Governor Bev Perdue

Perdue pitches tax increase in Charlotte.

Perdue in Charlotte

Big announcement about a future big announcement:

The Republican former mayor of Charlotte posted a video on his website Tuesday saying he hopes to make an announcement sometime after the first of the year. He said campaign seasons run too long and he's already traveling the state talking about his vision for North Carolina.

Too busy campaigning to tell people he's...campaigning. It's actually a pretty sweet gig, collecting over a million dollars with no declared purpose. But in the aftermath of Bernie Madoff & Co., I just find it hard to believe that sweet gig's legal.

The Governor hints at a possible veto (thanks, Laura), but she's being coy:

There’s one that I’m really considering. It’s a usurpation, I believe, of the governor’s power as governor. And so it’s not so much about the quality – the content of the bill. It’s about the fact that one of my jobs is to make sure that the governor’s powers, whether it’s me or somebody else in the future, stay intact.

Governor, even more important than preserving your power is your responsibility to keep our air and water clean and safe. As such, the bill that should be at the top of your veto list is this SEPA loophole abomination. If you sign it, I don't want to hear another damn word about transparency from your office. The gist of this bill is: The less we know, the better. If the Legislature wants it that bad, make them come back and vote for it again.

I know that Betsy or James would certainly address this issue far better than I can, yet they are away from the keyboard at this time and news of a new budget bill that the NC General Assembly must pass before Governor Purdue can sign this legislation into law in North Carolina should be addressed.

Previously, Betsy and James both weighed in on this here at BlueNC, first in Betsy's post entitled Dear Amazon...don't bother http://www.bluenc.com/dear-amazondont-bother

The message that Amazon sent to their NC affiliate's is as follows:

The NC General Assembly gave final approval to overhaul the probation system following the murder of University of North Carolina student president Eve Carson, Cherokee County serial killer Patrick Burris who killed five people in the Gaffney S.C. area and was on parole from North Carolina, and North Carolina parolee Jerry Case who is accused of kidnapping a whole family and shooting a Cherokee County deputy before he was arrested.

Creating jobs and updating our infrastructure was at the core of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and both of those aspects of the stimulus package that President Obama and the Democratic Congress passed are greatly needed today here in our country and in our state of North Carolina.

For those of us that have travelled the corridor between Greensboro and Charlotte on I-85, we can point out one such project that truly needs to be addressed yesterday and that is the bridge spanning the Yadkin River at the Rowan and Davidson county line. It looks like the NCDOT and Governor Purdue agree with us, as just today news that the state has submitted a grant application for stimulus cash to fund that very construction project was released.

North Carolina seeks $300M for I-85 bridge replacement http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2009/07/27/daily42.html

On Friday afternoon we sent out the latest newsletter from the Office of Governor Bev Perdue.  Hopefully you all are on our email list already, but if not, I have reproduced the newsletter below.  It details all the key moments from Governor Perdue’s busy first week.

Email communication is going to play a key role in the Perdue Administration, and I want to encourage everyone to sign up for the email list.  You can do that by clicking here.

You can help us by forwarding the newsletters to friends or directing them to this post right here.  We appreciate the help!  Working together along with tools like our website, our eTownhall, social networking, and North Carolina's blog network we are going to create a vibrant back-and-forth dialogue between citizens and state government.

This will be a very rough four years, Governor Perdue. We promise to back you as often as we can and nudge you in the right direction when we feel we need to.

Congratulations Governor Perdue!

Please use the comment section below to post well-wishes, advice, requests for Governor Perdue and we'll see to it that she receives a copy of this thread.