new luxury hotel in downtown Greensboro turned ugly. “There are a bunch of citizens who are talking about a civil rights march in front of the museu...
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The Recovery Zone Facility Bond program was new and unfamiliar to local government officials in 2009. But some managed to administer the program without controversy. That wasn’t the case in Guilford County, where the Board of Commissioners and...
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January 25, 2010
Edwards' tardy mea culpa John Edwards' dramatic plunge into infamy is just about complete now. Edwards' admission last week that he fathered a child during his well-publicized affair ranks right up there with former baseball slugger Mark McGwire's "d...
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January 24, 2010
A cartoon by longtime News & Record artist Tim Rickard.
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