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House members have filed separate bills that would allow 14 counties in the Piedmont and mountains and 12 counties in Eastern North Carolina to run public notices on their websites instead of in newspapers. This has been a bad idea over the past 10 years and it is arguably a worse idea today when a public health crisis calls for greater transparency, not less, and when the virtual learning experience in public schools has exposed huge gaps and inequities in internet access.
Public notices alert the public to pending government actions on rezoning requests, budget hearings, tax increases, auctions, property transfers, delinquent taxes, foreclosures, street name changes and more. They alert the public to disruptive land-use changes for things like sewage treatment plants, asphalt plants and garbage incinerators. They tell the public in advance about proposals for traffic-clogging high-density developments and plans for wider roads or new roads.
The Henderson County Board of Commissioners voted to rename the public health and social services building the Commissioner Charles D. Messer Human Services Building after the veteran commissioner died unexpectedly in July at age 66.
Commissioner Michael Edney described Messer as a smart man who made good, common sense decisions often informed by the grassroots opinions he heard from customers at Charlie s on the Creek, his convenience store in Hoopers Creek. “His heart was with the folks who came in the store,” Edney said during the ceremony to mark the renaming. “He understood the consequences of the actions he took and the board took.”
A bill that would penalize cities and counties for reducing appropriations to law enforcement agencies is drawing criticism from groups that want less police spending, praise from a law-enforcement officers group and skepticism from local officials worried about legislative interference in local affairs.
The bill, filed Monday in the N.C. Senate, would reduce revenues to local governments that cut spending on law enforcement by certain amounts.Â
Called the Police Funding Protection Act, the bill has as one of its co-sponsors Sen. Joyce Krawiec, R-Forsyth, who represents District 31, comprising parts of eastern and southern Forsyth County along with all of Davie County.