Press Releases and Newsletters
Number of N.C.’s voters up 1.2M (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Number of N.C.’s voters up 1.2M (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
RALEIGH – A new analysis of North Carolina voter registrations shows that the decade just passed was one of change for the state’s electorate.
Numbers released yesterday by elections watchdog Democracy North Carolina show that the number of independent voters in the state has increased by 83 percent since 2000.
By comparison, the number of registered Democrats has grown by only 11 percent and the number of Republicans has grown by 16 percent.
There are now more than 6 million registered voters in North Carolina. That is an increase of nearly 1.2 million from 10 years ago.
Onslow County showed the largest increase, up 63 percent.
The numbers also show that there was a 57 percent increase among nonwhite voters, compared with a 15 percent increase among whites.
Published: January 26, 2010
Panel studying NC govt pensions has first meeting (Associated Press)
Panel studying NC govt pensions has first meeting (Associated Press)
RALEIGH, N.C. The chairman of a blue-ribbon commission examining North Carolina’s pension system for public employees says it may not be serving the needs of everyone in the government work force.
North Carolina State University economics professor Robert Clark said at Monday’s first meeting that the Future of Retirement System panel will examine all facets of government pensions and make recommendations.
The 11-member commission could look at changing work and age requirements, benefit levels and payments into the system by employees and agencies. State and local pension trustees should receive recommendations by Nov. 15.
A state worker retiring after 30 years generally can receive a monthly pension payment equal to 55 percent of the worker’s average salary over the last four years of employment.
Published Mon, Jan 25, 2010 02:58 PM
Modified Mon, Jan 25, 2010 02:58 PM
Wilson resigns from turnpike board (News & Observer)
Wilson resigns from turnpike board (News & Observer)
Lanny Wilson is sworn in to testify at a State Board of Elections hearing in October on possible campaign violations by former Gov. Mike Easley and the state Democratic Party.
Lanny Wilson, a Wilmington developer and lawyer who resigned last week from the State Board of Transportation, notified the N.C. Turnpike Authority today that he also has given up his seat on that board.
Wilson was a key money man for the campaigns of former Gov. Mike Easley and Gov. Bev Perdue. He testified in a State Board of Elections hearing that he gave large checks to the Democratic Party that he expected would be in turn given to Easley’s campaign. Funneling the money in that way would violate the limits on donations to individual candidates.
“Just a quick email to advise you that I have submitted my resignation to the appropriate people in Senator Basnight’s office,” Wilson said today in e-mail to David Joyner, the turnpike authority’s executive director.
Schorr Johnson, a spokesman for Sen. Marc Basnight, the Senate leader, said he understood Wilson had notified Basnight’s office of his resignation “verbally,” and “we are awaiting a letter of resignation.”
Wilson served as the turnpike board’s vice chairman, and he championed the authority’s Cape Fear Skyway project, a proposed $1.3 billion road and bridge in Wilmington. He participated by telephone in the turnpike board’s monthly meeting last Wednesday.
Perdue now will find a replacement for Wilson on the Board of Transportation, where he represented Division 3, including New Hanover and five other southeastern counties. Basnight, who had asked Perdue to make Wilson her state transportation secretary, now will pick his successor on the turnpike board.
Wilson previously served four years on the N.C. Real Estate Commission and was former general counsel and vice president of Boney Wilson & Sons Inc.
Posted: Monday, Jan. 25, 2010
Whose Running and Whose Not – North Carolina General Assembly
Whose Running and Whose Not – North Carolina General Assembly (North Carolina FreeEnterprise Foundation)
America’s 75 Worst Commutes (includes Charlotte and Raleigh) (The Daily Beast)
America’s 75 Worst Commutes (The Daily Beast)
They are the highways to hell in the country’s most gridlocked cities. The Daily Beast crunches the numbers to determine your ultimate morning nightmares. How did your commute rank?
Bumper-to-bumper traffic is America’s collective nightmare, and like the movie Groundhog Day it repeats on a daily basis.
Congestion consumes billions of gallons of fuel, wastes hundreds of billions of dollars in productivity and causes billions of stress headaches. Yet over 100 million automobile commuters each day feel like they have little option. “We put so much of our national wealth and our identity into the whole motoring thing,” says James Howard Kunstler, author of Geography of Nowhere, “that we can’t imagine doing something different.”
Anthony Downs, author of Stuck in Traffic has identified four reasons for America’s congestion problem, also applicable to most European and Asian economies: first, most of us work during the same hours of the day; second, the country’s economic success has allowed households to buy multiple cars; third, there are more people now than when most roadways were conceived; fourth, more cars means more accidents which means more delays.
In other words, this problem isn’t going anywhere. So the Daily Beast set out to figure out the worst of the worst. The true Highways to Hell. It was a two-step process, done with data from traffic-tracking firm INRIX, which culls information nationwide from more than 1.5 million GPS units, mostly in freight trucks.
Our first step was ranking the metropolitan areas with the worst rush-hour congestion. The order is based on the peak hour Travel Time Index (TTI) for the metropolitan area each highway is in. TTI is a measure of how much longer it takes to complete a road journey during peak congestion hours compared to free-flow hours. (Peak hours are defined as 6 a.m. to 10a.m., and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.) Speeds during non-peak hours are used by INRIX to establish this free-flow baseline.
After determining the 75 worst metro areas, we then found the worst highway in each, defined as the most hours of bottleneck congestion, as reported by INRIX. The rankings then provide a still deeper look—at the most congested bottleneck segment for the worst highway in each area.
How does your commute fare? Read on.
#35, East Independence Blvd, Charlotte, NC
Weekly hours of bottleneck congestion: 33
Worst bottleneck: Stallings Rd
Length of worst bottleneck: .75 mi
Weekly hours of congestion on worst bottleneck: 12
Speed of worst bottleneck when congested: 20.6 mph
Commuter Buzz: “We had people in here last night wanting to sign after midnight,” said Dewayne Moser of Keffer Hyundai on East Independence Boulevard, during April’s Cash for Clunkers program.
#50, I-40, Raleigh, NC
Weekly hours of bottleneck congestion: 45
Worst bottleneck: Westbound, US 1/US 64/Exit 293
Length of worst bottleneck: 2.61 mi
Weekly hours of congestion on worst bottleneck: 8
Speed of worst bottleneck when congested: 27.9 mph
Commuter Buzz: “You just get so stiff and tired and sore before you get to work,” Wes Evans told The Citizen-Times, referring to the approximately two hours of daily driving added to daily commutes on the I-40—the result of a massive rockslide that has created numerous detours.
North Carolina’s Transportation Equity Formula
Click here to read the Metro Mayors White Paper on the State’s Transportation Equity Formula
Click here to see the video on the State’s Transportation Equity Formula
Below are a list of the cities and MPOs thus far that have pass a resolution in support of evaluating and revising the State’s Transportation Equity Formula.
Perdue’s chief of staff leaving (News and Observer)
Perdue’s chief of staff leaving (News and Observer)
Zach Ambrose, Gov. Bev Perdue’s chief of staff, is leaving her administration.
Ambrose has worked for Perdue since 2005 when she was lieutenant governor. He ran her gubernatorial campaign, was a key leader of her transition team and has run her office for the first year in which the state grappled with a deep recession.
Perdue spokesman Chrissy Pearson said that Ambrose informed senior staff today that he was planning to leave.
“He has chosen to take some time to spend with his family and refocus on other efforts and wanted us to know sooner rather than later as the year kicks off,” Pearson said.
Ambrose plans to stay on until Perdue replaces him. He wasn’t a very public figure, but Ambrose had a major role in the administration.
“He is unfailingly steady and handles the stresses of this job with extraordinary grace,” Pearson said. “He is that pivot point between the staff and the governor and we will miss him terribly.”
Perdue’s first year in office was a difficult one. The recession sidelined many of her more ambitious campaign promises and her poll numbers were down for most of the year.
Submitted by bniolet on January 21, 2010 – 9:43am.
Wilson resigns from DOT board (News and Observer)
Wilson resigns from DOT board (News and Observer)
Lanny Wilson, the fundraiser and developer who was once on the short list to run the state transportation department, has resigned his position on the transportation board.
Wilson, a Wilmington developer, was a key money man for the campaigns of former Gov. Mike Easley and Gov. Bev Perdue. He was unknown to many in North Carolina, until he testified in a State Board of Elections hearing that he gave large checks to the Democratic Party that he expected would be in turn given to Easley’s campaign.
Such funneling would violate limits on donations to individual candidates.
“After much consideration and thought, I am stepping down to avoid any further unnecessary distractions that would only serve to impede the progress of your reform efforts with the Board and Department of Transportation,” Wilson wrote.
Buzz around that state when Perdue was picking her cabinet was that Wilson was on the short list. Senate leader Marc Basnight advocated for Wilson, saying that Wilson raised money for campaigns because he genuinely cared about North Carolina.
“Lanny has so much to give this state. He’s smart and he understands the department very well. I believe he could reorganize the department in a fashion that we would get much more out for our money,” Basnight said.
Perdue accepted the resignation and thanked Wilson for his service.
Submitted by bniolet on January 21, 2010 – 11:23am.
No commitment from President Obama on $500 billion transportation bill (The Hill)
No commitment from President Obama on $500 billion transportation bill (The Hill)
President Barack Obama has yet to back a $500 billion transportation bill that Democrats plan to move early this year.
During a closed-door session with the entire House Democratic Caucus, Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), the chief sponsor of the transportation reauthorization measure, pressed Obama to back his bill funding road, rail and transit projects.
Obama, according to Oberstar and other lawmakers, didn’t make any specific commitments on infrastructure and transportation spending, but he listed infrastructure projects among his priorities.
“He’s on track,” Oberstar said of the president’s response.
Obama is under pressure to bring the country out of the worst recession in decades — unemployment is at 10.2 percent, a 26-year high. Democrats say the answer is to spend money to jump-start the economy with jobs. Republicans have criticized that approach, citing last year’s $787 billion stimulus, and say that Obama should consider cutting taxes instead.
House Democrats passed a job-creation bill in December and say they intend to move on Oberstar’s six-year transportation reauthorization next.
“The jobs bill that we passed was an important step and everybody recognized that, but there’s going to continue to be [a focus on jobs], both starting with Mr. Oberstar’s bill, but also focusing on innovation,” caucus Chairman John Larson (Conn.) told reporters during the House Democrats’ jobs summit.
The White House has held back from offering its full commitment, instead focusing on the general goal of job creation.
“The top priority is to continue to work hard on getting this economy back on track and creating jobs,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday.
Despite a push by Oberstar and the support of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the transportation measure stalled last year. Lawmakers were unable to find a way to pay for the projects in the new version. Past surface reauthorization bills have been funded through the federal highway trust fund, which relies on revenue from gas taxes. But that revenue is expected to slacken in future years as Americans cut back on driving.
Because of the unsettled funding debate, the White House and the Senate had been lukewarm toward the idea of a new, multiyear transportation reauthorization measure, pushing instead for an 18-month extension of the expiring version.
House and Senate negotiators have since agreed to several temporary extensions, the last of which will end Feb. 28.
House Democrats have been pushing for more infrastructure spending to help boost the job market. They included $48.3 billion in infrastructure spending, most of which will go to highway projects, in the $154 billion jobs bill they passed last month.
House Republicans have criticized the Democratic stimulus spending as ineffective, pointing to an analysis by The Associated Press and economists that found the stimulus infrastructure projects had failed to cut local jobless rates. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) pointed to the analysis in an attack on vulnerable House Democrats. NRCC spokesman Ken Spain said that Democrats have backed “bloated spending programs that will only stimulate more government and higher debt.”
The House jobs bill, in addition to its standalone increase in infrastructure spending, allows for another extension of the expiring transportation reauthorization bill to the end of September. Pelosi’s office has left open the possibility that a more permanent transportation bill could be taken up soon after the Senate passes its jobs measure.
“Once the Senate acts on its jobs bill, we will work out differences, but we expect infrastructure to be a critical component of the final jobs bill,” said Nadeam Elshami, a Pelosi spokesman.
By Walter Alarkon – 01/19/10 07:52 PM ET
Source:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/76927-no-commitment-from-obama-on-500b-transportation-bill
City of Raleigh Partners in the Development of a Roof-Top Solar Array (NCSEA)
City of Raleigh Partners in the Development of a Roof-Top Solar Array (NCSEA)
The City of Raleigh has partnered with Progress Energy and Carolina Solar Energy for the development of a solar array on the E.M. Johnson Water Treatment Plant located at the corner of Falls of the Neuse and Raven Ridge Roads in north Raleigh.
In 2009 Progress Energy Carolinas (PEC) launched its SunSenseSM Commercial Solar PV Program, which provides a fixed premium price for electricity from commercial rooftop solar PV arrays. The program is designed to encourage the development of multiple PV technologies by many companies at locations across the state. In just its first six months, the utility accepted proposals totaling more than 2 MW.
During this same time period the City of Raleigh initiated a major City-wide sustainability effort. All City Departments were asked to investigate opportunities for the City to invest in sustainability projects.
PEC selected Carolina Solar Energy (CSE) as their preferred developer for a .2 MW ac (250 KWdc) rooftop photovoltaic array, which is the largest possible under the SunSense commercial PV program. The PV Solar project proposed by Carolina Solar Energy is the first solar generator in the Southeast to use the First Solar, the industry leader in thin film PV solar panels.
Carolina Solar Energy contacted the City of Raleigh to inquire about possible rooftop locations that might be viable for the installation of a photovoltaic array of this type.
After staff evaluations of several possible locations, the City of Raleigh Public Utilities Department (CORPUD) identified the roof top of the “Clearwell” of the City’s E.M. Johnson Water Treatment Plant. The “Clearwell” is a 117,000 square foot enclosed concrete structure holding treated water ready to be distributed throughout the City’s water supply system.
The City of Raleigh and Carolina Solar Energy entered into a lease agreement for the roof-top installation of the array with an option for the City to purchase the array in the future from Carolina Solar Energy.
The PV Solar project incorporates 3450 FIRST SOLAR Thin Film modules in 68, 40′ X 10′, 30 degree fixed tilt angle, ballasted arrays. For purposes of comparison, the .2 MW AC solar generator will produce approximately 325,000 kWh annually, equal to the annual energy usage of about 22 average North Carolina homes and avoid the emissions of 230 metric tons of CO2.
“We are very pleased at the City of Raleigh to be a partner w/ Carolina Solar Energy and Progress Energy in bringing renewable energy to municipal government in North Carolina. This project is the first of what we hope will be many similar ones that will contribute both to improving our air quality and bringing “green jobs” to our region,” remarked Julian Prosser, Assistant City Manager.
January 19, 2010
