Speaker Joe Hackney has set up a committee to study broadcasting the House.

"Televising our sessions will give the people of North Carolina better insight into the work we do here and open up the process to more people in this state," Hackney said in a news release. "We want our citizens to see and understand how their government and their elected representatives work for them."

The committee will study the feasability, cost and other aspects of live broadcasts of the House when it is in session.

Rep. Cullie Tarleton of Blowing Rock will chair the committee. He is a former senior vice president and general manager for WBTV, WBT Radio and WCCB TV and a former member of the board of directors for the National Association of Broadcasters.

The final report will be due before the 2009 session convenes. (N&O) 

Erskine Bowles promised to stay out of partisan politics when he became president of the University of North Carolina, but that doesn’t hold true of his wife, former textile executive Crandall Bowles.

The Bowles residence on Old Providence Road in Charlotte is the site of a fundraiser to keep the Democrats in control of the state House, Rob Christensen reports.

For $100, $250, $500 or $1,000 one can hear House Speaker Joe Hackney and Majority Leader Hugh Holliman speak Thursday night, Sept. 4.

The event is listed as the home of Crandall Bowles, although one presumes that Erskine Bowles also hangs his hat there.

DENVER - State House Speaker Joe Hackney is catching the red-eye flight back to Raleigh after midnight tonight in time for Wednesday's special session of the legislature.

But Hackney, an Orange County Democrat, said he plans to return Wednesday night so he can catch Barack Obama's acceptance speech on Thursday, reports Rob Christensen.

Other Democratic lawmakers, such as Rep. Bill Faison of Orange County, were planning to return to Raleigh for the special session, which has been called to consider whether to override Gov. Mike Easley's veto of a bill relaxing the size of boats that can transported on state roads.

Meanwhile, Gerry Cohen, a top legislative staffer, made other accomodations. Cohen sat at a table at the North Carolina delegation breakfast Tuesday morning with his computer composing the legislature's adjournment resolution.

DENVER – There are plenty of familiar faces in North Carolina's delegation to the Democratic National Convention - from congressman such as David Price, Bob Etheridge and Brad Miller to state legislative leaders such as House Speaker Joe Hackney and Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand.

David Parker, a veteran Democratic National Committeeman from Statesville, said he didn't know a large number of the delegates, many of whom are attending their first Democratic convention

State legislative leaders Joe Hackney and Tony Rand got a good laugh tonight at Barack Obama's "town hall" meeting in Raleigh.

At one point during the event, Obama asked anyone in the crowd who makes more than $2.5 million a year to raise their hands, reports Lynn Bonner

Hackney, an Orange County Democrat who is speaker of the state House, and Rand, a Fayetteville Democrat who is Senate majority leader, were sitting together in the crowd and shared a chuckle at Obama's question.

But neither one of them raised their hand.

State Senate leader Marc Basnight wants to bring the legislature back to Raleigh to override Gov. Mike Easley’s veto of a bill allowing wider boat trailers on state roads at night.

Easley vetoed the bill on Sunday, saying it would be dangerous to let 9.5 foot wide boat and trailers travel after dark on roads and bridges as narrow as 18 feet. He warned of collisions with other wide boats, and with school buses on pre-dawn routes, reports Bruce Siceloff.

"He doesn’t impress me on this issue,” Basnight said Monday. “I would certainly be for an override. I believe the bill is valuable to the economy, and it’s a very safe, well-constructed piece of legislation.”

The measure originated in the House, so Basnight is waiting for House Speaker Joe Hackney to make the first move. A spokesman said Hackney is checking to see whether House members want to come back to Raleigh for an override vote or let the veto stand.

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Legislative leaders say they do not have enough extra cash on hand to pay the $747.9 million a Wake County judge says must go to public schools.

Superior Court Judge Howard Manning Jr. has ordered the state to turn over civil fines that were illegally withheld from public schools for more than nine years, but he left it up to the General Assembly to decide where to come up with the money and when.

But legislators say that instead of coming up with new revenue, they will comply with Manning's order by tapping money already earmarked for K-12 schools.

"Everybody assumed from the beginning that it would come out of the state's education budget," State House Speaker Joe Hackney, a Chapel Hill Democrat, said Tuesday. "We really don't have $700 million in new money."

That means the legal win may be a pyrrhic victory. (N&O) 

Gov. Mike Easley signed into law Thursday legislation that changes how North Carolina will respond to droughts.

Surrounded by state lawmakers and environmental officials, Easley said the legislation gives the state new tools to use before and during water shortages, David Ingram reports.

"We're not on the path to modernize every water system in the state," he said.

The legislation makes it easier for the governor to declare a drought emergency, including local emergencies.

It also gives state officials the authority to require localities to adopt and enforce conservation measures, and it requires users of more than 10,000 gallons of water a day for agriculture to report usage to state agricultural officials.

"It was badly needed, as North Carolina enters a situation where we don't have as much water as we used to and the demands are much greater," said House Speaker Joe Hackney, an Orange County Democrat.

When House Speaker Joe Hackney put the brakes on legislation that would have awarded legal fees to those who win public records battles against state and local governments, he went against the wishes of Democrats in a big chunk of his legislative district.

The Chatham County Democratic Party's executive committee had passed a resolution in 2007 advocating the passage of legislation that provides an automatic award of legal fees, Dan Kane reports. This was after some of its members were involved in a public records lawsuit with the Chatham County Board of Elections.

The citizens won against the board, but the judge in the case made the citizens pay all but 10 percent of their $35,000 legal bill.

"The entire burden of making sure the public records law gets enforced lies upon the citizens, and that's not fair," said Nick Meyer, a member of the Chatham Democrats executive committee.

Thursday night, the committee passed another resolution again urging lawmakers to pass "legislation requiring the award of legal costs to successful plaintiffs so as to reduce the temptation to play games with the legal process wasting the court's time and citizens' resources."

Representatives for local governments and public hospitals oppose the idea, saying it does not take into account cases in which there's a question as to whether a record's public.

The Senate unanimously passed the legislation on the first day of the session's final week, but Hackney, an Orange County Democrat, did not want it taken up in the House. He said there wasn't enough time, but he also confirmed that he does not like taking legal fee decisions out of the hands of judges.

North Carolina is sending more than 70 lawmakers and legislative staffers this week to the National Conference of State Legislature's annual meeting in New Orleans, where House Speaker Joe Hackney will be installed Thursday as president of the organization's executive committee.

The list includes 42 lawmakers, all but five of them House members. Senate leader Marc Basnight, a Manteo Democrat, is among the five senators, all of them Democrats. Five of the 37 House members are Republican, Dan Kane reports.

Thirty-two legislative staffers were planning to attend, though one of them, retiring Fiscal Research Director Lynn Muchmore, later decided to stay home.

Hackney's ascendancy may have drawn more interest among lawmakers to the annual meeting this year. In 2006, roughly 20 lawmakers attended the annual meeting in Nashville, and last year about 30 lawmakers went to the annual meeting in Boston, said Wesley Taylor, the legislature's financial services manager.

Expenses won't become available until after the lawmakers and staffers return and file expense reports, Taylor said.

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