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Domestic violence led to 131 homicides in North Carolina last year.

North Carolina has averaged around 550 homicides annually in recent years.

Mecklenburg County reported the most domestic violence homicides, 14, last year. Wake County had six.

Attorney General Roy Cooper announced the unpleasant data Thursday, the result of a two-year-old law requiring law enforcement agencies to file more detailed reports on such deaths to the State Bureau of Investigation.

The data showed some logical patterns, with the more populous counties showing higher numbers, but several rural counties showed surprisingly high figures, such as five domestic violence homicides in Edgecombe County.

"We should aim very broadly in our efforts" against domestic violence, Cooper said, emphasizing that the problem is not just concentrated in urban centers. Rita Anita Linger, executive director of the N.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said factors that contribute to domestic violence, such as isolation and the scarcity of support services, are more severe in rural counties.

Eight of the 131 victims had taken out a protective order, and Cooper said one goal is to better educate the public about the availability and value of those orders. He also praised a pilot program in Pitt County that alerts victims through a state system when the protective order they requested has been served.

Three of the offenders responsible were reported to be on pre-trial release for a domestic violence crime when the homicide took place.

Among the numbers included in Cooper's report: 99 of the victimes were female, while 32 were male. The offenders responsible included 103 males and 25 females. (Some had multiple victims.) The counties with the largest number of homicides, besides Mecklenburg and Wake, included: Forsyth and Guilford - seven each; Union - six; Durham and Cumberland counties - four each.  

State legislators have now asked for $181.4 million.

Eight more bills filed since Dome last checked have added another $60.7 million in requested spending, even as the state faces a $2 billion shortfall.

The largest request of the most recent batch is $50 million for the N.C. Housing Trust Fund, which finances low-income housing. The smallest is $50,000 for a caisson coordinator at the State Highway Patrol, an amount already requested in another bill.

Other spending bills would help run senior centers, provide block grants for home and community care, support people with dementia and their caregivers, fund a pilot program for adult protective services, and help domestic violence shelters.

In all, the requests amount to nine percent of the estimated shortfall.

The bills also call for another $11.1 million in spending next year, bringing the total requests for that budget year to $27.9 million.

Ongoing coverage of spending bills is available here.

A second bill would increase the penalty for injuring any pregnant woman.

While a bill filed by Sen. Doug Berger would boost the penalties for injuring a woman more than 20 weeks pregnant, another bill covers a woman in any stage of pregnancy.

Sen. Pete Brunstetter, a Forsyth County Republican, says his bill would cover "any time from conception forward."

Although he sponsored an unsuccessful bill identical to Berger's in last year's session, Brunstetter said he wanted to give legislators an option to vote for a broader definition.

He was not optimistic that either bill would get a hearing, though similar measures have passed in three dozen other states.

"It's going to be tough to get this heard because it will get caught up in the abortion discussion," he said. "There's 36 states that have managed to get around that discussion, including some that are very liberal and some that are very conservative."

Both pro-life and pro-choice groups have expressed concern about the bills. 

State Sen. Kay Hagan was not very bipartisan in her second term.

With the Democratic Senate nominee touting her bipartisanship in the legislature, Dome has been taking a closer look at the number of Republicans who signed on to her bills.

In the 2001-02 session, the Greensboro Democrat was the primary sponsor of 29 bills. Of them, 14 had no cosponsors, five had only Democratic cosponsors and 10 had Republican cosponsors.

Again, a few of the bills had more than one Republican cosponsor. Overall, her 74 cosponsors included 61 Democrats and 13 Republicans, or about a four-to-one ratio.

The most frequent Republican cosponsor was Sen. Robert G. Shaw, also of Greensboro. He signed on to four Hagan bills on local issues: UNC-Greensboro's parking authority, helping the High Point furniture market, giving the city of Greensboro more roads jurisdiction, and funds for a business court.

Other bills that attracted GOP support: suspending driver's licenses for stealing gas, teaching financial literacy in school, making changes to financial oversight of local housing authorities, limiting secrecy orders in civil cases, amending domestic violence laws, and revising laws on electronic transactions.

Previously: Cosponsors in 2003-04, 2005-06 and 2007-08.

State Rep. Deborah Ross has her eye on education.

The Raleigh Democrat says her biggest goal for the budget is a raise for teachers and state employees, though she did not have a specific amount in mind.

"I don't want to give a number because then they'll be mad at me because I didn't say a high enough number," she said. "I'm hoping that we can do as well as we did last year."

In the 2007-08 budget, teachers, UNC faculty and community college instructors received a 5 percent increase, while most state employees got a 4 percent raise.

Ross said she also hopes to land the rest of the funding for the Green Square project in downtown Raleigh, increase the contribution to the Housing Trust Fund to $50 million a year, add consumer protection measures on foreclosures and put a transportation bond before voters.

She also wants more funding for domestic violence shelters and other changes.

"We want to reduce the number of violations of domestic violence protective orders you need before it's considered a felony," she said.

A defunct Hoke County nonprofit did a poor job keeping track of state grants and may have used some of the money on personal expenses, according to a state audit released today.

Hoke County Youth and Family Services closed in June 2006 after five years operating. It served domestic violence victims in Hoke and surrounding counties.

State Auditor Les Merritt said a review of the nonprofit's books showed that it did not keep adequate records, that its executive director made cash withdrawals shortly before the organization closed and that it owed the state back taxes, reports Dan Kane.

"After spending over $135,000 of the taxpayers' money, the organization is no longer in existence and cannot supply adequate documentation on how those funds were spent," Merritt said in a news release. "I highly recommend that law enforcement officials investigate whether these funds should be returned to the taxpayers for the public's use."

Read more after the jump.

Undocumented immigrants who are victims of domestic violence now can get protected status from deportation.

The Department of Homeland Security issued rules on the new U visa, which offers victims temporary legal status in exchange for cooperating with police on prosecuting their abuser, Barb Barrett reports.

But the new visa comes seven years after Congress first authorized it, and then only after U.S. Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, warned that he would pull funding from the agency’s new headquarters. Price said as much in the report his Homeland Security funding subcommittee wrote the agency earlier this year.

"To encourage speedy progress on this issue, the Committee has withheld from obligation any funds for the Department’s headquarters projects until the U– Visa rule is published," the report said.

Today, Price said he was pleased with the results.

"This is good news for victims of domestic violence and for their tireless advocates who have been working to make the U Visa a reality," he said in a release. "Safety and justice for crime victims should never take a back seat to a victim's fear of deportation. This new visa program upholds the right priorities for a compassionate society."

A state review released today of an Anson County nonprofit said that the former executive director was overpaid by roughly $36,000 and had spent more than $6,500 on questionable and "possibly fraudulent" expenditures such as a veterinary bill, car parts and Christmas items.

The executive director of the Anson County Domestic Violence Coalition, which has received roughly $400,000 in state funds since 2004, resigned in February as some of the expenditures came to light. The audit found that the coalition's board had "rubber-stamped" many of the expenditures and lacked internal controls to catch misspending, Dan Kane reports.

The questionable spending has also led to an overhaul of the board, with several members replaced. The new board in a letter to the state auditor does not dispute the findings and said it is taking action to recover the money. State Auditor Les Merritt has referred the findings to the attorney general's office.

Chris Mears, a spokesman for the auditor's office, said the coalition's troubles illustrate the need for better oversight of the several thousand nonprofits that receive state funds each year.

State budget proposals by the House and Gov. Mike Easley would award the state auditor's office with an additional $180,000 that would largely go toward nonprofit oversight, but the Senate budget did not include those expenditures and cut another $50,000 from the office.

A total of 153 bills competed in the third qualifying round of Speed Week.

Among the 56 that passed a third reading in either the House or the Senate Wednesday:

Protective orders: A House bill would make it a felony to violate a domestic violence protective order while armed.

Don't feed them: A Senate bill would it illegal to intentionally feed alligators outside of captivity.

Swift Boating: A Senate bill would require 527 groups such as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to disclose state campaign spending.

MySpace: A Senate bill would require parental consent for minors on social networking sites such as MySpace.

In other news, a Senate bill would allow off-road bikers on public lands, a Senate bill woul allow prosecutors to keep the name of an informant from the defense, a Senate bill would allow private investigators to have tinted windows, a House bill would allow detention officers to carry guns into courthouses, a House bill would establish Juneteenth as National Freedom Day and a House bill would allow DNA testing for men paying child support.

North Carolina's female legislators have come a long way.

According to a study by the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research, the 43 women serving in the 2007 General Assembly is a record.

The first woman served in the legislature in 1920, but as late as 1971 there were only two women in the House and Senate, the report notes.

The women are also holding more power. This year, six of the 12 most powerful legislative committees have a chairwoman or co-chairwoman.

"Over the last two sessions, we have seen the most progress ever in legislation addressing domestic violence," said Sam Watts, a policy analyst for the Raleigh center.

The center found that North Carolina has the 18th highest percentage (25 percent) of female legislators among the 50 states. North Carolina leads the South in the percentage of legislators who are women.