Mecklenburg County

Mecklenburg GOP: Say that to our face!

markjohnson — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:02:04 -0400

Leaders of the Mecklenburg County Republican Party on Thursday challenged Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue to broadcast her latest campaign ad in Charlotte.

Lee Teague, chairman of the county party, dispatched a letter criticizing Perdue, the Democratic candidate for governor, for the new ad. The commercial, which is running in eastern North Carolina and Greensboro, accuses Perdue's Republican opponent, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, of putting Charlotte's transportation interests ahead of the rest of the state and suggests he will neglect rural areas' road needs.

"You have a history of saying different things to different groups, and I guess this is just one more example," Teague wrote. "When you opened your Charlotte campaign headquarters, you promised to help Charlotte get road money without our city leaders having to come to Raleigh and play 'mother may I.' Now you are running a television ad in other parts of the state attaking Charlotte for wanting more road money. What hypocrisy."

Perdue spokesman David Kochman wouldn't comment on whether the ad will appear in Charlotte but said McCrory has played divisive politics, both inside and outside Mecklenburg County.

"All parts of North Carolina have pressing needs in transportation and many other issues," Kochman said. "But while Pat McCrory wants to rob Peter to Pay Paul, Bev Perdue knows that North Carolina is strongest when all 100 counties are strong."

Charlotte has highest sales tax in N.C.

ryanteaguebeckwith — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:00:55 -0400

Charlotte has the highest sales tax in North Carolina.

Of the 100 counties in North Carolina, 91 have a 6.75 percent sales tax and eight have a 7 percent sales tax, according to research by the N.C. Department of Revenue. Only Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte, has a 7.25 percent rate.

The higher rate is because of a local 0.5 percent sales and use tax for public transportation.

In 1997, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory lobbied the legislature to allow Mecklenburg to charge the additional half-cent sales tax, which passed in a referendum the following year.

The tax raises about $77 million a year to pay for buses and the newly opened Lynx light rail line.

In 2007, a referendum to repeal the transit tax was defeated.

Munger: State dragging its feet

ryanteaguebeckwith — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:54:05 -0400

Mike Munger says the state is "dragging its feet" on Libertarian registrations.

The Libertarian gubernatorial nominee and Duke University political science professor tells Dome that the party had more than 13,000 registered voters in 2005.

When the Libertarians lost party status, those voters became unaffiliated, though they should be able to re-register now that it is a party again. But Munger says some of the state's largest boards of elections have not yet posted the forms online to allow it.

"How can we register people as Libertarian when they won't change the forms?" he writes in an e-mail. "The state is intentionally dragging its feet, in violation of the law, and the expressed will of more than 100,000 voters."

As of 8:45 a.m. today, the Wake County board of elections' online form did not include the Libertarian Party, listing only Democratic, Republican and unaffiliated. The Mecklenburg County form and the Guilford County form also lacked the Libertarian option.

The party was recognized in late May, but had only 29 registered members as of this morning.

Think online sunshine, act locally

ryanteaguebeckwith — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:50:21 -0500

Online sunshine isn't just for state government.

It's tempting for a local official to think that keeping public records in a three-ring binder in a downtown office building is good enough. After all, why would anyone in another city want to see the mayor's campaign finance records?

Except when the mayor's running for governor.

Dome — and many other reporters, bloggers and citizens — is curious about where Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory has raised his money in the last year. (Especially since he won't have to file a campaign finance report for his gubernatorial run for a while yet.)

But those records are at the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections in Charlotte.

As Jim Morrill has noted, the county's elections director is considering putting the records online to make it a "24-7 public records office."

Unfortunately, that would only be for records going forward.

Committee looks into 287(g)

ryanteaguebeckwith — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:39:22 -0500

A legislative committee looked into the 287(g) program Tuesday.

Sheriff's offices in Alamance, Gaston and Mecklenburg counties are currently using the federal program to train deputies in immigration enforcement. Cabarrus County will soon start as well.

Under the program, deputies screen inmates who have been charged with felonies or drunk driving to see if they are legally in the United States. If they're not, deputies can refer them to the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Last year, the legislature appropriated $750,000 to the N.C. Sheriff's Association to assist with training.

State Sen. Ed Jones said he is concerned about the risk of ethnic profiling.

"What does an illegal alien look like or sound like is what my problem is," he said. "I don't know if there's a simple way out of this or not." (Burlington Times-News)

Paper jams cause voting problems

ryanteaguebeckwith — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 08:28:37 -0500

Some voting equipment in North Carolina doesn't work well.

The state required paper ballots after a loss of 4,400 votes in Carteret County in 2004. In some cases, counties use hand-marked ballots, but in others they use touch-screen machines with a paper roll similar to a cash-register tape.

But the paper rolls have a tendency to get jammed.

In Guilford County, nine percent of the machines had a paper jam in 2006. Mecklenburg County officials estimated they had 50 or 60 jams.

"It's definitely not as reliable as your cash register tape or your ATM machine," said Joyce McCloy, founder of the N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting. (Char-O)

Friday quick hits

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 08:37:29 -0400

* Mecklenburg County works out system for helping the homeless vote after county commissioner challenged hundreds of voter registrations. (Char-O)

* Two Republicans on global warming panel clash: State Rep. Charles Thomas says time for action, Sen. Robert Pittenger says "We don't have the facts yet." (AC-T)

* Senate leader Marc Basnight says "untruths" have built distrust between state officials and Navy leaders who want to build a landing field here. (AP)

* Friends of the Earth Action, a national environmental group, will begin airing radio ads in support of John Edwards in New Hampshire. (AP)

Jim Black's vacant lot

ryanteaguebeckwith — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 07:58:47 -0400

A vacant lot could keep Jim Black from more prison time.

The disgraced former House speaker has put an empty 1.6-acre parcel near downtown Matthews for sale. He's asking for $950,000 — just $50,000 less than the amount he needs to pay a Superior Court fine to avoid more prison time.

Black bought the land from BB&T in 1994 with childhood friend Kenneth Outen. A few months later, he bought out Outen's half.

An investigation by The Charlotte Observer revealed that Mecklenburg County has undervalued the land. The town of Matthews failed to notify the county when it rezoned the property as commercial, which should have boosted its assessment.

County Assessor Garrett Alexander said he would seek the $7,200 in back taxes Black saved since the last reassessment in 2000. (Char-O)

Sales tax revolt

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 08:10:02 -0400

North Carolina now faces its second sales tax revolt in two years.

Opponents of a half-cent sales tax in Mecklenburg County used for transit projects have gathered enough signatures to put a repeal on the November ballot, according to the Char-O.

In February of 2006, Dare County voters overwhelmingly rejected a one-cent sales tax levied for beach replenishment projects in a similar referendum.

Ray Midgett, a Southern Shores resident who used to work as a state auditor, led the effort there.

Under the 1971 law that created the first local option sales tax, opponents of a tax can force a special election on it by gathering the signatures of 15 percent as many voters as turned out in the most recent gubernatorial election.

In Mecklenburg, that amounted to 48,669 signatures.