North Carolina had a session with important victories for working families, but the hands of energy and insurance lobbies ended up diluting the environmental and health-care reforms passed in the end.

Election Reform: Beginning with a new ethics law passed in the wake of corruption scandals involving the former Speaker, this session marked some major improvements in democracy for North Carolina:

In a major victory for improving voting rights, HB 91 will now allow voters to register and vote on the same day [8] during the early voting period up until the Saturday before the regular election day.
The legislature also approved HB 1517, publicly funded "Voter-Owned Elections [9]" covering the Commissioner of Insurance, State Auditor and Superintendent of Public Instruction-- joining North Carolina's successful public financing of state judicial elections. The legislature also gave the town of Chapel Hill [10] the right to implement public financing locally.
A bill to have North Carolina approve the National Popular Vote compact [11] to award the state's Presidential votes to the winner of the popular vote passed the House, but didn't come to a final vote in the Senate.

Working Families: The North Carolina General Assembly also approved a 3.5% refundable Earned Income Tax Credit [12], a benefit for 825,000 working North Carolinians. North Carolina has been a leader for years on fighting predatory lending and the legislature enacted three new anti-predatory lending laws:

HB 1374 [13] makes the foreclosure process fairer and protects homeowners from abusive mortgage loan servicing,
HB 1817 [14] protects home buyers from predatory lending practices, and
HB 947 [15] protects tenants who live in properties going through foreclosure.

Health Care: The final state budget included NC Kid's Care [16], a program to cover 38,000 currently uninsured children beginning in 2008. Children in families up to 300% of the poverty line will receive subsidized care based on a sliding scale tied to family income. The state also took over the costs of Medicaid [17] previously shouldered by local governments, freeing up that money for schools and other local needs.

Unfortunately, the high-risk health care pool [18] approved by the legislature does not require the insurance companies to contribute to its cost, giving those companies an incentive to push their sickest consumers into the public high-risk system. And a new mental-health parity law [19], while an important advance, was restricted to only nine mental illnesses.

Energy & Environment: While the state became the first legislature in the Southeast to mandate that 12.5% of energy used to produce electricity come from renewable sources, the bill was amended to allow greater profits for those utilities [20] when they build new coal and nuclear plants as well, a very mixed bag for environmentalists. The state did approve a bill effectively banning new hog farm "lagoons," [21] offering help to farmers installing new technologies to deal with hog waste.

A number of bills were thankfully defeated, including holding a constitutional referendum on banning gay marriage and a bill that would have blocked communities from creating publicly-owned broadband systems. Unfortunately, transportation funding solutions also went nowhere [22] this session and reforms of the death penalty and bans on school bullying failed as well.

Strengthening Communities

By Nathan Newman [7]

The Minnesota Transit Programs That Weren't

As we detailed in a LegAlert [23] last Friday, the Minnesota bridge collapse tragedy highlights the more general failure of states to invest in infrastructure maintenance. Most state legislatures have failed to muster the political will to vote for the revenues needed to maintain the transit infrastructure across the country.

[24]Ironically, Minnesota's legislature was not one of them. Repeatedly in recent years, bipartisan majorities in the Minnesota legislature have voted to raise gas taxes to fund transit improvements, only to see the present governor, Tim Pawlenty, block the bills. Back in 2005 [25], Pawlenty vetoed a 10-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase that had been passed with bipartisan support, and just this year [26], when the legislature voted to increase the gas tax by a nickel-per-gallon, Pawlenty ostentatiously vetoed the bill within twenty-four hours of passage.

A Change of Heart: But now in the wake of the bridge tragedy, Pawlenty has changed his no-new-taxes tune and is now willing to support [27] a gas tax increase to address critical infrastructure needs. "The bottom line is, all of us -- here in Minnesota, Republicans, Democrats, nationally -- know and have known for years that we need more resources," Pawlenty said, "Someone needs to break the logjam." Better late than never, but it shouldn't take a deadly tragedy for political leaders to recognize the need to invest in our transit infrastructure.

The right-wing ideologues are already demanding Pawlenty's head [28] for this heresy. The Minnesota Free Market Institute has denounced Pawlenty's position as "a serious mistake" while conservative strategist Paul Weyrich has observed that "anti-tax people... will try to drive him out of consideration for vice president or anything else."

E Coli Conservatism: Rick Perlstein, a historian of right-wing movements in America, has coined a term, "E Coli Conservatism [29]," for a right-wing movement so hell bent on defunding government that it doesn't care about the deaths left in its wake, including ineffective food safety inspections [29] that leave Americans eating poisoned food, a consumer protection system that ignored lead paint in children's toys [30] for years, and now a deadly, crumbling transit infrastructure.

In the wake of tragedy, Governor Pawlenty has finally stepped away from this extremist, self-destructive ideology. Hopefully, as we look for the political will to invest the estimated $1.6 trillion needed to repair the nation's infrastructure, more of his conservative compatriots will join him.

Research Roundup

The benefits of pre-school programs last long into adulthood, a new report by University of Minnesota researchers [31] finds. In one of the longest-lasting longitudinal studies, the research shows that by age 24, children involved in preschool programs were more likely to finish high school, attend college, and have health insurance, and less likely to be arrested for a felony and to suffer depression.

Due to limited federal and state funding for vaccines, a new Harvard Medical School study [32] finds that uninsured children are increasingly at risk. Because of rising costs, key vaccines are no longer available at public clinics in many states.

How much will the Iraq War cost? A new Congressional Budget Office study [33] finds that the minimum cost will be over $1 trillion and that costs could easily be more, especially as you add in "hidden" costs such as long-term health care for veterans and replacing equipment used in the war.

Please email us [7] leads on good research at research@progressivestates.org [7]

Eye on the Right

If you think Wal-Mart wages are bad in the US, try working for their stores in Mexico. Child grocery baggers at their supermarkets throughout Mexico are paid exactly... nothing. That's right; they receive no pay [34] despite Wal-Mart de Mexico's $1.1 billion in profits last year. Wal-Mart refers to these workers as "volunteer packers" and encourages gratuity from customers. Aside from being a heinous practice, what does this have to do with labor in the U.S.?

This is just the extreme version of unpaid labor forced on Wal-Mart employees. Wal-Mart has repeatedly lost in state court as employees have sued for unpaid [35] wages [36], including pretending janitors at their stores were "independent contractors" [37] to avoid paying legally required wages. States occasionally crack down on these wage violations, but a lot more needs to be done.

3 Steps Forward

1. MA Gov Eyes Free Education from Age 3 to Community College [38]

2. CO: Education chief wants in-state tuition for undocumented students [39]

3. NY: [40]Bill aims to spur housing for the poor in New York [40]

2 Steps Back

1. FL: Publix Uses New Law to Boot Petition Gatherers from Supermarket [41]

2. WI: Health Savings Accounts Promoted in Assembly Budget are "Snake Oil to the Sick" [42]

Jobs & Internships

Check out current opportunities with Progressive States on the Jobs & Internships Page [43].

Masthead

The Stateside Dispatch is written and edited by:

Nathan Newman, Policy Director
Mijin Cha, Policy Specialist
Adam Thompson, Policy Specialist
John Bacino, Communications Associate

Suggestions

Please shoot me an email at dispatch@progressivestates.org [44] if you have feedback, tips, suggestions, criticisms, or nominations for any of our sidebar features.

John Bacino
Editor, Stateside Dispatch

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