teepack's blog

I was a little surprised when the governor of our state cut short her press conference Wednesday when reporters began asking her questions about her previous relationship with Col. Glover of the Highway Patrol. And again when her public affairs person abruptly ended Glover's time at the microphone after he blamed the media for the patrol's image problem.

I guess transparency and accessibility are not the same, but still. After eight years of a governor who rarely ventured out of his office and rarely interacted with the media, I thought Gov. Perdue was going to be more open with the media and her constituents.

There are bills in the House and Senate that would extend the life of a development permit for developers that find themselves unable to complete or continue with a project due to the downturn in the real estate market. While this is probably a good idea, I think some of the reasons that the state legislators are considering this, as provided in the text of the bill, are rather amusing and shed light on why our government is so screwed up to begin with! The bills are SB 831 and HB 1490. Here are some of the reasons given for this bill (and I'm not making this up!):

(4) The process of obtaining planning board and zoning board of adjustment approvals for subdivisions, site plans, and variances can be difficult, time consuming, and expensive, both for private applicants and government bodies.

The realtors and homebuilders are at it again, getting numerous bills introduced that would exempt them from property taxes, eliminate a counties' ability to try to levy a land transfer tax, and keep counties from exercising basic land-use planning tools. Here are some of the highlights (or lowlights) of some of their proposed bills:

So what are the real progressive issues, and are any of them being discussed on the campaign trail in North Carolina?

I don't recall ever getting so many telephone surveys or robocalls in one season.

What is your favorite political song?

We sure have added a lot of new members lately, and almost all of them seem to be backing one specific candidate in one specific race! Coincidence? Methinks not.

Let's do our own poll! Civitas says it's a dead heat! Public Policy Polling says it's a dead heat one day, then three days later Perdue's got a huge lead. Who do you believe?

You gotta love some of the cheesy campaign photos!