This morning, the N&O’s Colin Campbell reported on the Senate Republicans’ new “compromise” plans on sales-tax distribution and the state’s economic incentive programs. The backdrop to this, which I wrote about at some length in June, is a session-long effort to steer money away from the state’s thriving municipalities toward poor, struggling rural areas beset […]
Jeffrey C. Billman
Posted inNews
Poll: Nobody likes legislative lightning rod Trudy Wade, not even in her ruby-red Senate district
Throughout this legislative session, State Sen. Trudy Wade, R-Guilford, has been on the frontline of some of the GOP majority’s most controversial causes, especially redistricting the Greensboro City Council, which had way too many Democrats for their liking (a court has put that law on hold), and trying to prevent the state from complying with […]
Posted inNews
33 amazing lines from the collected works of Tony Tata, novelist
Last Tuesday, N.C. Secretary of Transportation Tony Tata, the shit-canned former superintendent of Wake County Public Schools who, after joining the McCrory administration in 2013, became a prominent backer of the governor’s going-nowhere-fast infrastructure bond proposalabruptly stepped down. This was … strange. And unexpected. He said the thing that politicos always say, that he was […]
Posted inNews
Raleigh is too livable, says website not owned by Greg Hatem
This morning Wallethub, a website that compiles lists like “Best States to Be Rich and Poor from a Tax Perspective” and “2015’s Best and Worst Cities for Sports Fans,” released its compilation of “2015’s Best and Worst Large Cities to Live In.” And while, sure, we could nitpick the criteria—most of which are drawn from […]
Posted inNews
Here are all of Raleigh’s outdoor dining complaints for June and July
Tomorrow afternoon, the City Council will take up controversial changes to its Private Use of Public Spaces ordinance—in other words, the degree to which bars and restaurants are permitted to use the sidewalks in front of their buildings as patios. (While the ordinance is most definitely aimed at Fayetteville Street, the new regulations will be […]
Posted inNews
5 Takeaways from Raleigh’s Outdoor Drinking Debate
On Tuesday, as Jane Porter ably reported via live blog, the Raleigh City Council’s Law and Public Safety Committee (from here on out, LPS) took up the Private Use of Public Spaces ordinance, an issuewe’ve writtenabout onseveral occasions now. LPS did more or less what was expected: It adopted most of the noncontroversial points the […]
Posted inUncategorized
How Raleigh bars (probably) beat back sidewalk restrictions
From the get-go, Raleigh city staffers weren’t coy about which side they were on. In their view, this was a simple problem requiring a simple solution: Downtown bars had gotten out of handtoo loud, too congested, too dirty, too raucousand residents wanted them reined in. This is what the Fayetteville Street District’s Livable Streets Subcommittee, […]
Posted inNews
Gun-humpers and Confederate lovers: The General Assembly outdoes itself
While it is true that every week on Jones Street is a banner weekand by “banner week” we mean a week spent making North Carolina dumber, poorer, meaner, more violent, more polluted and increasingly subservient to rich people’s bank accountsthe General Assembly really outdid itself last week. Yes, the end of session nears, which means […]
Posted inNews
Thirteen percent of Raleigh city employees make less than $15/hour
In last week’s dead-tree edition, I wrote about N.C. labor activists’ #wageweek campaign, an effort to pressure policymakers and businesses alike to boost paychecks for those at the bottommost rungs of the socioeconomic ladder to something approaching living wage, and praising companies that have done so on their own. As it turns out, while the […]
Posted inNews
Here’s what Raleigh’s outdoor drinking ordinance will (probably) look like
Derrick Remer, the city of Raleigh’s emergency management and special events manager, had an idea of what this afternoon’s hospitality task force meeting was going to look like: Because the task force of downtown stakeholders—mainly small business owners and managers, with one resident representative—that he was helping facilitate had, after six weeks or so or […]
