North Carolina editorial roundup

Recent editorials from North Carolina newspapers:

May 17

The News & Observer, Raleigh, North Carolina, on state needing to comply with voter registration law:

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 has a simple aim: Encourage voting by making it easier to register.

To that end, the law included two simple requirements. First, states are to provide individuals with the opportunity to register to vote at the same time they apply for a driver’s license or seek to renew a driver’s license, a requirement that led the law to be dubbed the “Motor Voter” law. Second, it requires states to offer voter registration at offices that provide public assistance to the needy and disabled.

Now these simple requirements have developed complications in North Carolina. Several voting rights advocacy groups say the state appears to be largely ignoring the law. They point to a sharp fall in voter registration applications - especially through agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services - since the start of Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration in 2013.

The groups say the applications taken by public assistance agencies have dropped by more than 50 percent in the last two years, falling from an annual average of 38,400 between 2007 and 2012 to an average of only 16,000.

The groups that identified the decline were Democracy North Carolina, Action NC and the A. Philip Randolph Institute. With the help of lawyers from Demos, Project Vote, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, the groups have filed notice that they will sue the state if it fails to come into compliance within 90 days, as the NVRA requires.

Just why voter registration applications have dropped is unclear. The likely explanation is that when the McCrory administration took over, new leaders at DHHS, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the State Board of Elections simply overlooked the requirement.

That’s the way it’s seen by Gary Sims, deputy director of Wake County’s Board of Elections. He has complained in messages to his director, Cherie Poucher, and the State Board of Elections Director Kim Strach that DMV routinely fails to forward voter registrations to local elections boards. “I think what we have here is an agency that has failed to do their jobs,” Sims wrote.

At DHHS, the decline in registrations might have resulted from problems with the department computer system that handles public assistance applications. The system known as N.C. Fast had operational glitches and problems processing food stamps in 2013. It also has been slow to include the required voter registration information.

This is not the first time North Carolina has fallen out of compliance with the NVRA. Demos, the New York-based group that has put North Carolina on notice, also monitored the state about 10 years ago after seeing a drop in voter registration applications processed by public assistance agencies. Gary Bartlett, the State Board of Elections director at the time, worked closely with Demos to get the state back into compliance.

The previous registration decline happened when the state was controlled by Democrats. This time, from the governor through the General Assembly and State Board of Elections, Republicans rule. And a lot has changed since the first compliance problems. Democrats were interested in encouraging voter registration. The state’s Republican leaders have made registering and voting more difficult by eliminating same-day registration, reducing the days for early voting and requiring a valid photo ID to vote in 2016.

Given the thrust of Republican changes in voting laws, Republicans may not be upset to see registrations decline, especially among low-income residents who tend to vote Democratic. There’s no evidence that this lapse was deliberate, but it would be reassuring to see the state get quickly into compliance before it becomes involved in yet another lawsuit over its handling of voting laws.

Online:

https://www.newsobserver.com

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May 20

News & Record, Greensboro, North Carolina, on better spending plan:

When Gov. Pat McCrory submitted his proposed budget to the legislature in early March, the state was still in the grip of winter gloom. Like brown lawns and bare trees, revenue forecasts also gave little hint of new growth just around the corner.

Since then, spring burst forth in its glory and tax collections surged. So, in its proposed budget revealed this week, the N.C. House of Representatives took a more generous turn.

The House and governor both want to raise starting pay for teachers to $35,000. The House would add 2 percent pay raises for all state employees as it proposes to increase state spending by 6 percent overall. It includes adding money to state reserves.

The House would restore a tax deduction for senior citizens’ medical expenses. Eliminating that benefit was a painful blunder. It pulled in more revenue but gave thousands of die-hard voters a nasty shock: The Republicans’ “tax reform” cost them money. House members aim to correct that mistake.

Also restored would be millions of dollars in film incentives and money to pay for historic property restoration. Dropping those favors sent movie and TV productions to other states and got rid of a tool used to revitalize small towns and inner cities.

The House would spend money to improve state ports at Wilmington and Morehead City. Trade contributes heavily to the North Carolina economy, and it’s better to move more of it through state ports. They need upgrades.

Overall, however, there still aren’t enough investments. North Carolina must re-strengthen its universities and community colleges and do more to make sure children are ready for post-secondary education. Quality early childhood learning is still unavailable to many children, and high numbers never get on track in the primary grades. This summer, Guilford County Schools (face) reading camp cuts. Legislators insist that third-graders should read well before advancing to fourth grade, but they’ve never provided enough resources to fund the summer programs needed to help slower learners catch up.

The House also suffers from the attitude that some state services should pay for themselves. One example is the directive that state parks, museums and attractions such as the N.C. Zoo in Asheboro implement “dynamic pricing,” a concept that amounts to charging whatever the market will bear. The “market” is not a monolith, and people of modest means should have the same opportunity as well-to-do residents to enjoy public facilities. There’s nothing dynamic about ticket prices that leave some families outside the park gate.

The $400 million revenue windfall for the current fiscal year gives budget writers some hope that revenues will continue to be strong. They are wisely investing a little more in people, infrastructure and savings.

Yet with more corporate tax cuts coming, it’s questionable whether revenues will continue to grow enough to pay for further needed investments.

It would be better to freeze corporate tax rates and make sure a lush, green spring doesn’t dry up in a summer drought.

Online:

https://www.heraldsun.com

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May 19

Charlotte Observer on more openness in federal court:

If you’d like to know more about the three-year prison sentence N.C. House Speaker Jim Black received on political corruption charges back in 2007, that information is just a Google search away.

His sentencing memorandum, a legal document that outlines federal prosecutors’ case for the harshness or leniency of punishment sought, can be found online fairly easily.

If you seek the same insight into the punishment for former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon, felled last year by an FBI corruption probe, you’d be out of luck.

The sentencing memorandum for Cannon is not publicly available. Also unavailable: The sentencing memorandum for former CIA Director David Petraeus, sentenced in Charlotte last month to two years of probation for leaking government secrets.

You can see the sentencing memorandum in Black’s case because it was handled by prosecutors in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. That district, like other federal court jurisdictions, routinely makes such memorandums publicly available. The Western District of North Carolina, which includes Charlotte’s federal court, takes the unusual step of keeping those documents away from the public.

It’s been that way in the Western District since 2008. Frank Johns, the Western District’s clerk of court, tells the editorial board that with the advent of electronic filing, lawyers were filing documents that failed to redact private information. So the area’s federal courts simply decided to seal all sentencing memorandums.

Johns says the rule has remained in place at least in part because no one has challenged it. He also voiced fears that sensitive information such as the names of cooperating witnesses could fall into the wrong hands.

But if other courts can redact these documents and release them without imperiling sensitive information, surely we can do so here, too. The Observer is now challenging the rule, with court motions seeking to unseal the sentencing memorandums and related documents in the Cannon and Petraeus cases.

The American criminal justice system is built around the premise that transparency enhances the public’s confidence in its courts. That cause would be well-served by opening up these key documents, which can offer the public a behind-the-curtain glimpse of the debates that help shape the severity of the sentences meted out by judges.

Johns says a local rules panel of lawyers, judges and clerks oversees filing policies. The panel ought to move expeditiously toward unsealing these documents.

Online:

https://www.charlotteobserver.com