They're at it again, and this time, the stench of scandal at the Department of Transportation has attached itself to gubernatorial candidate Beverly Perdue.
In 1971, an audit by then-State Auditor Henry Bridges of the State Highway Commission, an earlier incarnation of the DOT, found that “the commission does not have proper internal controls over appropriations, revenues or expenditures.” (Raleigh News & Observer, 10/15/92).
It’s interesting to note that in nearly 40 years, almost nothing has changed.
The North Carolina Economic Investment Committee has given final approval for taxpayers to subsidize two companies to the tune of $60 million in corporate welfare dollars. It’s the latest action in a year’s worth of intense, behind-closed-doors wheeling & dealing which included two special sessions of the North Carolina General Assembly a year ago this month, all for the benefit of the behemoth tire manufacturers.
The first session was originally called to attempt to over-ride Gov. Mike Easley’s veto of a 2007 bill which would have awarded $40 million in taxpayer subsidies to Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., even though the Fayetteville company didn’t ask for the money and hadn’t announced plans to move anywhere. Goodyear ramped up the rhetoric, however, after the governor vetoed the public assistance scheme.
Recently, Internet blogs erupted with speculation about a grotesque looking creature that supposedly washed ashore at Montauk on Long Island, New York.
A commentator from Animal Planet claimed it might be a decomposing raccoon. Since the original photo came from an employee of a marketing company, New York Magazine said it might be a viral marketing campaign, perhaps an attempt to build buzz about a character on Cartoon Network.
In North Carolina, state and local governments are prohibited from borrowing money without the approval of a majority of the people who choose to vote on the question. So why does the recently adopted budget for the fiscal year 2008-09 include more than $850 million in borrowing that will never undergo the scrutiny of voters?
... MOREWhen voters approved the controversial Amendment One to the North Carolina constitution on the 2004 ballot, they gave local governments a powerful new economic development tool: the ability to partner with private developers without having to bother the taxpayers with the details. Proponents – mostly local government officials and private developers – claimed that they needed the amendment as a time-saving measure that would allow them to more efficiently close development deals in their cities & towns, and that it would not cost taxpayers. Critics of Amendment One (tax-increment financing) argued that it would encourage secretive backroom deals that put more risk on the taxpayers than the private developers.
... MORECharged with distributing hundreds of millions from the tobacco settlement, it was supposed to remake North Carolina's distressed tobacco dependent communities. But has the Golden LEAF Foundation really panned out?
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