Editorial Roundup: North Carolina

Recent editorials from North Carolina newspapers:

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Aug. 5

The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer on improving elder care in North Carolina:

North Carolina knows about hurricanes and how to prepare for them. That awareness makes it especially disturbing that at least six elder-care facilities in Eastern North Carolina failed to evacuate their residents as Hurricane Florence bore down on them two years ago.

A story by the News & Observer’s Carli Brosseau published this week gave a harrowing account of what happened next. One facility evacuated residents by boat, some were carried out on backboards covered by sheets in the driving rain. At one home, staff members, unprepared and poorly paid, stopped showing up. Residents were put on buses and delivered to shelters ill-equipped to care for them. At least 200 residents were moved more than once. Some ended up at a shoddy, oft-penalized nursing home.

The most infuriating part of Brosseau’s account is that the chaos is likely to happen again. Fortunately, Hurricane Isaias did less damage than Florence, but as this year’s hurricane season enters its most dangerous months more stories of neglect and incompetence may emerge from nursing homes and assisted-living centers. Indeed elder care facilities may now be even less prepared for a storm, given the strain that COVID-19 already has already put on understaffed and poorly run operations.

Some nursing homes and assisted-living centers provide excellent care delivered by dedicated administrators and a well-trained staff. But that level is achieved despite the system, not because of it. Hurricanes and the pandemic are exposing the weaknesses in the system that is supposed to protect vulnerable people in congregate care settings in North Carolina. For-profit chains tend more to the bottom line than to their residents. Smaller operators run one or a few homes and accept fines for poor care as the cost of doing business.

This year, when North Carolina has seen more than 800 deaths from COVID-19 among long-term care residents, the legislature did not tighten accountability; it loosened it. Tucked into a COVID-19 relief law is a provision giving long-term care facilities immunity from most legal claims for the duration of the state of emergency.

North Carolina law includes bills of rights for residents of nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. Both documents begin with the residents’ rights to be treated with consideration and respect and receive care, treatment and services that are adequate and appropriate. Those rights were washed away as Florence flooded Eastern North Carolina. And they’ll continued to be ignored unless the state backs those rights with action.

Improving nursing home care requires driving out unscrupulous nursing home operators. But responsibility for tough regulation tends to get lost amid the tangled overlap of local, state and federal regulation.

KEY STEPS

Should Gov. Roy Cooper win re-election, as seems likely, he and state lawmakers should make it a priority to protect nursing home and assisted-living residents from neglect and exploitation. Taking these steps recommended by the advocacy group Friends of Residents in Long Term Care would be a good start:

- Add more state inspectors. There are plenty of regulations, but they are useless without enforcement.

- Increase the state’s Medicaid funding to add more staff at care facilities and improve their pay.

- Increase fines and penalties and tighten the appeals process. Too often operators wear down regulators and state lawyers with lengthy appeals that end in settlements.

- Don’t repeatedly cite bad operators. Shut them down.

There should be no more waiting. North Carolina should move its vulnerable elderly – literally and figuratively – to higher ground.

Online: https://www.newsobserver.com

Online: https://www.charlotteobserver.com

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Aug. 4

The Winston-Salem Journal on the Republican National Convention in Charlotte:

There’s a little uncertainty about the ceremony for renominating President Trump during the Republican National Convention in Charlotte later this month. On Saturday, a GOP spokeswoman said it would be conducted in private, without members of the press present. She cited the coronavirus as the reason.

Though we’re glad convention authorities are taking coronavirus seriously, a press ban would be disappointing to many of the presidents’ fans, who would follow it from the safety of their homes if they could.

But a committee official contradicted that assessment on Sunday, saying that no final decisions have been made and that logistics and press coverage options were still being evaluated.

However it happens, Charlotte should benefit from the presence of the 336 delegates who are scheduled to attend - while wearing masks and maintaining social distancing, we hope.

As of last week, both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence planned to be in Charlotte to accept the nomination. We’ll see. It wouldn’t be unusual for the president’s plans to change once again.

We’re not unsympathetic to the diminished nature of this year’s convention. The party nomination process is usually exciting, and Trump has a flair for fanfare. Ideally, his acceptance would be carried out in an auditorium full of roaring supporters. We wish that a convention of that magnitude could be held in Charlotte, where attendees would fill hotels and restaurants, helping everyone during a time in which many businesses are struggling. That was certainly the original plan.

But it’s still not safe for crowds to gather with no safety precautions. They’ll have to make do.

Back in June, frustrated that North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper wouldn’t guarantee him a packed house in the middle of a raging pandemic, President Trump accepted the invitation of Jacksonville, Fla., Mayor Lenny Curry and moved many convention functions there. Unfortunately, Florida became a simmering hot spot for COVID-19. Some prominent Republicans said they wouldn’t attend. Donors were antsy. And a group of businesses in Jacksonville sued to block the convention.

Despite continuing assurances from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, it’s still not safe. Nearly 7,200 Floridians have died from the virus as of Tuesday. One out of every 52 residents in the state has been infected with it. And in July, Curry conceded that it wouldn’t be safe to hold the convention in Jacksonville.

So last month, Trump bowed to reality and canceled the Jacksonville event. “We won’t do a big, crowded convention, per se - it’s not the right time for that,” Trump explained.

But it hadn’t been “the right time” in Charlotte, either. And though the president now says that public safety has concerned him all along, it didn’t seem to be much of a priority when he was haranguing Cooper for daring to suggest that an arena filled with 18,000 people, not socially distancing, wasn’t a good idea.

Cooper isn’t out of the woods yet, either. But his judgment has been sound and he hasn’t denied the reality of a pandemic. He’s given it to us straight about the challenges ahead, even when the news is bad.

Is that too much to expect from any of our leaders?

Online: https://journalnow.com

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Aug. 1

The Fayetteville Observer on the importance of voting, even during a pandemic:

Darren Generette takes voting seriously and knows his rights as a voter. So, the call that came in on July 28 around 10:30 a.m. struck him as suspicious.

Generette, owner of Gillespie Street Barbershop downtown, said the woman on the other end of the line asked him if he was interested in doing mail-in voting.

First, he asked how she got his number; she said from his voter registration.

“I’m going to do mine the conventional way of going into the polls,” he told her.

But he says she kept trying to convince him to consider an absentee ballot and wanted an address to mail it to.

“She said, ‘Well coronavirus is going to have a lot of things closed,’ and things like that,” Generette says. “She was very persistent. I pretty much had to interrupt the phone call.”

He says it was the first call like that he had received as a voter, and he found it “odd.”

We do not know if the caller was on the up-and-up. It is possible she was genuinely concerned that the situation with COVID-19 this fall will make voting in-person difficult or even impossible, and wanted to make sure Generette is covered either way.

But the barber is right to be cautious. John Lewis, the late civil rights icon who was honored by U.S. presidents at his funeral on July 30, paid as heavy a cost to secure voting rights as anyone. He once said of voting: “The right to vote is precious and almost sacred, and one of the most important blessings of our democracy. Today we must be vigilant in protecting that blessing.”

Yes, voting is something to be protected - a right of immense value. For people without large amounts of money or direct influence on politicians, the vote is the most power they have as a single individual to help transform government.

That is why so many billions are spent on election years like this one to steer that power in one direction or the other. Sadly we know that some people are willing to steal that power - like we saw with the absentee ballot fraud in Bladen County in a 2018 congressional race, where people were accused of illegally collecting ballots from voters.

With the voting power comes responsibility. Among other things, that means keeping up with important dates.

The COVID-19 pandemic will certainly impact voting this year, and has already had an effect. North Carolina does not have universal, mail-in voting, but anyone can vote by mail, i.e. by absentee ballot, if they meet certain deadlines to request and then return the ballot.

Statewide, around 70,000 residents have requested absentee ballots, four times as many than at this point in 2016, according to TV news station WXII. Usually, less than 5 percent of voters vote by mail; this year the number could hit 40 percent, the station reports.

Absentee ballot forms can be picked up in person at the Cumberland County Board of Elections building on Fountainhead Lane downtown; they must be returned by Oct. 27. There are other rules; visit the county and the state boards of elections site for information.

Early, in-person voting is scheduled to begin Oct. 15 and there are 12 sites in Cumberland County. Election day is Nov. 3. (Incidentally, there are positions available, $12/hour, for people to work early voting and Election Day.)

Meanwhile, the pandemic has temporarily closed the county Board of Elections office building, which has posted signs. Messages at the board’s website and at the building say staff is still available to the public by phone and email, Monday - Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (phone: 910-678-7733. email: boardofelections@co.cumberland.nc.us)

Voters can still pick up registration forms and absentee ballot request forms inside and, when they complete them, deposit them in a drop box just outside the door.

The building closure is a stark reminder the pandemic adds an unwanted element to voting in this important election cycle. Each family and each individual must decide for themselves whether to vote in-person or do mail-in voting.

But whichever works best for you, keep your eye on the main prize - cast your vote.

Online: https://www.fayobserver.com/