NRA Favorite Things

Uptown welcomes some 70,000 visitors this week as the National Rifle Association convenes its 139th annual meeting at the Charlotte Convention Center. Those visitors will include Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck and Chuck Norris among other celebrities and politicians. We’re fresh out of trumpets for a welcoming fanfare, but we do have this delightful little ditty penned by Martin Settle, of UNC-Charlotte’s English Department. Sing along if you know the tune – and you do! It’s set to “My Favorite Things” from ‘Sound of Music.’

Pistol snub noses and shooting positions
Bright copper casings and carbines with pistons
Wood stocks of walnut with swivel stud rings
These are a few of our favorite things.

Pump action shotguns and toggle lock Lugers
The sound of a round as it seats in a Ruger
Wild geese that plummet when they’ve been winged
These are a few of our favorite things.

When the law’s tight
When the ammo’s low
When there’s gun control
We simply remember the second amendment
And then we can just reload.

Gun barrels that gleam with a stainless steel satin
Pistol grip diamonds and holsters of patent
Night vision scopes that turn everything green
These are a few of our favorite things.

Butt plates on shoulders, cheek pieces to nuzzle
Suppressors for flashes to thread on a muzzle
Tactical weapons with large magazines
These are a few of our favorite things.

When no street lights
When police cease
When we’re feeling sad
We simply find peace in our safety release
And then we don’t feel so bad.

Take Joe 'You lie' Wilson to work

Remember Joe "You lie" Wilson, who got so much attention for talking back to President Obama during his 2009 speech to Congress. Well, he's running for re-election in South Carolina and his campaign is sending out a creative e-mail saying he will "work" for voters, and he means work as in doing constituents' jobs. Here's part of what the e-mail says:

"Second District Congressman Joe Wilson has made job creation his top priority and he's setting out to tell the voters one-on-one about his plans. He’s hitting the streets to talk to employers and workers about how we can create jobs here in South Carolina.
"Joe’s jobs plan isn’t a top-down, government knows best program like you'd see from Democrats in Washington. He’s rolling up his sleeves and getting to work alongside his fellow South Carolinians. It’s all a part of “Take Joe to Work.”

"Recently, Joe has worked the drive-through window at Wendy’s and laid bricks at the new State Farmers’ Market. Today (Tuesday) he headed out to Richard’s Automotive in West Columbia and did auto maintenance alongside small business owner Richard Lee.
"If you want Joe to come out to your workplace, it’s not too hard to get in touch and make your pitch. First, the business has to be located in South Carolina's Second District. Second, go to TakeJoetoWork.com, and follow the instructions. The campaign will need some information about the business and why Joe should visit.
"In just a couple simple steps, anybody in the Second District could be working shoulder-to-shoulder with their Congressman.
For more information, and to catch Joe’s latest Web Video, go to TakeJoetoWork.com."

The Age of Budget 'Scenarios'

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Peter Gorman got sneers and some derision last year when he rolled out, for the first time, different scenarios for the school budget. Anticipating state and local cuts of up to $70 million last year, he developed a list of potential cuts that would kick in based on how much money the schools eventually got from its different funding sources. The worst-case scenario, a $70 million cut, didn't materialize because of federal stimulus money. But the process did give the community a sense of what would have to go, and an opportunity to weigh in on what residents valued keeping.

CMS took the same approach this year, with a worst-case scenario of close to $80 million cut, and up to 1,000 employees laid off including nearly 600 teachers.

Now, the Public Library is taking the same tack. Today, Charles Brown, Director of Charlotte Mecklenburg Libraries presented three budget scenarios to the Board of Trustees. The scenarios outlined three different ways the Library could deal with a possible $17 million budget reduction from Mecklenburg County. The Library receives approximately 93% of its sustainable funding from the County.

Scenario One allows for most libraries to remain open, but most locations would only be open one to three days per week and for limited hours, with some locations closed. This scenario leaves just 27 percent of the Library’s workforce intact (based on 614 positions in July 2008) and is not recommended because many citizens would not be able to use the library during the extremely limited hours, and because the employee to customer ratio at larger locations would be insufficient to ensure a safe environment for either employees or the public.

Scenario Two would close as many as 16 of the current 24 libraries based on both subjective and objective criteria, similar to what had been used in the scenario presented in March that recommended the closing of 12 branches. The criteria would include cost, usage, proximity and size in addition to community need. This scenario would result in large unserved areas and would leave a slightly larger percentage of the workforce intact, approximately 35 percent.

Scenario Three would involve keeping all of the regional libraries open, including ImaginOn and Main Library, but would close the community locations. This scenario also allows 35 percent of staff to remain and would provide minimal coverage for the largest segment of the community. Brown said keeping the regionals open allows the library system to offer full service (including more computers, books, meeting rooms and copiers), and to be able to accommodate more parking. In addition, this option provides a stronger starting place from which to rebuild the system should the economy recover. Brown also indicated that a reverse scenario was considered that closed the regional libraries and kept the community libraries open, but the “cons” around this model included fewer book and computer resources available to a potentially larger number of users as well as issues of more limited physical space and parking availability. Library officials will discuss the issues further at a meeting in May.

Officials said that no matter which scenario is selected, library customers will be negatively impacted because all of the scenarios include severe cuts to staff, library locations, service and materials. Information sessions to facilitate a dialogue between the community and Library staff will take place from Mid-April to May 4. Information shared at these sessions will help inform any future scenarios and will help the community to understand the library’s decision-making process. To view the presentation, click here.The Board of Trustees will vote on the Library’s final operating budget in June, following Mecklenburg County’s adoption of the FY11 budget.

Education $$ not helping CMS budget

Education dollars are flowing into North Carolina, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, but they're not making the local schools' budget picture look brighter. Last week, CMS learned it was a finalist for the Broad urban education prize. It will get $250,000 as a finalist. But if it wins - the announcement will be made this summer - it will get $1 million. But all that money goes to scholarship so it won't help operating costs, which may take up to a $80 million cut in state and local funds because of poor revenues due to the recession.

This week, both Gov. Bev Perdue and U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) announced that North Carolina will receive more than $91 million from the federal stimulus to turn around poorly performing schools. Hagan serves on the Senate committee with jurisdiction over education.

Perdue said the money will toward the state's goal of “preparing every student, no matter where he or she lives, to graduate from high school ready for a career, college or technical training demands that we turn around our low-performing schools.”

Noted Hagan: “Schools in North Carolina will receive stimulus funding to implement innovative models to better serve our students. This funding will help North Carolina students compete in the 21st-century economy and become career and college ready.”

But according to Hagan, qualifying school districts must be among the “persistently lowest achieving,” as determined by the state of North Carolina. School districts that have failed to meet yearly progress for two years can also apply, but will only receive funds once all of the persistently lowest achieving school districts have received funds. CMS as a whole doesn't fit those categories though it has schools that do.

Expert: Build roads where people are

Just a week or so ago, Observer reporter Mark Johnson and News & Observer reporter Bruce Siceloff wrote a long piece about the inequities in road funding for Charlotte and other N.C. cities. They reiterated what most elected officials in Charlotte know - that the city's transportation needs are disproportionately underfunded by the N.C. Department of Transportation. Mecklenburg County ranked 89th out of 100 N.C. counties in the number of state dollars for road construction and maintenance on a per-person basis.


Today, a N.C. Justice Center expert added his voice to a push to address such inequities in testimony before the N.C. legislature's Joint Transportation Committee. According to a news release from the Justice Center, Dr. Stephen Jackson said changing the funding priorities is essential to dealing with the state's road needs effectively, especially easing traffic congestion.

We can build infrastructure that meets the challenge of the future, said Jackson of the N.C. Justice Center's Budget & Tax Center. But to do so requires bold steps to empower local governments and forward-thinking initiatives to send transportation funds where most people live. "Building better roads and road networks in our urban areas is necessary, but can't solve the problem alone," said Jackson. "To combat sprawl, we also must build better public transportation, encourage more compact growth, and change our funding priorities."

One prime example of why changing those funding priorities is necessary: urban congestion is a major problem in North Carolina, while traffic in rural areas is stagnant. Instead of mandating roads in places fewer and fewer people are driving, Jackson said, we should change the formula which currently guides where new roads are built.
He urged adoption of a new formula that encourages building where the people are - allocating funds mostly based on population.

Perhaps the most bold of Jackson's prescriptions, the news release said, is to enhance local responsibility for transportation needs, which would empower local communities and relieve some of state government's burdens. Reducing state responsibility in some avenues would enable policymakers to focus on the major roads that form the backbone of the road network and carry the most traffic.

North Carolina should give counties and municipalities new revenue powers, said Jackson, which could include a local gas tax, vehicle utility fees, or transportation impact fees. Revenue should also be used for maintenance and operations as well as construction, he said.

Gorman, Jones agree on doing 'less with less'

In one of their rare joint appearances on the same side of the table, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Peter Gorman and Mecklenburg County Manager Harry Jones gave pretty much the same message to residents at the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum today: These are tough financial times and this community will feel the pain for years to come. Employee layoffs and cuts in services will happen next year for the schools, and for the county.

For the county, every revenue source except property taxes has seen a decline this year, Jones said. As a result, "we're going to have layoffs (expected to be 500-plus employees) and significant curtailment of services," he said.

Gorman said the "new economic reality" for the schools is to do "less with less."

The two were pretty chummy even when talking about the bone of contention between them - the county's cuts in funding for the schools. The county provides about a quarter of the the school system's operating funds. Last year, the county cut funding to the schools by $40 million. Gorman points out that other school systems throughout experienced much smaller cuts in local funding. Wake County cut its schools by $2.8 million. Guilford (Greensboro) got about the same as it did the previous year. "We wouldn't have laid off any individuals last year if we got the same cut as Wake (schools) did?" Gorman said.

But Gorman said he understood the situation the county was in, with service demands going up in other areas.

For his part, Jones noted that Wake has a different budgeting system. They put aside money for construction debt service in a debt service fund, which now has over $150 million. Mecklenburg pays for debt service out of its general funds each year so "operating funds and debt costs wind up competing with each other," he said. Wake also did property revaluations when property values were at their peak so Wake is getting more revenues from that stream and thus is in a better position financially.

Those at the forum peppered both with questions that showed their discontenct and had suggestions about how the county and the schools could do things better. Among them: Give more resources to education and look for other strategies to deal with some crimes other than jails. Jones said he was already planning to put on hold jail expansion plans so this might be "the time to have the discussion" of alternatives.

Gorman said no schools would close next year to deal with budget cuts. He's not recommending that. Residents didn't like the idea of laying off more teachers and suggested instead furloughs (Gorman said he liked that as an option but legislative approval is needed and it would take 26-27 days to make up the budget deficit through furloughs alone), longer days/four-day weeks (Gorman said some savings could accrue but there were also problems such as child-care for parents on that day kids weren't in school), 10 percent across the board salary cuts (Gorman said it would only get part of the needed money - about $60 million of the $80 million in anticipated cuts plus some cuts would constitute demotions and require hearings to resolve. But Gorman just doesn't favor across-the-board-cuts because he said it only puts off the need to "reduce the budget to meet the new economic reality" that will be around for the next five or so years, he said.)

Vote for me, because I'm not a Duke fan!

Who cares what a U.S. Senate candidate thinks about the issues?! As long as he's not a Duke fan!

Ahhh, what a candidate will do when he's losing a race he was supposed to win. Voters in Kentucky are really (not) wrestling with the things that matter, thanks to U.S. Senate candidate Trey Grayson. In a new ad, Grayson, a Republican, distinguishes himself from primary opponent Republican Rand Paul not over health care reform or the deficit but over ..... Duke vs. Kentucky basketball.

His ad shows grainy video of his opponent acknowledging he is a Duke fan. Grayson then swears his allegiance to the Wildcats. "I approved this message because I will always cheer for the Big Blue," Grayson says without a hint of tongue in cheek.

Maybe Grayson should be more concerned about the critical problems facing America and Kentucky, including education. His beloved Wildcats have one of the worst academic performances in the nation, with just 31 percent of players graduating. At Duke, 92 percent of players graduate. It's probably too much to ask for, but we hope this scheme backfires on Grayson.

Here's Grayson's pitiful ploy.




- Posted by The Observer's editorial board

Libraries slashing; who's out of touch?

Two items arrived in the e-mail inbox of our department today. One was from former N.C. Sen. Robert Pittenger, a Mecklenburg Republican.
He wrote:
"The liberal big government machine grows larger and larger, as it did
when I served - continuing to raise taxes and public spending at
alarming rates. The amazing thing is, whether the public favors their
actions or not, they do it anyway."

Not too long afterward, we received this, from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library:
"On Tuesday, March 16, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library learned that Mecklenburg County would be reducing the Library’s funding for Fiscal Year 2010 by 6.3 percent, or $2 million dollars, before June 30, 2010. To absorb a $2 million reduction in such a short period of time, the Library will need to lay off at least 140 employees, resulting in the closure of at least twelve Library locations, pending final library board approval."
While we agree with Pittenger that our governments need to root out any waste and fraud they can find, it's hard to see how closing 12 county libraries, or laying off up to 600 teachers for next year, as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools may have to do, equates to the "big government machine" growing "larger and larger."
"What will it take for the out of touch liberal establishment to
understand that they cannot go on brazenly
behaving so irresponsibly?" he asks.

Er, maybe the liberal establishment isn't the only one you could say is "out of touch"?

- Posted by The Observer editorial board

Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill?

One Charlotte-area congressman is pushing to put President Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., of Cherryville, today announced he has introduced a bill that would do just that.
“President Reagan was a modern day statesman, whose presidency transformed our nation’s political and economic thinking,” McHenry said in a press release.
Reagan would replace Ulysses S. Grant, widely regarded by historians as one of our weaker presidents. In fact, Grant seems like the most likely target if you're going to replace someone on a bill. We'd have a hard time arguing to bounce George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln or Benjamin Franklin. Even Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Jackson are pretty strong. If not Grant, maybe Reagan could replace William McKinley on the $500 bill.
What do you think? Reagan on the $50 bill? Reagan on a more prominent bill, or less prominent one? Or would you keep Reagan off any currency?
-- Posted by The Observer's editorial board