Recent editorials from North Carolina newspapers:
Dec. 11
The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer on efforts to increase pay for North Carolina public school teachers:
The governor and lieutenant governor have begun a fresh debate on an issue that should never grow stale: North Carolina’s inadequate pay for public school teachers.
The dispute flared up again last week when Gov. Roy Cooper sent a letter to N.C. teachers and school personnel explaining why this year’s raises have become a casualty of a budget dispute with Republicans, and why the governor didn’t think a separate Republican bill offering a 3.9 percent raise for teachers was good enough. “As the professionals who take great care of our students every day, you deserve better,” the letter said.
Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, who is running to unseat Cooper in 2020, responded the next day with a letter of his own and some talking points Republicans have long trotted out on teacher pay. Some are true, such as the fact that Republicans have increased N.C. teacher pay by 20 percent to an average of $8,600 (with some help from county supplements). Some are incomplete, such as the claim that Republicans also have increased overall public school funding in North Carolina, when the reality is that state spending has declined on a per-pupil basis when growth in the student population and inflation are factored in.
It’s a not a new debate, and it’s one that’s sure to keep bubbling to the surface regardless of who gets the Republican nomination for governor next year. Each time it does, Republicans should answer a simple question about the people who educate the children of our state. Should N.C. teachers be treated worse than the average teacher in the United States?
Right now, they are. N.C. average teacher pay about $7,800 below the latest national average of $61,782, and even after recent raises, our state remains in the bottom half of U.S. teacher pay rankings. Cooper wants to change that. His veto of Republicans’ 3.9 percent average pay raise was followed with a counteroffer of an 8.5 percent average raise for N.C. teachers, along with a 5 percent raise for non-certified school personnel instead of the 2 percent Republicans wanted. Cooper also has offered to sit with Republican leaders and hammer out a pay raise compromise. Those discussions haven’t happened yet.
Instead, Republicans including Forest continue to tout what they’ve done for teachers instead of acknowledging what still needs to be done. Doing so would force them to confront an inescapable truth - that rather than quickly bring N.C. teacher pay to a level that would discourage educators from leaving for other states or other professions, Republicans prefer that money go toward sustaining tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Those tax cuts don’t benefit teachers or most struggling North Carolinians, and they haven’t produced the exemplary growth that Republicans promised.
By the way, even Cooper’s teacher pay increase would leave N.C. teachers short of the national average, especially those who don’t benefit from more affluent counties that provide pay supplements. That average continues to be a worthy target, one that North Carolina governors long ago recognized was important. Both Gov. Jim Hunt and Gov. Jim Martin thought North Carolina’s lagging teacher pay was unacceptable. Both raised it, with Hunt reaching the national average in four years.
Today’s teachers deserve the same. It’s the right answer to a simple question, and Republicans should sit down with the governor to craft a similar path now.
Online: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/ and https://www.newsobserver.com/
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Dec. 7
Winston-Salem Journal on the new congressional map for North Carolina:
The new congressional district map for North Carolina is settled - for now. And though some will find it to be an improvement - and many will be glad that we can move on from the issue to the elections - it’s still not completely fair and shouldn’t be the final, final word. Following the election, good-government groups and North Carolina residents should continue to work for a better, more equitable map.
On Monday, a panel of three state judges upheld the redrawn map, thus allowing the filing period to begin. With primary elections on March 3, the State Board of Elections had requested a timely resolution by mid-December.
“As a practical matter, in the court’s view there is simply not sufficient time to fully evaluate the factual record necessary to decide the constitutional challenges of the congressional districts without significantly delaying the primary elections,” Judge Paul Ridgeway said. “It is time for the citizens to vote.”
We appreciate the concern for practicality, but it’s something like a doctor using duct tape and a ruler rather than a cast to set a broken arm.
Or, as N.C. Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Goodwin put it, “North Carolina Republicans yet again run out the clock on fair maps, denying justice to North Carolina voters and forcing our state to go another election using undemocratic district lines.”
The redrawn districts are a slight improvement, but they won’t be as competitive as they should be. Republicans and Democrats are roughly equal in number in North Carolina, but there will still be a Republican advantage, thanks to the party’s success in gerrymandering over the last decade. Ten of the 13 House seats belonged to solid Republican districts before the map was redrawn. Political analysts say the new map is likely to shift the outcome to eight solid Republican and five solid Democrat districts, with the 2nd and 6th districts flipping blue.
The 2nd district is entirely in Wake County. The 6th district, currently represented by U.S. Rep. Mark Walker, a Republican, has been redrawn to contain most of Winston-Salem, half of Kernersville and all of Guilford County, which makes it a less reliable win for him. In response, he’s currently keeping his options open; he may run again in the 6th or challenge an incumbent in the 10th or 13th district. He may even challenge Sen. Thom Tillis’ seat, the Journal reported Thursday.
“Rep. Walker is going to run where his constituents are,” spokesman Jack Minor said.
That’s kind of the problem.
If he does run again in the 6th, he’ll face a serious challenge from a Democrat - either former Guilford County Commissioner Bruce Davis Sr., who filed for the seat last week, or Greensboro’s Kathy Manning, who announced her candidacy via Twitter before the judges’ ruling was disclosed.
Fair and transparent elections should be a nonpartisan issue. A new congressional map will be drawn in 2022 after the U.S. Census, but before then, all of our legislators, Democrat, Republican and independent, should work together to authorize an independent commission to draw the lines. The results may not be perfect, but they will be better than allowing legislators to continue choosing their voters.
Residents who want to work for fair elections may resolve, in 2020, to support good-government groups like Common Cause N.C., with donations and volunteer efforts. We shouldn’t have to become activists to ensure fair elections, but with legislators who keep seeking unfair advantages, it may be the only way.
Online: https://www.journalnow.com/
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Dec. 7
The Citizen-Times (Asheville) on reasons to make changes within the prison system in North Carolina:
One way to look at North Carolina’s prison crisis is to say we have too few guards. A better way is to say we have too many prisoners.
The imbalance is clear. Three months ago the state announced it would shut down three minimum-security facilities so the employees could be reassigned elsewhere in the system. One of every five staff positions is vacant, resulting in extra hours and shifts that lead to fatigue, burnout and danger.
“They have been doing a tremendous job over many, many months, working mandatory overtime, taking time away from their families, things that people who don’t work in the prison take for granted,” said Tracy Little, deputy secretary for the state Division of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice.
“It’s absurd how thin they’re stretched,” Mary Pollard of N.C. Prisoner Legal Services said of the state’s prison system. “Even with the resources available, it’s just hard to find people to fill all those jobs.”
North Carolina is relatively low in its incarceration rate, 30th among the 50 states. Still, it has 36,000 people behind bars. Should all of them be there?
No, says the American Civil Liberties Union. Nearly one-third of those imprisoned in North Carolina was serving time for a drug or property offense as of May 2018, the ACLU says, while as of 2015 a person serving time in North Carolina had served an average of 29.4 percent more time than just a decade earlier.
In 1994, North Carolina essentially eliminated discretionary parole in favor of structured sentencing, under which inmates must remain incarcerated until the minimum time listed for their offense. The theory was to make the system predictable and uniform. The reality was to make sentences longer.
And then there is habitual felon sentencing. Under state law, anyone found guilty of three felonies over their lifetime is automatically sentenced at a felony class four levels higher than their most serious offense.
“If you go from a Class H felony to a Class D felony, that’s the difference between kicking in the door of somebody’s storage shed in the back of their yard and armed robbery,” said Ben Finholt, a staff attorney with N.C. Prisoner Legal Services. “None of that seems like a positive thing for our criminal justice system.”
Habitual felon sentencing is particularly controversial in North Carolina because its structured sentencing law already accounts for a person’s prior criminal record in determining prison time.
The problem with “get tough” sentencing measures that limit discretion is that they lump all offenders together, be they hardened criminals or people who made a mistake and have learned from their error. “ People do change and mature, and we’re holding a lot of people who are not threats to public safety,” Pollard said.
Lasting reform can come only from the General Assembly. Discretionary parole should be reinstated and habitual felon sentencing eliminated. These bad ideas were instituted by Democrats, which should make it easier for the Republicans who now control the General Assembly to be willing to undo them.
Gov. Cooper can give some short-term help. Dawn Blagrove, executive director of the Carolina Justice Policy Center, said he could commute sentences for the 4,800 inmates classified as habitual felons. That move would likely not result in immediate release for all of them, she said, but it would put all of them on a faster track to a fair release.
Prisons should be a place for those who have committed serious crimes, especially crimes of violence. We should not be warehousing those who are better rehabilitated in settings that are both less restrictive and less expensive.
Online: https://www.citizen-times.com/
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