Following the disastrous coal ash spill at the Dan River nearly two years ago, the North Carolina Legislature and Gov. McCrory charted a path to begin to address the state’s 14 coal-fired power plants. The Coal Ash Management Act emerged last August, requiring Duke Energy to clean up four high-priority coal ash lagoons, and in […]
Jane Porter
Jane Porter is Wake County editor of the INDY, covering Raleigh and other communities across Wake County. She first joined the staff in 2013 and is a former INDY intern, staff writer, and editor-in-chief, first joining the staff in 2013.
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Join us live for the Raleigh City Council candidate forum
Tonight, WakeUP Wake County, the League of Women Voters of Wake County and the Delta Sigma Theta sorority are hosting a forum for all 18 candidates for Raleigh’s City Council and the Mayor’s office. We’re here at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, live blogging the forum from 7 to 9 p.m. Thanks for joining! 6:52: We’re […]
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Wake County extends protections to LGBT workers
On Monday, the Wake County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to add sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression to its anti-discrimination policy. The county has practiced equal employment opportunity for some time already, according to Commissioner John Burns, and the County’s updated Equal Employment Opportunity Ordinance enshrines protections for LGBT workers and job applicants […]
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NC bill could change what adolescents learn in sexual health education classes
Imagine your child, in public school, learning that contracting HIV is God’s way of punishing promiscuity, or that contraceptives are harmful or cause abortions. A bill heading to the state Senate, which makes changes to the state’s Healthy Youth Act, could broaden the scope of the resources teachers can use to educate middle-schoolers on sexual […]
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Raleigh City Council candidate lays into state budget
The Eastgate Shell station on Wake Forest Road is a fitting place for Raleigh City Council District A candidate JB Buxton to bring attention to one of the worst provisions in the new state budget: the sales tax on auto repair, maintenance and installation services that will go into a fund to benefit the state’s […]
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Can young voters swing Raleigh city elections?
You’d expect college kidsespecially college kids at N.C. State, which ain’t Berkeleyto greet municipal elections with a shrug and then return to their beer bongs. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if this year actually was different? How would that affect Raleigh’s City Council races? That’s what an organization called the Youth Government […]
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North Carolina finally has something resembling a state budget
Updated: The N.C. Senate voted to approve the budget 33-16 Tuesday afternoon. Sen. Josh Stein, D-Wake, who voted against the budget wrote on his Facebook page that it “it fails NC’s school kids, teachers & future.” Stein said according to the General Assembly’s Fiscal Research division, the cost of the corporate tax cuts and tax […]
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No McDowell County magistrates officiating marriages until March
Marriage equality is the law of the land, and North Carolina is, officially, the land of the absurd. On Thursday it was reported that all four magistrates in McDowell County, near Asheville, have recused themselves from performing gay and straight marriages for the next six months. That’s their right under Senate Bill 2, which became […]
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Koch brothers tell lawmakers to tell other lawmakers: REPS bad for N.C.
Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards are responsible for the creation of 23,769 fewer jobs in North Carolina since the Great Recession in 2008. REPS cost the average North Carolina family $3,870 in 2013. Renewable energy sources are significantly more expensive than traditional options that are available. Farmers are being pushed off of their land by solar […]
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Residents aren’t buying Raleigh’s plans for East College Park
In 2005, Willie Stokes, a tall soft-spoken man with deep brown eyes, returned to the home he grew up in. It’s on Maple Street in East College Park, about a mile east of downtown Raleigh, a gray one-story home with a wide backyard built during the Roaring ’20s, back in this neighborhood’s heyday. The house […]