The July 4 holiday has always provided Americans a welcomed pause for rest, reflection, celebration, and renewal. Never more so than in 2018.

Less than two years ago, we endured one of the bitterest, most divisive elections in our history. Partisan rancor has now reached an unparalleled level and shows no sign of diminishing. Public trust has understandably all but disappeared.

Especially in a time when our collective historical memory seems to be failing, there is much succor and encouragement to be had from remembering our history.  A deeper appreciation of our past can provide confidence in who we are as Americans and hope for what we may yet achieve in the future.

As Americans reflect back over this holiday, we tend most often to remember the founders and the earliest history of the republic, but there are many other chapters in our long history that can also uplift our spirits. One such seldom remembered chapter, involving two long forgotten men, is the presidential election of 1924.

Most historians dismiss the election of 1924 as insignificant in the sweep of American history; however, there is a revisionist view. It was the last election in which both parties nominated a conservative candidate. It was the results of this election that realigned the modern Republican and Democratic parties, sending them onto the courses they have generally adhered to ever since. But there was more to it than this.

Calvin Coolidge

The two candidates, Calvin Coolidge and John W. Davis, are also too often dismissed as dull and insignificant. Americans would do well to take another look.

Both men were from small town America – Coolidge from Vermont and Davis from West Virginia. They were both gentlemen in the sense that Confucius used that word – solid citizens of real ability, lack of pretense, personal integrity, and unerring civility. As columnist Fred Barnes has written, “They were neither mean-spirited nor power hungry. I can’t recall a presidential race in modern times between two such honorable men.”

Coolidge was – in Paul Johnson’s words — “the most internally consistent and single-minded of American presidents.” He was a successful and able politician who, despite his sobriquet “Silent Cal,” has left an articulate record of his conservative creed, which he liked to call “common sense.” He was repeatedly elected to office by the people of Massachusetts, finally serving as governor. In 1920, he was elected vice president under President Harding and stepped into the presidency upon Harding’s death in 1923. With the gradual revelation of Harding administration scandals, it was a tribute to Coolidge’s integrity that no hint of scandal touched him. Indeed, he came to stand as an icon for those solid American values of honesty, hard work, self-reliance, thrift, and civility. In an age of sound bites, political spin, image handlers and the like, it is refreshing to rediscover a leader who was in every sense himself. Calvin Coolidge was the real thing. Like him or not, you knew what he was.

John W. Davis

The Democratic nominee in 1924, John W. Davis, was a man of unimpeachable integrity, immense personal charm, and extraordinary legal ability. He emerged from the House of Representatives to serve under President Woodrow Wilson with distinction as solicitor general and as ambassador to Great Britain. He headed a major Wall Street firm, served as counsel to many major corporations, was president of the American Bar Association, and was widely known as “the lawyers’ lawyer.” By the end of his long career, Davis had argued more cases before the Supreme Court — 142 — than anyone in American history except Daniel Webster. Although it may be difficult for modern Americans to imagine, there appears never to have been even a trace of self-promotion in Davis. He was always put forward for office by friends who knew him well. As Walter Lippmann observed of Davis, “I have seen a good many men under the awful temptation of the presidency. I have never seen another who had such absolute respect.”

Interestingly, there was even a direct link between each of these men and the 4^th of July. Coolidge was born on July 4, 1872, Independence Day. Davis was born on April 13, 1873, Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. Both men became ardent champions of the Jeffersonian principles of limited government and individual freedom, which we celebrate July 4.

On this Independence Day, if Americans will reflect back on Coolidge, Davis, and the 1924 election, perhaps we just might conclude that graciousness and civility are not outdated political attributes. Strong conviction does not preclude these attributes; likewise, civility and graciousness do not demand philosophical ambivalence. Despite all the unattractiveness of modern politics, perhaps Lord Tweedsmuir’s assessment can still somehow hold: “Public life is regarded as the crown of a career. … Politics is still the greatest and most honorable adventure.”

Garland S. Tucker III is retired chairman/CEO of Triangle Capital Corporation, author of Conservative Heroes: Fourteen Leaders Who Changed America – Jefferson to Reagan, and a senior fellow at the John Locke Foundation.

Have you ever seen a news story reported in a national or regional media outlet about your hometown, or a place you know well, that portrays the area in such a light that you just can’t recognize it?

The piece might use anecdotes or other information about the area to make a larger point, perhaps to satisfy an agenda, or settle a score. It’s quite possible the reporter or the editor of the article left out a lot of relevant information because the journalists didn’t know much about the place before they got there and were spun by the sources who pitched the piece initially.

The premise of the article may be plausible, but because the writer is unfamiliar with the region or its history, a story that appears to be reported thoroughly can be one-sided or incomplete, and it’s evident if you live in the place that’s being singled out.

This practice is known as “parachute journalism.” A reporter visits a foreign area for a few days, collects information that tells the story using the slant the reporter intends, and then leaves without spending enough time or effort to gather other material that may temper or even contradict his premise.

A recent case in point was a lengthy feature in The Wall Street Journal that tried to explain the factors leading to the rise of Donald Trump with a local twist, using the collapse of the furniture industry in Hickory, N.C., as the backdrop.

The story opened with troubling data about the demise of Hickory’s industrial backbone, and how competition, especially from China, has affected the political landscape. “Disillusionment with globalization has fed one of the most unconventional political seasons in modern history, with Bernie Sanders and especially Donald Trump tapping into potent anti-free-trade sentiment.”

But that’s hardly the entire story. Yes, several of the manufacturing industries that built North Carolina’s economy for more than a century — furniture-making and textiles, primarily — have vanished, largely. But more modern manufacturers have taken their place.

More than 75,000 North Carolinians work in plastics and chemical manufacturing. The Lenovo computer plant in Research Triangle Park, the Cree LED facility in Durham, and the HondaJet research and manufacturing campus near Greensboro are examples of forward-looking industries that do quite well in a global marketplace.

In a number of cases, the new, high-tech manufacturers have set up shop where the old mills thrived, as explained in a response to The Wall Street Journal story on TheFederalist.com website from Hickory native and Appalachian State University student Eric Cunningham. He agrees that Hickory no longer may be the hub of the world’s furniture industry, but the city has adapted by embracing new types of industries — notably, telecommunications.

I was not aware of this, but Cunningham reports by 2000, 40 percent of the world’s fiberoptic cable — the pipeline that brings broadband services to homes and businesses — was manufactured in Hickory. Local furniture makers now produce high-end, specialized products. A historic former textile mill has been repurposed as a major logistics hub. And while the unemployment rate in Catawba County reached 16 percent at the height of the Great Recession, it’s now 4.6 percent, lower than the national average.

What really undercuts the WSJ story, however, is this nugget Cunningham cites: A 2015 study from Ball State University has found that while U.S. industrial output has grown dramatically in the 21st century, 90 percent of the nation’s manufacturing job losses from 2000-10 can be attributed to improvements in productivity rather than competition from foreign trade.

Including just a bit of this extremely relevant information would have led to a much less dramatic tale about Hickory. Or perhaps none at all.

So beware parachute journalism — especially when the story’s profiling a place you know better than the out-of-town reporter who’s writing about it.

Rick Henderson (@deregulator) is editor-in-chief of Carolina Journal.

The mainstream media and pundits on both sides of the aisle focus an extraordinary amount of time and energy examining public school funding.

It is not surprising that they do. Surveys suggest that most Americans believe that public schools should receive more taxpayer money. According to the left-leaning PDK/Gallup Poll, “Lack of financial support for schools has been at the top of Americans’ list of the biggest problems facing their local schools for 10 years — and by a wide margin.”

Likewise, when asked if “government funding for public schools in your district should increase, decrease, or stay about the same,” 57 percent of respondents to the right-leaning EducationNext poll said that expenditures should increase and another 35 percent said that they should stay about the same.

Even when provided the actual per pupil expenditures for their respective school districts, 42 percent of respondents still believed that additional taxpayer money was needed.  A plurality of those surveyed answered that the government should hold them harmless.

Naturally, the beliefs of the average American voter inform media narratives and political discourse. Throwing money at public schools is a handy political talking point. Not throwing “enough” money their way can be a political liability.

Unfortunately, the media, as well as those in the punditry or advocacy business, often decide how much is “enough” based on who is in charge. Regardless of the actual change in the state budget, education budget increases by Democrats are called “sound investments,” while Republican efforts to boost the education budget are tagged “insufficient” or, more recently, an “election-year ploy.”

The truth is that the endless debate over “appropriate” funding increases is bootless. (I am trying to revive the word “bootless,” which means “ineffectual” or “useless.” Try it out on a friend today!)

Don’t get me wrong. Assessments of available resources are necessary. But they alone are not sufficient measures of the health of our public schools. Indeed, education researchers have generally found that the relationship between spending and performance is weak. Most agree that how the money is spent is far more important than how much money is available to be spent, that is, a focus on educational productivity.

As I have argued many times, whether you call it “educational productivity,” “return on investment,” or “bang for the buck,” an assessment of the relationship between educational inputs (money) and outputs (performance metrics) is an essential starting point for good K-12 education policy. Educational productivity researchers use quantitative methods to measure the relative return on investment for schools and school districts. These methods take into account differences in cost of living, household income, English language proficiency, and special education services across districts and states.

All things being equal, there are tremendous variations in productivity within North Carolina’s public school system. According to a 2014 study published by the liberal Center for American Progress, Union County, Davie County, Mooresville City, and Surry County school districts had the highest return on investment in the state. In general, these districts had below-average per-pupil expenditures but above-average test scores.  Schools in Hertford, Anson, Washington, and Halifax counties had the lowest return on investment. Per-pupil expenditures in these districts were relatively high, but their test scores were disappointingly low.

Productivity research cannot identify specific causes of unproductive schooling, which obviously complicates the turnaround process. School districts are complex organizations embedded in messy social, cultural, and political institutions. What works well in Union County may not work at all in Hertford County. On the other hand, productive school districts may have policies or practices that could benefit their struggling counterparts.

The most valuable contribution of productivity research, however, is that it offers a way of thinking that helps us escape our baseless preoccupation with public school funding, a mind-set that ultimately distracts us from the praiseworthy goal of ensuring that no child is forced to attend a substandard public school.

Dr. Terry Stoops (@TerryStoops) is director of research and education studies at the John Locke Foundation.

The city of Charlotte really wants to build a streetcar line. Queen City taxpayers probably will have to dig a bit deeper to pay for it, though, as construction bids have come in over 30 percent above projections. Such overages should come as no surprise, given the history of transit projects in general and the specifics of this project in particular.

Mecklenburg County has a dedicated sales tax to pay for the Charlotte Area Transit System’s capital needs and to cover the operating losses of its rail and bus network. Though CATS will build and operate the streetcar, no transit tax money is going to it. Instead, the city of Charlotte is responsible for financing the project and covering its operating losses. That’s a particular concern for the city as the federal government is paying $75 million toward the streetcar line’s second phase, and all costs beyond that fall entirely on the city.

Bids have come in over budget. As the Charlotte Observer reports, the city had estimated the cost of the line plus some city-funded related improvements at $93.2 million. It received two bids for the work, one at $123.3 million, the other at $128.5 million, both more than 30 percent above the city’s estimate.

Such cost overruns are par for the course. Over the past decade and a half, a series of academic journal articles has demonstrated that costs routinely are underestimated and benefits overstated to get transportation projects approved.

For example, in a seminal 2002 article in the Journal of the American Planning Association, Bent Flyvbjerg, Mette Skamris Holm, and Søren Buhl of Aalborg University described the results of a large-scale statistical analysis of transportation project cost overruns. Their article was titled “Underestimating Cost in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie.”

The researchers compared the estimated cost of projects at the time the decision was made to proceed to their final actual cost. Flyvbjerg and company’s dataset included 258 projects costing $90 billion over 70 years.

The authors found that costs were underestimated in 86 percent of projects, with the average overrun varying by project type. Rail projects came in on average 44.7 percent over their estimated costs, larger than the cost overruns in fixed-link (tunnel and bridge), at 33.8 percent, or road projects (20.4 percent).

Significantly, projects in the 1990s were just as likely as projects in the 1920s to come in over budget. As the authors note, “underestimation today is in the same order of magnitude as it was 10, 30, and 70 years ago.” It is as if project administrators had learned nothing from earlier projection errors. Based upon their analysis, the authors concluded that these original cost estimates were off not because of methodological errors, but rather because the project proponents were engaging in deception — lying — to get projects approved.

“Legislators, administrators, bankers, media representatives, and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust the cost estimates presented by infrastructure promoters and forecasters,” they wrote.

Indeed, we’ve even seen it before in Charlotte. The Queen City’s first light rail line, running roughly from Pineville to Uptown was projected in 1998 to cost $227 million. The actual cost came in at over twice that amount.

Charlotte’s streetcar Gold Line is a strange project. The Gold Line really isn’t a transportation solution. The streetcars run on rails set in the car traffic lanes of major streets and stop for red lights, making them no faster than buses, while also being less flexible and more expensive to operate.

In actuality, the Gold Line is a politically motivated economic development scheme.  Asking hard questions about its costs wouldn’t improve its chances of winning community support, and for that city taxpayers are likely to suffer.

Michael Lowrey is a contributor to Carolina Journal.

Four classically liberal professors and an economist named Adam Smith walk into a room. No, this isn’t the beginning of a bad joke; it was the first event of the Classical Liberals in the Carolinas conference held Aug. 11 at Johnson and Wales University in Charlotte.

The annual conference, now in its third year, was conceived by Adam Smith, an assistant professor of economics and director of the Center for Free Market Studies at Johnson and Wales. It offers opportunities for libertarian and right-of-center scholars to discuss important regional issues while building a stronger state-based network.

This year, Smith assembled a group of professors to address a hot button topic: free speech on campus. How did we arrive at this era of trigger warnings, microaggressions, and ideological conformity on campus? And what can professors and university officials do to establish respect for open expression and the marketplace of ideas?

The panel, sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies, was led by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Donald Downs, who was joined by Bradley Thompson of Clemson University, Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi of Winston-Salem State University, and James Otteson of Wake Forest University.

Thompson, a political science professor and the executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, said that indoctrination is a major reason there seems to be so much hostility to principles of free speech on campus.

Particularly troublesome, he said, is the re-emergence of 1960s-style “struggle sessions” in which people are made to confess their “sins” publicly. Thompson cited a recent case from Guilford College in which students demanded that each week, one white professor be required publicly to denounce his or her “white privilege.”

The panelists had plenty of advice for fellow faculty members on how to approach the issues of indoctrination, censorship, lack of viewpoint diversity, and student-led illiberalism.

For example, Otteson read from a personal blog post in which he imagined what would be Page 1 of an enlightened college’s handbook. The opening page would include the following pledge:

We will continually and robustly exercise the freedom to investigate and examine new ideas, to review our prejudices and settled beliefs critically and regularly, and to confront, in good faith, lines of thought with which we are unfamiliar or even uncomfortable.

Otteson, an active advocate for free speech at Wake Forest, has called for the private university to adopt the Chicago Principles, which mirror the language of the above pledge. So far, he’s seen at least some success; the university’s provost is considering creating a faculty task force on free speech and the president addressed the issue in a letter to alumni.

Winston-Salem State also appears to be making ground. Thanks to the efforts of professor Madjd-Sadjadi, the school became both the first university in the South and the first historically black college to adopt the Chicago Principles.

Madjd-Sadjadi also urged faculty to get involved in campus committees, specifically ones which are likely to consider speech policies. He said the committees that pass problematic speech policies often have only one or two faculty members, but that the administration treats those members as representative of the viewpoint of the entire faculty.

Thompson closed the panel session with a challenge to faculty members: “There is no freedom of speech without freedom of thought. A university without freedom of thought is not a university, it’s something else. If we can’t defend freedom of speech on America’s campuses … then I think we need to find new lines of work.”

Stephanie Keaveney is a policy associate for the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

During her primary fight with Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton argued that his “free college” promise went too far. She merely advocated that students should be able to graduate “free of debt.”

Now, however, Clinton has come out with a plan to make public colleges and universities free for families who earn less than $125,000 annually.

But because the president can’t order states to comply, under her scheme the federal government would pay states for their cooperation if they charge no tuition to students from “poor” families.

Suppose a state decides to adopt Clinton’s free college plan. What would the consequences be?

First, some students who previously concluded that the cost of college (even at the already highly subsidized public institutions) was greater than the expected benefits would now decide differently and enroll. Even though most students and their families don’t attempt a precise cost/benefit analysis on going to college, if tuition suddenly were reduced to zero, that would certainly induce some to say, “Now it’s worth a try.”

That would mean at least a modest increase in enrollment, but it would come mainly from the most academically marginal students. The colleges and universities that gained in those enrollments also would find a need to increase remedial programs.

Even so, luring in more academically weak students will mean an increasing dropout rate, a metric that schools fear because it hurts their rankings. More students would be a mixed blessing.

Another adverse result from making college tuition free would be that many students would devote less effort to their courses. People have a tendency to put more of themselves — to feel more “invested” — when they have to pay for education (or any other good or service) than when they don’t.

In a 2004 study, Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist Aysegul Sahin concluded, “Low-tuition, high-subsidy policies cause an increase in the ratio of less highly-motivated students among the college graduates and that even highly-motivated ones respond to lower tuition by choosing to study less.”

Therefore, while the Clinton plan might “produce” more college graduates, it would probably reduce the overall level of learning. This is another of those cases where government action leads to visible benefits but at the expense of greater but hidden costs.

Another likely effect of the plan would be increased federal control over state university systems.

With a greatly increased inflow of federal dollars into those systems, U.S. Department of Education officials and Congress (particularly if the Democrats have control) would have more leverage than ever to dictate policy and curriculum. The prospect losing even more control over their university systems could cause some governors to say “no thanks” to the Clinton proposal.

Finally, how would this plan affect private colleges?

Many small schools already find it hard to stay afloat and if some students who might have enrolled in them instead decide that attending a state university free of tuition is a better deal, those schools will be in much greater peril. Then we’d probably get another federal program to help save endangered private colleges.

Clinton also has released a new loan forgiveness idea. She wants to allow budding entrepreneurs to defer payments on their student loans for up to three years, along with any student loans held by “their first 10 or 20 employees.”

This idea obviously is crafted to appeal to tech-savvy young people, but is another instance of misusing educational policy to advance an economic objective.

These new campaign proposals show how much further the Democratic nominee will go to keep the higher education bubble inflated.

George Leef is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

The 2016 N.C. legislative session was short, but full of significant action: limiting the growth of government, cutting taxes, paying down debt, building savings, raising teacher pay by almost 5 percent, protecting property rights, and continuing the momentum toward economic growth that began in 2011.

What’s ahead? More of the same, I hope. As we look toward a new legislature convening in 2017, there are opportunities to continue on the same path of reform that has led to a vibrant, revitalized North Carolina with one of the strongest economies in the country.

A longtime debate continues between economic development and economic growth. Progressives tout economic development, a system in which government decides which businesses get resources at the expense of the vast majority of taxpayers, picking winners and losers through subsidies, tax breaks, and carve-outs for a select business or industry.

On the other hand, economic growth, favored by free-market advocates, is based on policies that maximize growth for all businesses: low and fair taxes and reasonable regulations, providing a well-skilled work force, consistent and fair treatment, and a fertile environment for entrepreneurs and investors.

For those committed to the long term, growth policies result in a strong economy. We’ve seen this in North Carolina with 300,000 net new jobs created since 2013 and unemployment down in all 100 counties. Gross domestic product, job creation, and per-capita income growth all beat national and regional averages. We have the ninth-strongest economy in the country.

But the battle against economic development incentives is never-ending. This session we saw the introduction of a new markets tax credit. Expect to see this idea revived again, along with proposals to reinstate solar tax credits, expand film credits, and revive a research-and-development grant program.

Expect to hear noise about small-town main-street revitalization and historic preservation, regional community and low-income community development strategic planning, land-use credits and grants, and training on “economic development” programs.

Those incentives redirect hundreds of millions of dollars that could be better spent on tax reduction, training well-skilled workers, infrastructure investments, or returning tax dollars to those who earned them.

Economic growth depends on innovation and investments of entrepreneurs. How do you get capital into the economy? If you are an economic developer, you push things like a new market tax credit or taxpayer-funded cash giveaways. If you are committed to economic growth, you look at repealing North Carolina’s capital gains tax. Complete repeal would pump $500 million back into the state’s economy to be re-invested by proven job creators, North Carolina’s small-business community.

The right investments can fuel economic growth as long as those investments are broad and benefit everyone. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in roads, bridges, and highways determined by formulas based on safety, congestion, and economic need. Economic developers look to investments in bike lanes, transit, and light-rail trains that come with huge short-term and long-term costs to the benefit of a very few.

As we look forward, we should focus on further economic growth, fueled by entrepreneurs, job creators and people investing money and resources in a market-driven economy. We still have a lot of work to do, but it is unquestionable that North Carolina is moving forward, stronger than ever, even stronger tomorrow.

Becki Gray (@beckigray) is vice president for outreach at the John Locke Foundation.

There are many reasons for North Carolinians to be proud of the statewide education reforms implemented over the last five years. The state has made massive investments in K-12 education with a focus on grade-level proficiency in reading. Accountability is stronger. We pay teachers better. School districts have unprecedented budgetary flexibility. The list goes on and on.

But no achievement is more impressive than the remarkable expansion of school choice in North Carolina. Today, around 17 percent of school-age children in North Carolina attend a home, private, or charter school.

In 2013, the General Assembly made changes to the state’s homeschool statute that gave parents the option of using online schools and cooperative arrangements to supplement conventional, parent-led instruction. Since then, homeschool growth has been phenomenal. In 2015, homeschool enrollment eclipsed the 100,000-student mark after adding nearly 8,700 students, compared to the prior year estimate. This year, North Carolina had an estimated 118,268 homeschooled students, a staggering increase of 11,415 students — or nearly 11 percent.

While not as impressive as homeschool growth, private school enrollment inched up by roughly 500 students this year. After years of enrollment declines and only negligible increases over the past two years, private school enrollment finally exceeded the pre-recession enrollment peak of 97,656 students. At last count, North Carolina private school enrollment totaled 97,721 students.

The Opportunity Scholarship and Disability Grant programs, which provide private school vouchers to eligible low-income and special-needs students, are likely responsible for the recent uptick in the private school population. The General Assembly just approved substantial funding increases for both programs, so total private school enrollment may soon surpass 100,000 students.

More than 800 students received a voucher through the Disability Grant Program in 2016. The most recently passed state budget boosted funding for the program by 137 percent to $10 million. Thanks to that change, hundreds of additional special needs children will have access to $8,000 private school vouchers.

Lawmakers also created a reserve fund for the Opportunity Scholarship Program that will add $10 million a year to the $34.8 million program budget over the next decade. More than 6,000 low-income children will receive an opportunity scholarship next year, well over five times the number of students who received a scholarship during the program’s first year of operation. By the 2026-27 school year, the program will have a total budget of $134.8 million, allowing thousands more to receive a $4,200 voucher to attend a private school that better meets their needs.

In recent years, the General Assembly has chipped away at unnecessary restrictions on charter school growth. In 2011, lawmakers removed the 100-school cap and further authorized charter enrollment to grow by as much as 20 percent a year. Subsequent statutory changes permitted charter schools to add one grade per year without approval from the State Board of Education and implemented a fast-track replication process for outstanding charter schools. In 2014, lawmakers approved legislation that allowed two virtual charter schools, N.C. Virtual Academy and N.C. Connections Academy, to begin operating in North Carolina.

Thanks to these forward-thinking changes, there are more charter schools now than at any time since passage of the charter law in 1996. Enrollment in the state’s 158 charter schools had grown to nearly 82,000 students, an increase of 83 percent over the previous five years.

Too many families are not satisfied with the academic quality or social environment of their assigned public schools but do not have the means or opportunity to give their children an alternative. One day soon, household income and zip code no longer will correlate to the quality of education in North Carolina, and the leadership of the General Assembly will be the primary reason why.

Terry Stoops is director of research and education studies at the John Locke Foundation.

The following editorial was published in the August 2016 print edition of Carolina Journal:

Several members of the Investment Advisory Committee, a state commission that advises the treasurer about financial strategies for the state’s substantial investment portfolio, were surprised to learn at a recent meeting that, unlike many elected and appointed officials in the federal government, nothing prevents the treasurer, or most state employees (along with elected officials and government board members) from accepting outside employment that offers significant compensation and could pose conflicts of interest.

You may not know that there’s no limit to the amount of money North Carolina public employees and officials can receive in addition to their government salaries. State ethics laws require many of these officials to disclose those outside sources of compensation — including business interests, investments, rental income, and scholarships — to the state Ethics Commission in a document known as a Statement of Economic Interest.

But merely disclosing personal holdings seems inadequate.

There are criminal penalties for filing SEI forms with false or incomplete information, but they hasn’t prevented Lt. Gov. Dan Forest from being part-owner of two real estate firms, Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin from being part of a firm that collects lease revenues from a building in Rockingham, Attorney General Roy Cooper from getting rent from commercial and residential real estate, or Gov. Pat McCrory from owning stock in Duke Energy, as WRAL News reported earlier this year.

The IAC’s concerns are related to a recently enacted state law that requires stricter ethics guidelines for the treasurer, who serves as the ultimate decision maker for investing nearly $90 billion in pension funds for state and local employees and teachers. Retiring Treasurer Janet Cowell raised eyebrows several months ago when she joined the corporate boards of James River Group Holdings and ChannelAdvisor without notifying the IAC or the pensions’ board of trustees. Cowell reportedly received roughly $300,000 in compensation, between cash and stock, for joining the corporate boards.

Cowell would have to recuse herself from any decision the retirement fund might make if it considered investing in those entities. The candidates seeking to win the treasurer’s office this fall — Democrat Dan Blue III and Republican Dale Folwell — say they would not serve on corporate boards.

Blue told Carolina Journal he thinks that a prohibition on outside income should be considered for a number of offices across state government. Folwell said the treasurer, in particular, should be focused fully on protecting state investments and not have the potential distractions corporate board membership or other outside employment would entail.

We agree, particularly for full-time officials such as judges, the Council of State, and most senior-level staff members and department heads. High-level public servants should give their undivided attention to the people of North Carolina and not be in a position where they may be distracted or compromised by outside interests.

Many senior elected or appointed officials in the federal government must surrender any outside business interests or place their assets in blind trusts. Similar requirements might be appropriate for those serving at the top echelons of state government.

The arrival of summer means vacation time for many, and airports stay busy. While we think of domestic airline service as being deregulated, the reality is that government decisions still play a role in where airlines fly.

The most obvious case of government involvement comes in awarding international routes. While the U.S. Department of Transportation has done a good job of pushing “Open Skies” agreements that allow airlines to fly to foreign destinations as often as they want, some countries do not allow such deals.

In those cases, the DOT allocates the limited number of flights that are available. These route award proceedings often are contested hotly; an airline can make a lot of money by being one of the few allowed to serve a popular destination.

Flight rights to Cuba, China, and Tokyo’s Haneda Airport are among the routes that the DOT will hand out this year. There’s a North Carolina link here, as American Airlines wants to fly from Charlotte to Havana daily, but the current U.S. agreement with Cuba allows only 20 flights a day, and various airlines have requested more than 60 daily flights to Havana.

If you’re flying to Washington or New York City, government policy influences your travel options. Four key airports — Newark, John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Reagan National — are heavily congested.

The DOT has responded by imposing capacity limits,assigning airlines a fixed number of takeoff and landing slots. In addition, LaGuardia and Reagan National both allow only nonstop flights within a limited geographic radius to encourage usage at alternative airports.

Federal law also limits capacity at Dallas Love Field, the airport used by Southwest Airlines. Local politicians wanted Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to be the airport for the entire Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and set limits on Love Field’s usage before Southwest was formed.

In 2014, the restrictions on Love Field changed from geographic — nonstop flights could serve only some nearby states — to a hard cap on the number of gates at Love Field. The change has allowed Southwest to offer one flight a day from Love to both Charlotte and Raleigh, but also limits future growth severely.

On the other end of the spectrum are routes that are subsidized by either the federal or local governments. When airlines were deregulated in the late 1970s, the feds established a subsidy program for places that lost air service as a result of deregulation — the Essential Air Service program. It guarantees local airports could maintain access to cities they served in 1979, when deregulation came into effect.

Currently, more than 100 cities use the EAS program at a total cost of about $250 million a year. None of these cities is in North Carolina, though Beckley, W.Va.’s twice-daily EAS flights are to Charlotte.

The federal government also has a grant program for smaller cities to attract new flights. Unlike EAS, the Small Community Air Service Development Program requires communities to put up some of their own money to get a grant. Among the communities that applied for a SCASDP grant are Greenville, which wants to lure Delta Air Lines with flights to Atlanta, and Concord, which is seeking federal money to help market its existing flights to Florida on Allegiant Air.

Local airports often also offer financial incentives for new routes, sometimes in conjunction with an SCASDP bid. Raleigh-Durham International Airport is paying Delta up to $2.2 million, primarily with public money, to help cover first-year losses on the airline’s RDU-Paris flight.

Enjoy your vacation this summer. But as you’re flying to wherever you’re going — New York City, Dallas, Paris, or someplace else — keep in mind that government policy still can influence how you get there.

In history books, Anti-Federalists often are depicted as losers during the constitutional ratification debates. But in many ways, they were victorious.

For instance, they assured that a Bill of Rights was added to the U.S. Constitution, and their concerns prompted a vigorous political debate and constitutional commentary that Americans still reference.

One of the leading founders and proponents for a Bill of Rights was North Carolina planter Willie (pronounced Wiley) Jones. The Anti-Federalist Jones influenced many of his contemporaries’ political views and demands for a declaration of rights.

A Virginia native, Jones and his family moved to present-day Northampton County, N.C., in the early 1750s. The son of a large landholder, Willie was tutored at home and traveled to England for his formal education.

Willie married Mary Montfort, the daughter of Col. Joseph Montfort, on June 27, 1776. The couple had 13 children, of whom only five survived childhood (three girls and two boys), and only the three girls married. Jones died in 1801.

Jones’ political career is worth examining. While North Carolina was a royal colony, Jones had served in the House of Commons. Becoming disenchanted with the Royal Governors and the British Crown, Jones eventually became an ardent revolutionary.

Royal Gov. Josiah Martin remarked that Jones was one of the loudest voices encouraging secession from Britain and the establishment of an independent state.

During the Revolutionary War, Jones served in various political and military roles. He was a delegate of Halifax County at the Provincial Convention of 1774. He served in the 1775 and 1776 Provincial Congresses as a delegate of Halifax County. He was the president of the 1776 Provincial Council.

From 1777-80, he served in the General Assembly House. He then represented North Carolina at the Continental Congress of 1780. In 1782, 1784, and 1788, Jones served in the North Carolina Senate.

During the war, Jones also fought the British; he became a lieutenant colonel under the command of Nathanael Greene and led 300 men in the pursuit of Lord Charles Cornwallis. In 1787, Jones was elected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia (a meeting to solve the problems deemed inherent in the Articles of Confederation), but Jones declined, claiming to be too busy.

Once a new constitution was submitted to the states for ratification, Jones vigorously opposed its adoption. In North Carolina, two prominent Federalists (supporters of the Constitution) were James Iredell and William Davie.

Jones opposed ratification for several reasons: He feared a standing army, a U.S. Supreme Court that could overrule state court decisions, and a federal government that regulated the economy to benefit a few commercial interests.

To Jones, the Constitution could be a dangerous instrument of centralization. To prevent it from becoming so, he wanted the document to enumerate specific, individual rights. Until such a list was included, Jones encouraged his colleagues not to ratify the Constitution.

In great part because of Jones’ influence, North Carolina was the only state to have two ratification conventions; the state initially voted neither to ratify nor reject the Constitution.

North Carolina finally ratified the Constitution in 1789. And because of Jones and other Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights eventually was drafted.

After North Carolina ratified the Constitution, Jones never served in political office again, though he continued being a public servant.

Thanks in great part to Jones’ effort on a planning committee, the city of Raleigh was established in 1792. For his significant role in the establishment of the capital, Jones has been called the “real founder of Raleigh.”

Jones also served as a trustee for the University of North Carolina in the 1790s. For decades Jones had wanted (in true Jeffersonian spirit) a university that offered North Carolinians a means of enlightenment.

Dr. Troy Kickler is director of the North Carolina History Project.

North Carolina should abandon economic development policy and completely refocus on economic growth. These are distinctly different goals that more often than not conflict with each other. Most policies meant to promote economic development create economic inefficiencies and therefore hinder economic growth.

For decades North Carolina has been pursuing “economic development policy.” Indeed, the N.C. Department of Commerce is completely dedicated to this concept. As is emphasized on the department website, “The N.C. Department of Commerce is the state’s leading economic-development agency, working with local, regional, national, and international companies.”

The department claims it accomplishes this by “giving companies the assistance and resources necessary to meet their unique business needs.” But government agencies, as nonparticipants in the market process, have no way of determining a company’s unique business needs.

The department has no market incentive — profit and loss — nor the necessary market knowledge to get these decisions right. In attempting to implement such policies, it is invoking what Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek referred to as a “pretense of knowledge.”

Since the money used to implement these policies is not manna from heaven, the department must use the state’s taxing authority to transfer resources from the majority of North Carolina taxpayers to businesses that the agency determines are worthy of its largess.

It necessarily entails an effort by the state to pick marketplace winners and losers by using tax breaks and direct subsidies to promote targeted businesses and industries. This, in fact, is what “crony capitalism” is all about.

On its website, the agency boasts about targeting specific industries for special consideration. They include tourism, film, sports development, telecommunications, biotechnologies, health care, and financial services. In reality, economic development is a disguised form of state central planning of the economy, and it should be abandoned.

Policy that focuses on economic growth rather than economic development starts from a different premise than that taken by the Commerce Department and programs the state has supported over the years, like the One North Carolina Fund, Golden LEAF Foundation, and Job Development Investment Grants. All of these channel resources into government-determined uses and away from market allocation based on free choice.

The starting premise behind policies to promote economic growth is that private entrepreneurs, using their own money or money from voluntary investors, know best how resources should be allocated. Policymakers should see to it that property rights are secure, entrepreneurs can use their property rights in any way they believe will be most productive, and tax and regulatory policies do not get in the way of this process.

Economic development policies divert resources from this process, thereby moving resources to less efficient uses, hindering economic growth.

Over the past several years, North Carolina lawmakers have begun to craft policies with an eye toward enhancing economic growth. They have done this primarily by implementing pro-growth tax and regulatory reform and cutting taxes overall. And economic growth rates in North Carolina relative to the rest of the country attest to the success of this approach.

Unfortunately, policymakers have continued to pursue anti-growth and counterproductive economic development policies. During the 2015 legislative session, every proposal to implement new or to expand existing economic development programs became law.

This schizophrenic approach to economic policy is like trying to increase a boat’s speed by investing in a bigger and more powerful motor while simultaneously tossing a heavy anchor over the side. Sure, the boat may continue to move forward, and indeed it may increase its speed if the force of the new engine is greater than the drag of the anchor.

But clearly the new engine would work even better if the anchor were lifted completely.

Dr. Roy Cordato is vice president for research and resident scholar at the John Locke Foundation.

Like a recovering addict on the verge of a major binge, some North Carolina lawmakers are on the brink of falling back into the black hole of tax credits. Rather than serving as a national model for tax and regulatory reform, North Carolina risks becoming, again, a national leader in crony capitalism.

Senate Bill 826, which remains alive even though the legislative short session is winding down, would create a new state-level credit mirroring the federal New Markets Tax Credit. The state version would have given insurance companies and affiliates a credit to filter money to private entities making investments in distressed communities. Even if S.B. 826 is not enacted into law this year, the NMTC concept won’t go away any time soon.

Established in 2000, NMTC was designed to provide capital, spurring the revitalization of low-income and impoverished communities. To date, 14 states have adopted NMTC programs. Texas and Georgia have joined North Carolina in introducing state-level legislation.

Targeted incentives never live up to their promises, benefit a few at the expense of many, and are not a good investment of taxpayer money. When credits, grants, and carve-outs are piled on, success for “investors” comes almost entirely at the expense of taxpayers.

The proposed North Carolina New Markets Tax Credit would offer a 25-percent state tax credit for private investments over seven years, so long as 75 percent of the investment is made in the economically disadvantaged Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties. This would be on top of a convoluted federal program that already offers a 39-percent credit over seven years.

Before a project can qualify, supporters must provide government overseers a revenue impact assessment using “a nationally recognized third-party independent economic forecasting method that projects state and local tax revenue to be generated by the project.” You can bet the forecast will claim large increases in state revenues, economic outputs, and jobs, because the reports often use a flawed economic analysis model called IMPLAN, which ignores opportunity costs and frequently conflates business costs with societal benefits.

A July 2014 U.S. Government Accountability Office report on the federal NMTC called the program complex, nontransparent, and unnecessarily duplicative. The GAO also found “the data on equity remaining in businesses after the credit period were unreliable,” and “data on NMTC project failure rates were unavailable.”

The NMTC isn’t the only subsidy available to the politically connected. At the federal level, about 16 additional tax credits, breaks, and carve-outs also are used in conjunction with NMTC. Duplication of tax credits is likely in North Carolina as well. Historic restoration credits, solar and renewable energy credits, Job Development Investment Grants, OneNC Fund grants, and local incentives are just a few of the other programs an investor might qualify for in addition to NMTC.

The only projects prohibited from the North Carolina credit are real-estate investments. Although the stated intent is to generate economic activity in Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties, of the 95 federal NMTC projects currently underway in North Carolina, 60 are located in Charlotte, Durham, Greensboro, Raleigh, and Winston-Salem. There are hundreds of projects in North Carolina already identified as eligible for the NMTC. Most are clustered around the same areas.

Long-term evidence and academic research tells us that investment credits don’t work. They benefit a few at the risk and expense of all other taxpayers.

North Carolina lawmakers have fought hard to roll back special tax carve-outs and set the state on the right road to economic prosperity. To turn in the opposite direction, adopt a state New Markets Tax Credit, and set the state back is foolish, irresponsible, and ill-advised.

North Carolina has become a national model in tax reform, focusing on low rates and fair tax treatment rather than picking winners and losers through targeted incentives. We’ve come too far to return to bad habits, poor choices, and destructive decisions.

Becki Gray is vice president for outreach at the John Locke Foundation.

When did North Carolina become known as North Carolina and acquire its modern shape?

We must go back to Jan. 24, 1712, when Edward Hyde became the first governor of what became known as North Carolina, or more specifically, he was the first official governor under the Lords Proprietors. Carolina was then divided into two parts: North Carolina and South Carolina.

Such a division was deemed necessary because Carolina had earned a reputation for being a colony with an often, unruly population. In 1691, the Lords Proprietors had made Charles Town (now Charleston, S.C.) the seat of government for Carolina and established deputy governors for the faraway Albemarle region.

For some time, there had been unruly behavior and political disagreement in what became North Carolina. Among the colonists, there were, writes historian William Powell, citing a contemporary missionary, four general religious groups: 1) Quakers; 2) Anglicans; 3) Baptists (most likely); and 4) a smaller number that seemingly remained unchurched or lacked any religious organization. A few Presbyterians also lived in the area. There was a strong Quaker presence in the Assembly, yet an influential segment demanded that all members take oaths — an objectionable practice to Quakers, who held that swearing allegiance to a king or a state violated scripture.

The disagreement intensified from 1708-11. Deputy Governor Thomas Cary demanded that Assembly members take an oath of office and fined those who assumed office without taking an oath. Even so, he eventually appointed Quakers to office. The political scene was chaotic, and in Charles Town, political factions formed. To provide more stability and order, and to attract settlers to the area, the Lords Proprietors appointed a governor of North Carolina.

The chaos intensified before it abated, however. Serving as deputy governor before his commission started, Hyde, among other things, undid much of Cary’s work. As a result, Cary and his political allies sailed a ship on the Albemarle Sound toward a house where Hyde was meeting with council members and lobbed two cannonballs. In a hasty retreat, Cary mistakenly ran his ship ashore. The men escaped.

No serious effort to draw a southern boundary occurred until 1729, when the crown purchased land from seven of the eight Lords Proprietors. During the rest of the century, North Carolina had occasional boundary disagreements with South Carolina and Georgia. But for the most part, disagreements ended in 1821 after the Walton War, which led to the eventual creation of Transylvania County.

After the North-South separation, remember that North Carolina, along with many colonies, had western land claims far beyond current boundaries. What is now Tennessee used to be part of North Carolina, and during the 1780s, many western North Carolinians complained about lack of representation and neglect from the Assembly. Several counties tried separating in what they called the State of Franklin that existed from 1784-88. Through skillful negotiations, North Carolina avoided major violence. The state ceded its land in 1789 — something the U.S. government preferred to help foster statehood. Tennessee became a state in 1796, with John Sevier as its first governor.

There was little dispute about the northern boundary when King Charles II gave Carolina to the eight Lords Proprietors in 1663. The northern boundary was set out in the Carolina charters of 1663 and 1665. The two charters spelled out different latitudes, however, so approximately 30 miles were in question. When the seven Lords Proprietors sold their land to the crown, official surveys had been or were being conducted. William Byrd II describes the boundary in The History of the Land Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina.

The Atlantic Ocean had made the eastern boundary rather obvious. For a more thorough description regarding many previously mentioned items, please see www.northcarolinahistory.org.

Dr. Troy Kickler is director of the North Carolina History Project (northcarolinahistory.org).

Parts of North Carolina are growing rapidly. Other areas, usually but not always “rural,” are stagnant or worse. What can be done to ease the economic challenges facing places that aren’t doing so great?

First, we must accept the obvious — if there were some easy cure to what ails rural North Carolina, then state and local government officials and community leaders would have acted long ago. There isn’t, which is why we’ve been struggling to figure out what to do for many years.

Rural areas typically are associated with farming, and there certainly is money to be made in agriculture.  It’s just that economies of scale apply in agriculture, meaning bigger is more efficient, thus making it difficult for small-scale operators of traditional farming to prosper. Agricultural productivity also is ever-increasing — farmers over time continue to get higher yields with fewer inputs, including labor.

Agriculture will, of course, remain a key part of many community’s economies, but it’s difficult to see how it can fuel the consistent job growth needed to get a stagnant area’s economy out of neutral.

At least in a North Carolina context, rural doesn’t just mean farming. Towns both large and small are interspersed every 10 or 20 miles among those fields. And the “rural” economic development challenge is really about keeping these towns vibrant.

One solution that’s been suggested — often — is tourism.

There are a couple of problems with tourism as an economic development tool. To paraphrase “The Incredibles,” if everyone is special, no one is. While you may think that your town has a lot to offer and is a great place to visit, lots of people in the next county over, and the counties beyond that, think the same thing about their communities. And while these places may have their own charms, they all can’t be big tourist draws.

Tourism is also seasonal and cyclical. There is always an offseason.  And when the economy tanks, the first thing that people cut back on are road trips.

The combination of retail, hotel, and food service jobs that make up the tourism industry are a great way for young adults to earn some money while gaining extremely valuable job experience. But “some money” is the key term, as tourism-related jobs tend to rest at the bottom of the pay scale. Indeed, the low-paying nature of tourism-industry jobs is generating some concerns in Asheville, which has based much of its local revival on tourism.

At times, a variety of massive economic development schemes have been tried to invigorate towns and even regions. The results typically have been disappointing at best. There’s nothing more soul-crushing for an area than having the next big thing turn out to be a small thing or even a complete bust, like the Global TransPark in Kinston or the Randy Parton Theatre in Roanoke Rapids.

So what to do? Every community is unique, so one-size fits all remedies aren’t available. There are some constants. though.

Good government matters, meaning providing basic services efficiently. So does avoiding the opposite of good government. Nothing turns off potential investors in an area like corruption, dysfunction, or red tape.

Transportation — which transcends county lines or city limits — is another part of the solution. Getting to and through the state’s big cities is critical to rural areas. Aside from shopping and cultural attractions, the state’s cities also contain its major airports. You must be able to get from here to there.

Most of all, your community must be the best it can be, even if it can’t keep up with Charlotte and Raleigh in income or population growth.

Last month, the National Education Association released “Rankings of the States 2015 and Estimates of School Statistics 2016.” “Rankings and Estimates” is a useful publication for its per pupil expenditure and teacher pay rankings. For example, North Carolina is ranked 41^st in teacher pay this year, an improvement of one spot since last year and six spots since 2014.

But take a step back from North Carolina and consider the massive size and scope of the nation’s public education enterprise and the relatively disappointing academic results it produces.

NEA researchers estimate that the United States will spend just under $675 billon on public education this school year. To put that figure in perspective, public school spending alone is roughly equal to the gross domestic product of Switzerland, the 20^th-largest economy in the world.

Of course, the United States educates nearly 50 million children, which is around six times the total population of Switzerland, so one would expect that taxpayers would need to make a significantly larger investment in public schools. Yet, the national average expenditure in the United States is around $12,000 per student, which, coincidentally, joins Switzerland as the fourth-highest in the world.

Even the Swiss would agree that that is some serious cheddar. Unfortunately, it does not mean that the United States is the academic big cheese.

In “Comparative Indicators of Education in the United States and Other G-20 Countries: 2015,” the National Center for Education Statistics compared education input and output measures in the United States with those in Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and other Group of 20 countries. The report is the most current summary of the performance of students on major international assessments.

In fourth-grade reading, students in the United States fared well. Seventeen percent of students reached an advanced level on international tests, eclipsing Canada, Germany, and several others. Mathematics performance is a different story. While 13 percent of U.S. fourth-grade students reached the advanced level, 39 percent of South Korean students and 30 percent of Japanese students hit that mark. Science performance among fourth-graders in the United States was competitive with Japan and Russia, but no nation outperformed academic powerhouse South Korea.

By eighth grade, Pacific Rim nations begin pulling away from the pack. Nearly half of eighth-grade students in South Korea and 27 percent of Japanese eighth-graders scored at the advanced level in math. That compared to only 7 percent in the United States. In science, the gap between the United States and other G-20 nations was not as large. Even so, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and England all had higher percentages of eighth-grade students who scored in the upper achievement tiers on international science assessments.

Proficiency levels in reading, mathematics, and science literacy among 15-year-old students suggests that the academic deceleration that begins in middle school continues into high school. Indeed, reading performance in the United States lags significantly behind Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Although 9 percent of U.S. high schoolers scored at the top two achievement levels on international math assessments, 24 percent of Japanese and 31 percent of South Korean 15-year-olds attained top scores. Australian, German, and Canadian students were not far behind.

Over the next year, international testing programs will release updated results from math, science, and reading assessments. Those reports will provide insight into whether the near-universal adoption of the Common Core State Standards in reading and math has improved the nation’s international competitiveness. Yet, even if the United States closes the performance gap with top-performing nations, we will have done so at a great and largely unsustainable cost.

Terry Stoops is director of research and education studies at the John Locke Foundation.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a ballpark proposal in High Point. Recently, I saw a Fayetteville Observer headline: “Fayetteville, Cumberland officials to visit Columbia, S.C. to tour baseball stadium.”  Oh, no.  I knew where this was going.

And I was right. The city has met with the Houston Astros about bringing a minor league team to Fayetteville, so these officials are headed down to Columbia to see the Single A ballpark there. They have a consultant working on a feasibility report for building a stadium and an economic impact assessment.

I’ll go ahead and predict that the consultants will assure the city of an enormous economic impact. They always do, and it’s total bunk.

But let’s set that particular issue aside for a moment and consider a more fundamental set of questions.  Should the city and county be financing a ballpark at all? Are there other ways to do it? Because ballparks are always publicly financed, aren’t they?

The answers, in short, are no, yes, and almost. Let’s take them in reverse order.

It is indeed true that ballparks are almost always publicly financed. This wasn’t always the case, but it has been since the 1950s. That said, there are a few notable exceptions, and those warrant some consideration.

AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, opened in 2000 and was privately financed. It’s also consistently ranked as one of the best, if not THE best, ballpark in the whole of Major League Baseball. (Yes, I’m a Giants fan. Yes, my office is painted orange. But this is not my bias coming through. It’s a great ballpark.)

The last Major League ballpark before AT&T to be financed privately was Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. I find it slightly ironic that they’re both on the left coast, but it is what it is. It’s also the only thing I like about the Dodgers.

And it’s not just big-league parks. The West Michigan Whitecaps, a Single A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers, play their home games at Fifth Third Ballpark, which was privately financed in 1994.

The owners didn’t originally intend to build the ballpark with private money. They started out pursuing tax dollars. But over time, as that didn’t pan out, they decided to explore the private route, and they’re glad they did. It turns out there are lots of benefits.

Which brings us back to Fayetteville. I love the idea of a minor league team in Cumberland County, but I’d challenge the city and county to take a look at the West Michigan Whitecaps. If that team can do it, so can North Carolina entrepreneurs.

The local government gets to avoid risk, taxpayers get to keep more of their money (which they can use for baseball tickets, among other things), and the team gets to own its own facility. Win-win-win.

Julie Tisdale is city and county policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation.

Don’t you hate it when you read a story in a newspaper or online, or watch a news report on TV, and the reporter seems to have completely missed the essential question? I know I do.

It happens more than you think. Sometimes it’s a product of lack of time, in the case of a TV or radio interview, or it can be a product of a lack of preparation by the reporter. But too often the news consumer gets the feeling that it’s a way to get past an inconvenient fact or issue that the reporter or his or her editors wants to de-emphasize.

A good example of this kind of thing occurred late last month when a group of people opposed to House Bill 2 gathered on the grounds of the N.C. State Capitol with a large number of boxes stacked one upon the other, 26 of them by my count, 20 large moving boxes and six smaller file boxes. The media were told, or were led to believe, that these boxes were filled with petitions signed by people against H.B. 2.

However, once these boxes arrived at the governor’s office and were opened, the governor’s staff reported that there were only enough petitions to fill two of the smaller boxes, and most of those were from out of state.

So here’s my question: Didn’t one reporter notice that these large boxes, supposedly filled with paper, seemed to be pretty easy to carry? Even the women in photos and videos seem to be carrying them with the ease of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. Have you ever carried a box of copy paper to your car from the office supply store? Pretty hard to carry, right? Did not one reporter say, “Hey, let me look inside that box. It seems to be empty”?

I’m guessing they didn’t, because not one news outlet that I could find reported the 24 empty boxes. Instead, they published photos of protesters carrying the empty boxes and stacking them dramatically, giving the impression that they were filled with petitions signed in outrage.

In the very last paragraph of the story that appeared on The Charlotte Observer’s and The New & Observer’s websites, the reporter noted that “the governor’s office released a statement” saying that they received only enough petitions to fill two boxes.

Twenty-six boxes of petitions versus two boxes of petitions is a big discrepancy, one that any news consumer would be fair in thinking that a reporter should try to resolve. Did the governor’s office throw away 24 boxes of paper, or did the protesters carry empty boxes? From the photographs and the video of people carrying very large boxes with ease, it’s clear that the latter is more plausible.

But the media didn’t check. And if they did, they didn’t report it. Instead, they acted as if this was a case of conflicting claims that could not possibly be resolved. That’s not journalism. That’s complicity in street theater.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder’s decision upholding the sensible election reforms enacted in 2013 may have sent liberal activists into hysterics, but more reasonable North Carolinians should applaud the care Schroeder employed in reviewing and sustaining the law.

The judge’s 485-page opinion meticulously details the facts surrounding these contentious changes in election law. It recounts the legislative debates surrounding the 2013 law and changes made last year in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding a voter identification requirement. It acknowledges the state’s shameful history of discrimination, while acknowledging the progress of recent decades — and the absence of evidence that such discrimination persists.

And those facts knock down, one by one, the claims of voter suppression and disenfranchisement made by the plaintiffs — led by the NAACP’s state chapter, the League of Women Voters, and others.

Ending election-day voter registration, reducing the early-voting period (while extending hours and opening more early-voting sites), and ending the “preregistration” of 16- and 17-year-olds at schools did not reduce minority participation, as the plaintiffs predicted.

“The evidence shows that African-Americans have fared better in terms of registration and turnout rates in 2014, after the new law was implemented, than in 2010, when the old provisions were in place,” Schroeder wrote.

As Carolina Journal reported in 2013, even after the election reforms were enacted, North Carolina provided more liberal access to the polls than a number of traditionally “blue” states. New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut don’t allow either early voting or no-excuse absentee voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Other states allowing neither include Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Schroeder noted that while states should “make it as easy as practicable to exercise the right to vote, … a state’s repeal of a convenience or ‘failsafe’ [is not] unlawful, or unconstitutional per se,” Schroeder wrote. Every time the rules are relaxed, it becomes more difficult to ensure that those who cast ballots indeed are eligible to vote, possibly undermining the integrity of elections.

“[The] question in this case is whether plaintiffs have demonstrated that the measures violate the [Voting Rights Act] or the Constitution,” the judge said. They didn’t.

The judge concluded that “North Carolina has provided legitimate state interests for its voter-ID requirement and electoral system,” including generous time periods to register, vote by absentee ballot, and cast ballots at early voting sites (including early voting locations open on Saturdays and Sundays).

The left-wing opponents of election reforms claimed that North Carolina’s system is repressive and outside the American mainstream. Their arguments always relied upon overwrought rhetoric and not-so-subtle allegations of racism or other evil intentions.

Fortunately, Schroeder considered the facts, examined the law, and came to the proper conclusion. The opinion is a model of judicial restraint at a time far too many judges mistakenly believe their role is to write laws rather than interpret them.

We’ve been witness to a level of ideologically driven mass media hysteria in recent weeks unseen since the Duke lacrosse rape hoax story. I’m talking about the General Assembly’s nullification, via House Bill 2, of Charlotte’s ordinance designed to legislate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender discrimination.

The Charlotte ordinance, which was defeated in March 2015 in a close vote, but which passed 7-4 on Feb. 22, was billed as a nondiscrimination proposal that would have added sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories in such things as job discrimination and public accommodations.

“Public accommodations” turned out to be the fly in Charlotte’s social-justice ointment. It was undeniable, and universally agreed, in fact, that this law would allow transgender people to use public or private-business restrooms that, shall we say, didn’t match their born-with plumbing.

The concerns of many that men dressed as women were going to be able to enter restrooms and locker rooms with women and girls were ridiculed by the media, in print and even on sports radio talks shows, who used the NBA’s threat to yank the NBA all-star game from Charlotte as a means of entry into this story.

Nearly every news story ignored the real concern of men being able to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, even though stories abound nationwide of men using such ordinances as cover to invade those once-protected premises.

Most reports were content to call the Charlotte ordinance an “anti-discrimination ordinance” and leave it at that. The News & Observer, for instance, ran a headline, “North Carolina not the only state restricting LGBT rights,” unquestioningly classifying restrictions on men using women’s facilities as a restriction of LGBT rights.

If there has been any concern in the mainstream media with the right of privacy for girls and women in restrooms and locker rooms, I haven’t found it.

The immediate hysteria on the part of corporate giants like Facebook, Apple, Bank of America, and the NBA was something to behold, spurred by inaccurate reporting and sensationalism.

The degree of hypocrisy behind these reactions was best captured by Charlotte blogger SA Matthews. She pointed out in an online column that since Charlotte didn’t pass its anti-discrimination ordinance until February, the situation now is exactly the same as last year, when the NBA awarded the city the all-star game.

As it stands, private businesses can do what they like, but public restrooms are restricted to those whose birth certificate gender matches the sign on the restroom. This is status quo ante, which prompts the question: Why so much media and corporate hysteria?

Jon Ham (@rivlax) is a vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.

It’s pretty messed up what North Carolina hospitals have to go through just to be able to own an MRI machine.

That’s what we learned recently while sitting in a stuffy government building on the grounds of a former psychiatric hospital in Raleigh, listening to members of the State Health Coordinating Council hash out certificate-of-need rules.

Here’s how CON works. Let’s say a group of doctors or a hospital wants to add more hospital beds, construct a new facility, or even update major medical equipment like an MRI machine. They can’t just go ahead and make it happen. They first need to ask the state for a permission slip.

And that’s not all. Even if the state gives a stamp of approval, competitors can block the process by contesting approval and filing lawsuits that cost a lot of time and money. In the meantime, patients are left with fewer health care options.

On the agenda of the SHCC technology and equipment meeting was a petition submitted by Cape Fear Valley Health System, headquartered in Fayetteville. CFVHS made a request to change the law’s policy on how a “need” is determined for a community hospital to make the switch from leasing an MRI machine to buying one outright. Under current CON rules, a hospital that is leasing a mobile MRI unit can apply to buy its own MRI unit only if usage exceeds 1,716 scans, the minimum threshold for rural hospitals.

But — given rural locations and sometimes low MRI output — some may never reach that threshold, stunting their chance of ever owning a machine. The petition made a logical argument that community hospitals should be able to decide for themselves if acquiring a fixed MRI unit is more cost-effective than leasing. But even after hearing such logic, the council rejected the petition.

The committee majority reasoned that such a policy change would benefit very few hospitals. Based on historical data on MRI usage, they concluded with the assumption that only a handful would even apply for a fixed MRI scanner in rural areas.

The committee instead offered a less flexible option, one which upholds their central planning authority and ignores the sensibility of market forces. They tossed around the idea to lower the minimum threshold of MRI scans that would trigger a need for a fixed MRI unit.

Others pointed out that hospitals and other providers can take advantage of  “special needs determinations,” a saving grace which permits exceptions to the usual rules. In other words, if a community hospital doesn’t qualify to access new equipment — even with a readjusted threshold — it can seek an exemption.

And therein lies the bigger problem. A problem that many central planners don’t understand.

The life of North Carolina’s CON law has been riddled with preferential treatment. This petition is exemplary of just that. Although CFVHS did not provide an in-depth financial analysis, it argued that owning an MRI scanner could be more cost-effective than leasing. That sensitivity to cost abides by CON’s overall intent to slow the growth of health care expenditures. But the petition would have made fixed MRI acquisition exclusive to community hospitals.

Triangle Orthopedic Associates, a private medical practice, publicly commented that if CON law really wants to be consistent with its basic principle on cost containment, a uniform exception should apply to all health care settings that can house MRI units. Independent doctors’ offices receive 12 percent less in payment from Medicare for an MRI scan and upwards of 54 percent less from private insurance carriers compared to hospitals.

The bottom line is this: If health care providers constantly have to manipulate CON rules or take advantage of existing loopholes to access equipment they might need (and to keep others from acquiring that equipment), this reinforces that the law doesn’t work as intended and further undermines the argument for centralized planning.

Katherine Restrepo is health and human services policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation. Kari Travis (@karilynntravis) is associate editor of Carolina Journal. A version of this article appeared originally at Forbes.com.

Recently I watched a documentary about the popular music phenomenon known as the Muscle Shoals sound. The film not only discussed all the top hits that were produced in that distinct Alabama area along the Tennessee River, but also explored why national hits came out of such a small place.

The first megahit from the area was Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman.” There, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, and Duane Allman also recorded hits. The songs were by black and white musicians working together in a seemingly unlikely place for collaboration during the 1960s and 1970s.

Along with Fame Studio producer Rick Hall, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (who later started another studio in town and were referred to as “The Swampers”) improvised grooves during the recording sessions that produced Billboard hits. Lynyrd Skynyrd mentions the local band in “Sweet Home Alabama.” Whether you enjoy their sound, the musicians in and near Muscle Shoals influenced national musical tastes.

All of this information (some recalled and some new) prompted a conversation regarding Southern contributions to the American music scene: Can you imagine American music without the South? What would it sound like? I later thought particularly about North Carolina’s contributions to the music scene.

Indeed, the region has given the nation much of its musical genres that were many times products of the interaction between black and white cultures. The genres include jazz, Dixieland, country, bluegrass, blues, rhythm and blues, zydeco, funk, gospel, Southern gospel, beach music, Tex-Mex, and rock and roll.

Many national and iconic performers hailed from below the Mason-Dixon line. Can you list some?

Did you think of Elvis Presley or Dolly Parton or Buddy Holly or Johnny Cash? How about Ray Charles, James Brown, Little Richard, or Fats Domino? Maybe you thought of Hank Williams or Otis Redding or Bo Diddley. You may have recalled the so-called Southern rock groups, including Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, Wet Willie, or the Marshall Tucker Band. Or maybe you remembered a gospel or Southern gospel singer or group, such as J.D. Sumner and The Stamps. The list goes on. But I hope you get the point.

North Carolina contributed to the national scene, too. One notable musician was the banjoist Charlie Poole, a native of Randolph County. Another was Thelonious Monk, a Rocky Mount native and pianist who has been called an American original who introduced “bebop” to America. Monk later collaborated with another North Carolinian, John Coltrane, a native of Hamlet who grew up in High Point.

Other notable Tar Heel musicians are Charlie Daniels, Roberta Flack, Maceo Parker, Ben E. King, James Taylor, George Clinton, Doc Watson, Randy Travis, and Nina Simone. Let’s not forget Earl Scruggs.

More contemporary artists with deep North Carolina roots include Ryan Adams, Eric Church, Ben Folds Five, the Avett Brothers, Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Steep Canyon Rangers (who’ve become banjoist/comedian Steve Martin’s regular backup band).

I also began thinking about dance forms, remembering Carolina beach music with its “shag” and Appalachian bluegrass with its “clogging.” As a child growing up in the Piedmont, barbecue was Lexington-style, and eventually I learned how to clog. I even knew some folks who could “flat foot.” As a 10-year-old, I only heard and read about Carolina beach music and shag. At the time, Lexington-style barbecue, verdant rolling hills, and Piedmont textile culture defined North Carolina to me.

Maybe the Great Compromise in North Carolina history occurred in 2005, when clogging was made the official folk dance and shagging was declared the official popular dance. Sometimes one has to give up something to keep what he holds dear.

North Carolinians, and their Southern counterparts, have contributed much to the American music scene.

Dr. Troy Kickler is director of the North Carolina History Project (northcarolinahistory.org).

The following editorial appeared in the April 2016 print edition of Carolina Journal:

As Dan Way reported recently at CarolinaJournal.com, any celebrations for the sixth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, were muted.

With health care spending growing at its fastest rate since 2007, Obamacare has made health insurance anything but affordable. And that’s not all. The law’s primary goal was making health coverage universal, ending the alleged “free rider” problem that allows healthy people to forgo insurance until they get sick and have to go to emergency rooms for treatment.

Obamacare failed that test as well. A recent report by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that the percentage of Americans who had no health insurance fell a mere 2.7 percentage points between 2010, when the president signed Obamacare into law (13.9 percent), and the end of 2014 — the most recent data available (11.2 percent).

Most of the problems with America’s health care system predated Obamacare — led by too much regulation and tax laws making employer-provided health insurance cheaper than individual policies — and they’re unlikely to vanish if the law were repealed under a new administration and Congress.

But there are things North Carolina legislators could do during the short legislative session to make health care more accessible and more affordable without involving Washington lawmakers or bureaucrats:

• Repeal Certificate of Need. North Carolina requires doctors and hospitals to get a Certificate of Need — a government permission slip — before offering new technology, better facilities, or more treatment options. North Carolina’s CON program is one of the most stringent in the nation, regulating more than two dozen services, ranging from organ transplants to acute-care hospital beds to ambulatory surgery centers. Repealing the law would let patients and practitioners rather than bureaucrats decide where new facilities go.

• Expand scope of practice. To expand access to care in rural and low-income areas, nurse practitioners and other midlevel providers should receive full practice authority — in other words, letting them prescribe medicines and order diagnostic tests without the direct supervision of a physician. This reform would help reduce primary care shortages in 145 areas across the state.

• Promote direct primary care. In exchange for an affordable monthly fee covering a defined package of services, direct primary care guarantees patients unlimited access to their physicians. More doctors are bypassing regulatory burdens that take time away from treating patients by establishing DPC practices. State policymakers should pass legislation ensuring that patients’ monthly membership fees are not classified as insurance premiums. That reform would protect this health care delivery method from regulations under the N.C. Department of Insurance in the future and likely lead to a stronger DPC presence in North Carolina.

These three changes would bring better medical services to more people in more locations at lower costs. And they would inject a healthy dose of freedom in North Carolina’s medical marketplace no matter who occupies the White House or controls Capitol Hill in 2017.

I was struck when I came across two recent news stories virtually side-by-side. One was the story of the Randy Parton Theater — now called theRoanoke Rapids Theater — a failed venture by the city of Roanoke Rapids that was supposed to attract big shows, create tourism, and bolster the economy.

The other was about the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite project, a project to create an industrial site for a large automotive plant in Randolph County. The city of Greensboro will run water and sewer lines for the site, and Randolph County has purchased 420 acres for the project.

The two are very different. One’s a theater, an entertainment venue, a partnership with a celebrity (or at least the sibling of a celebrity) that promised glitz and glam. The other is hardly glamorous, an industrial complex for a manufacturing facility. The theater is a project from 10 years ago. The Megasite is just starting now. The theater was a relatively simple project really just involving the city of Roanoke Rapids, which built the theater. The Megasite project is more compex, with lots of different governments involved.

And yet, there’s a fundamental characteristic that they share. Set aside the nature of the ventures for a moment. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a theater or an industrial site. Both of these are the sorts of ventures most people think of as primarily being in the realm of private business — theater building, land development. But in both of these cases, they’ve become government projects.

And therein lies the problem. These simply aren’t the sorts of business ventures that local governments (or state or federal ones, for that matter) ought to be undertaking. The Roanoke Rapids experience demonstrates why. Governments, it turns out, just aren’t very good at this sort of thing. The theater failed, Randy Parton proved to be an unreliable business partner, attendance didn’t meet projections, and the whole thing lost tons of money. The city and its taxpayers were left with tens of millions in debt, much of which remains to this day.

Fortunately, in the case of the theater, a private promotions company has come in and is finally managing to sell some tickets to a show or two. It’s certainly too early to tell whether this will be a success, but there’s at least some hope that a private company may be able to help fix the mess that the local government created.

And of course, private companies make errors in judgment, too. They gamble on businesses that don’t work or invest in projects that end up going bust. The difference is who’s left footing the bill when things go wrong. In the case of private business, it’s investors and shareholders, who willingly entered into those ventures hoping to make a profit.

That’s not the case in a local government project. With a local government project, it’s local taxpayers who are left to pay for a failed business, a bad loan, or a poor investment. Those taxpayers didn’t get to choose the undertaking. In fact, the Megasite has significant local opposition. But they do bear the burden when something goes wrong.

City and county governments should stick to core functions, things like schools, police, fire, public streets, and sidewalks. They should steer well clear of speculative business ventures that put taxpayers on the hook.

In both of these cases, the local governments involved would have done better to focus on good infrastructure, low local taxes, and strong schools. If those things are in place — making cities and counties attractive locations for businesses and tourists — then businesses can handle choosing locations and doing their own building and development.

Julie Tisdale is city and county policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation.

Driving along Highway 64 from Murphy to Manteo, you can experience the state’s geographical diversity and in so doing hear distinctive, regional North Carolina accents in the mountains, the Piedmont, and eastern North Carolina. Along the way you also can eat barbecue that in one region is taken from the shoulder and another from the whole hog, the meat flavored with different sauces that reveal the state’s regional diversity and history.

North Carolina is not unusual in this regard. Traveling across the South, visitors will encounter barbecue subcultures and preferences for different sauces. As a child growing up in the Piedmont, I thought Lexington-style was the definition of barbecue. All others were foreign to me. Ever wondered why, in South Carolina from Columbia to Charleston, barbecue is served with a mustard-based sauce? Many argue that preference derives from the culinary influence brought by the German immigrants who arrived in the region nearly 300 years ago.

Regionalism is not as pronounced as it was in past decades. In great part, technology makes it possible for many, in North Carolina or elsewhere, to listen to the same songs or watch the same television shows. Most hear the standard, flat delivery of broadcast news anchors, no matter where they live or what channel they hear or watch. Many drive the same cars or wear the same brands of clothing because they have been influenced by the same commercials whether the advertisements appeared on the radio, on television, or online.

As more people experience information and entertainment online, however, the personalization embedded in online applications that foster a sense of individualism may chip away at American homogeneity. Instead of being of a nation of regions with individuals, where people’s lives were affected in great part by the land and weather, America may be becoming a nation of formal and informal associations of individuals influenced by increasing and widespread technology.

At any rate, regionalism was far more robust in early North Carolina than today. In the so-called Regulator Rebellion, Piedmont farmers criticized the royal government in New Bern and later clashed with militia, mainly from eastern North Carolina at the Battle of Alamance. In short, “backcountry” Piedmont farmers were at odds with eastern North Carolina gentry and royal government officials.

The religious components of the Regulator Rebellion reveal a schism among denominations. Regulator leader Herman Husband was a Quaker, and his political ally Shubal Stearns was a Baptist. In a pamphlet citing Nehemiah 5, Husband questioned what he deemed a government that overstepped the boundaries placed on authority and encroached on liberty. Citing passages from Job and Jeremiah, the Anglican George Mickeljohn, however, condemned the Hillsborough Riot of 1768 and reminded his congregation that “every soul [is] subject to the higher powers.” Many back in eastern North Carolina agreed. Royal Governor William Tryon was so pleased with Mickeljohn’s sermon near Hillsborough that it was published and copies were sent to England.

The efforts of Anglican missionary Charles Woodmason also reveal a religious regionalism during the mid-1700s. He claimed to have traveled approximately 6,000 miles to stop the spread of New Light and less formal practices primarily among Baptists, Methodists, and Quakers. He believed religious splintering led to chaos and perpetual infighting. Even so, he noted that these various denominations increasingly noted three common foes: the landed gentry, the Anglican Church, and the royal government — all holding their greatest influence in eastern North Carolina.

Although regionalism is not as pronounced as it has been — and as the state’s population grows, newcomers may affect local cultures — in some fashion North Carolina regionalism will remain and influence the state’s future.

Dr. Troy Kickler is director of the North Carolina History Project (northcarolinahistory.org).

The 2016 legislative short session begins April 25. While continued uncertainty over congressional (and even legislative) district maps could cut into the General Assembly’s calendar, there are a number of moves our elected officials could make this year to highlight economic growth — fairer taxes, fewer barriers to building businesses, education options that work for all, patient-driven health care, lower energy costs, and a sensible criminal code.

As you’d expect, we have a few ideas:

• Further tax reform with a fairer, simpler system that encourages economic growth and respects wage earners. Eliminate the bias against savings and investment by reducing or removing the tax on capital gains. Allow all business expenses to be written off in the year they are incurred. Increase the standard deduction (the zero percent tax bracket) to let all taxpayers shield higher incomes from income taxes. Expand the per-child tax credit, recognizing that an investment in children yields positive returns.

• Roll back regulations that stifle economic growth, discourage entrepreneurship, and create barriers to entering professions. State regulations cost North Carolina’s economy between $3.1 billion and $25.5 billion yearly.

A state-level REINS Act would require any rule with a major economic impact on the people of North Carolina to receive legislative approval and the governor’s signature before it is enacted.

Occupational licensing poses a barrier to entry, increases the cost of services, and discourages entrepreneurial activity. North Carolina has some of the nation’s most restrictive occupational licensing requirements. Many should be repealed.

• School choice puts parents in charge of decisions about which education options work for their children. Invest more in private-school scholarship programs for low-income and special-needs students. Encourage the growth of strong charter schools. Strengthen virtual schooling options by expanding access and enrollment. Safeguard the right of parents to educate their children at home.

• Teacher pay should reflect success in the classroom. Teachers willing to tackle hard-to-teach subjects and teach in hard-to-staff schools should get more money. Principals should be equipped with the knowledge and authority to manage their schools to attain highly competent, motivated staff.

• Promote patient-driven rather than government-driven health care. Certificate-of-need laws laws create barriers to the expansion of medical services to the detriment of competition, patient access, and care. The federal government repealed its CON mandate for states in 1987. North Carolina’s should go as well.

Medicaid consumes 17 percent of North Carolina’s General Fund budget, and it’s the fastest-growing part of the budget. Expanding Medicaid under Obamacare would cost millions of dollars, leaving taxpayers on the hook indefinitely. About 82 percent of those newly insured would be able-bodied, childless adults. They need jobs rather than dependence on welfare.

• As long as the renewable energy industry gets subsidies and special treatment, power costs will continue to rise on the backs of North Carolina consumers.

North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast with a renewable energy mandate. Ours eventually will require utilities to provide 12.5 percent of their energy from conservation and renewable sources. Since the renewable mandate took effect in 2008, North Carolina’s electricity rates have increased about 2 1/2 times faster than the national average, costing jobs and economic growth. Repeal the mandate and focus state energy policy on ensuring the least-cost, most-reliable electricity sources.

• Many North Carolinians unknowingly commit crimes every day. Our state criminal code has more than 700 crimes, significantly higher than the number in neighboring states. A bipartisan legislative task force to eliminate overcriminalization is needed to consolidate, clarify, and simplify our bloated criminal code.

A short session does not mean an ineffective session. We have a plan. Let’s get started.

Becki Gray is vice president for outreach at the John Locke Foundation.

Over the last four years, comprehensive reforms have turned our state around, with higher-than-expected state revenues, growing income statewide and per resident, and the creation of 234,000 net new jobs. North Carolina has become a model, not only in our region, but also for the nation.

But until every North Carolinian has the opportunity to find a job, until every barrier to succeed is removed, until the freedom to choose is open to all, there is still work to do.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down a requirement from the North Carolina Dental Board for people who whiten teeth but perform no other dental services to get a license. The General Assembly is taking a hard look at North Carolina’s occupational licensing laws to clean up a very messy system.

North Carolina has one of the more restrictive occupational licensing regimes in the country — 154 licensed job categories, compared to South Carolina, with only 49.

There are inconsistencies throughout the system. It costs $300 for a license to practice law but $923 to become a sign language interpreter. It takes 169 hours of training to earn an emergency medical technician license but 1,528 hours for a barber.

Some requirements for state licensing leave you scratching your head. Makeup artists, landscape contractors, and travel guides must be licensed in North Carolina.

These restrictions ripple through our economy, preventing people from pursuing their dreams, and driving up the costs of services.

Who benefits? It’s often those already in a profession who want to protect what they perceive as their turf, keep out competition, and inflate costs for their financial and professional benefit.

But it’s also complicated. We want to open opportunity while ensuring public health and safety. It’s a balance between appropriate government oversight and the freedom to choose your occupation.

That’s something we’ve been studying at the John Locke Foundation. There is a lot of research on occupational licensing — from the General Assembly’s Program Evaluation Division, the state auditor’s office, the Institute for Justice, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Goldwater Institute, and even the White House.

The findings are pretty consistent:

• When it’s harder to enter a profession, there are fewer employment opportunities, excluded workers earn lower wages, and consumer costs rise.

• Inconsistencies within professions and variations across states create barriers for workers to relocate, and inefficiencies for businesses are a drag on the economy.

• The cost of licensing falls disproportionally on low-income workers.

• Well-designed and carefully implemented licensing requirements can benefit consumers while allowing qualified workers to pursue freely the occupations they choose.

Implementing a system that balances safety and freedom will make North Carolina a model in occupational licensing, just as North Carolina has become a model in other reforms.

The need for reform goes beyond data. Reform can help every North Carolinian who is shut out of opportunities to pursue their dreams.

It’s for the young man who wants to open a barber shop in his low-income neighborhood and provide access to a quality service at an affordable price — but with 1,528 hours of experience and training required to get a license, plus passing three different exams, becoming a barber is out of reach.

It’s for the military spouse who has worked as an optician in one of the 28 states that do not require a license and finds that when her spouse is transferred to Fort Bragg, her experience is irrelevant. She must log 3½ years of apprenticeship training, pay a $250 fee, and pass various exams to get a license here. Continuing in her profession is out of reach.

It’s for the handyman dad who wants to open his own business — installing security alarms. But with 1,095 days of training and experience required to obtain a license, the obligations of his current full-time job, and his family commitments, the dream of starting his own business is out of reach.

North Carolina’s restrictive occupational licensing requirements create barriers for real people, impede their choices, and prevent them from pursuing their dreams. That’s why reform is absolutely necessary.

Becki Gray is vice president for outreach at the John Locke Foundation.

The following editorial appeared in the January 2016 print edition of Carolina Journal:

By the time you read this, either hundreds of candidates will be running a 10-week sprint toward the state’s March 15 primary, or hundreds of elected officials and attorneys will be scrambling to redraw congressional and legislative districts and determine how to start the filing process from scratch.

It should be the former. The state Supreme Court on Dec. 17 issued a well-reasoned opinion concluding that the districts drawn by the 2011 General Assembly complied with the state and federal constitutions — the fourth time those maps have survived a legal challenge.

But the left-leaning plaintiffs suing the state — led by the state’s Democratic Party and its chapter of the NAACP — aren’t done. They vowed to file yet another appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the federal justices to invalidate the districts, forcing lawmakers to go back to the drawing board, possibly requiring primary elections sometime this summer.

If the federal justices entertain the appeal, state taxpayers should prepare to cough up millions more dollars — in legal fees defending the current districts, and more if the General Assembly has to draw new maps, defend them in court, and schedule new candidate filing periods and primary elections.

Whatever the outcome, the perpetual court fights over legislative districts should elevate one issue to the top of the 2016 legislative session’s agenda: independent redistricting reform.

In 2015, the state House considered two bills that would take map drawing out of the hands of legislators. One would have legislative staff, after the 2020 census, set district maps and subject them to an up-or-down legislative vote. The other would establish, after the 2030 census, an independent commission to present three sets of maps to the legislature for approval. In both instances, the districts must be contiguous, must include equal numbers of residents, and should not divide cities or counties when possible.

So long as those and a few other rules requiring impartiality are followed, it doesn’t really matter whether a commission or legislative staffers draw the lines.

Both House bills are stuck in committee, and that’s where they’re likely to stay, even though more than half the members of the House have co-sponsored one of them (House Bill 92). Several key senators continue to insist that no bill passing the House will move through the Senate — which is no surprise, since few politicians in the majority party want to surrender power.

But we maintain what may be a naive hope that a spirit of public service could prevail. The two top combatants in the debate, House Speaker Pro Tem Paul “Skip” Stam, R-Wake (a lead sponsor of H.B. 92), and Sen. Bob Rucho, R-Mecklenburg, who chairs the Senate Redistricting Committee, and sees no need for reforms, are retiring after the 2016 session.

Rucho and his Senate allies could leave a legacy to make North Carolinians of all partisan persuasions proud, and allow independent redistricting — at a minimum — to get a fair debate.

The 1787-89 debates over ratifying the Constitution offer another example of North Carolina’s longstanding role as a battleground state in U.S. political history.

During the debates, the state’s population was divided over the necessity of a U.S. Constitution and what became known as the Bill of Rights.

After the framers drafted a new constitution at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, the document was submitted to respective state ratification conventions for approval. According to Article 7 in the Constitution: “The ratification of the conventions of nine states shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the states so ratifying the same.”

Nine states approved the Constitution, and the new Union was formed. In some, the vote was unanimous (Georgia, 26-0, and New Jersey, 38-0). In others, the vote was divided (Pennsylvania, 46-23, and South Carolina, 149-73).

Widespread criticism and skepticism, however, remained in key states: New York, Virginia, Rhode Island, and North Carolina. In New York, the recurring skepticism prompted Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to pick up quills, dip them into inkwells, and pen 85 essays that became known as The Federalist — one of the best commentaries regarding the Constitution’s meaning.

In North Carolina, Edentonian James Iredell, using the pseudonym Marcus, explained the Constitution’s meaning and pointed out the necessity of its adoption. Tar Heel Federalists, such as Iredell and William Davie, believed the “general government” needed more “energy,” such as more authority to tax and be able to have an army to defend the fledgling nation.

A strong Anti-Federalist sentiment, however, remained in North Carolina. Many North Carolinians remembered the Parliamentary abuses before the Revolutionary War and questioned giving more authority to what would become the federal government. Tar Heel Anti-Federalists, including the influential yet somewhat reticent Willie Jones and the vocal and somewhat bumbling Judge Samuel Spencer, questioned handing any more power from the individuals and the states to the general government.

Unlike other states, there were two ratification conventions in North Carolina. One was in Hillsborough (1788) and the other in Fayetteville (1789). James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” remarked more than once that the state ratifying conventions provide the key to unlocking an understanding of the Constitution’s meaning. That said, many historians consider North Carolina’s ratification convention minutes to be the most revealing and balanced regarding the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists.

(In most states, Federalists paid for transcribers, and many times convention minutes give the impression of erudite Federalists engaging Anti-Federalist ignorance; the Hillsborough minutes instead reveal a sophisticated exchange among delegates with opposing beliefs.)

At Hillsborough, Anti-Federalists preferred a quick vote and dismissal while the Federalists desired opportunities to provide commentary for the record. Ultimately, the delegates debated and discussed such issues as defining local and state responsibilities and the necessity of paper money and religious oaths of office. Much debate centered on questions regarding taxation. In many ways, the Regulator spirit remained in many parts of North Carolina, and many delegates were concerned with local authority or wanted a declaration of rights added to the submitted constitution.

In Hillsborough, the delegates voted neither to reject nor ratify the U.S. Constitution (184-84). Some historians have called this “the great refusal.”

In subsequent months, debate continued not only in North Carolina but also in other states regarding the necessity of the Bill of Rights. After being assured that a declaration of rights would be added to the Constitution, in November 1789 North Carolina ratified the Constitution by a vote of 195 to 77 at the Fayetteville Convention. The Old North State finally had joined the new Union.

In the end, North Carolina’s heated political debate and strong dissent contributed significantly to ensuring that Americans have a Bill of Rights.

Dr. Troy Kickler is director of the North Carolina History Project (northcarolinahistory.org)

Obamacare’s third annual enrollment period for health insurance is officially underway. Americans who do not have access to employer-sponsored health insurance, are self-employed, or have been dumped into the individual marketplace by their employers have the opportunity to sign up for or renew their government-knows-best health insurance plan.

While low-income North Carolinians benefit from plans paid for by other taxpayers, middle-income residents are getting pummeled by double-digit premium increases, some of the highest in the United States.

A recent article from The News & Observer tells the story of Janet Joyner, a Raleigh resident who is struggling to make ends meet when it comes to paying for health insurance:

Joyner said she’s healthy and used only about $500 in health care services last year, but paid Blue Cross nearly $6,700 in monthly premiums. Her current plan would cost nearly $9,500 in premiums for the full year, plus a $3,500 deductible that Joyner would have to pay before coverage kicked in.

“It’s like 2 1/2 car payments for me,” she said. “I’d be paying $9,500 a year for my annual physical and lower prescriptions.”

As health insurance is becoming more expensive, curiously, some basic health care is becoming more affordable because an increasing number of primary care physicians are breaking away from the status quo. By cutting the cord with insurance companies, doctors can spend more time with their patients in exchange for upfront cash payments.

This simple and effective strategy is known as direct primary care. It brings back the incredible value of personalized medicine, and it’s a win for both doctors and patients.

For doctors:

Imagine not having to spend more than 40 percent of your practice’s revenue on personnel responsible for submitting claims to insurance companies. Opting out of insurance contracts allows solo direct care practices to break even on just four patients per day — rather than 32 in today’s typical practice setting.

Direct primary care heightens providers’ professional satisfaction because they can escape the corporate environment of the ever-consolidating health care industry and instead hold fast to their autonomy. Calling their own shots under this business model allows them to practice the actual art of medicine by scheduling longer appointment times with patients if necessary, and even committing to house calls.

For patients:

Because primary care is relatively inexpensive to administer, direct primary care is an affordable option for the masses. Just ask Dr. Brian Forrest, whose practice is located in Apex.

He continues to emphasize this concept after seeing a Medicaid patient and a CEO sitting next to each other in his waiting room. For a monthly payment equivalent to a gym membership (rather than the typical amount equal to multiple car payments), patients are entitled to around-the-clock care.

Despite limited data on direct care, existing literature concludes that patients enjoy an improvement in health outcomes while saving on overall health spending when compared to those navigating the traditional health insurance system. A study conducted by the University of North Carolina medical school and North Carolina State University MBA students found that patients seeking treatment at Dr. Forrest’s practice, Access Health Care, spent 85 percent less and enjoyed an average of 35 minutes per visit compared to eight minutes in a traditional practice setting. Other studies have shown similar results.

Katherine Restrepo is health and human services policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation.

The following editorial appeared in the December 2015 print edition of Carolina Journal:

Although you may not have read it in mainstream media outlets, the series of reforms in taxation, regulation, and government operations that began in 2013, when conservatives took control of the executive and legislative branches of state government for the first time in decades, are delivering tangible benefits to North Carolina’s families and entrepreneurs.

Those benefits include lower, simpler taxes; regulations that are easier to understand and focused on limiting excessive bureaucracy; expanded educational choice, allowing families more alternatives to choose among charter schools, private schools, or home-based education; reduced public debt, led by the retirement of more than $2.5 billion in unemployment insurance debt to the federal government; and an overall economic environment making it easier for individuals to invest their financial and human capital into new or growing businesses.

Weve seen steady job and income growth — in fact, North Carolina is the only Southern state to rank in the top 10 nationally in both factors, based on recent federal statistics. Prudent fiscal policy has kept increases in state spending below the combined rates of inflation and population growth. And retiring the federal unemployment debt will end a business surcharge, resulting in nearly a half-billion dollars in tax relief this year and next — some of it retroactive to January.

The Tax Foundation’s just-released 2016 State Business Tax Climate Index underscores the improvements in North Carolina’s environment for entrepreneurship. The index considers a host of factors relating to tax rates and structure, compares the states, and ranks them accordingly.

As the 2013 legislative session opened, the state ranked 44th nationally, much lower than any of our neighbors — our direct economic competitors — and the lowest of any Southern state. But the significant changes that have taken effect since then have vaulted North Carolina nearly 30 slots, to 16th in the 2015 index and 15th in the newest rankings.

The changes that boosted North Carolina’s national standing resulted from several tax reforms.

Personal income-tax changes included replacing graduated rates with one flat rate; lowering the tax rate; broadening the tax base by closing or limiting many credits and deductions; expanding the child tax credit and standard deduction; and repealing the estate tax.

Business tax reforms were led by lowering the corporate income tax rate over three years with a further cut subject to a revenue trigger; broadening the tax base by allowing many credits to expire; and eliminating local business privilege taxes.

The sales tax changes included broadening the base to include some service contracts; eliminating state sales tax holidays; and ending special sales tax rates for electricity, piped natural gas, amusements, and entertainment.

Tax Foundation scholars project that, if scheduled tax cuts go forward, North Carolina should reach No. 13 nationally, and additional reforms could push us into the top 10. North Carolinians hoping to see more money in their paychecks, additional employment options, and greater opportunities for their families, should be mindful of the reforms that have elevated our economic prospects, and push their elected representatives to stay on track.

During the past several presidential elections, North Carolina has been described as a “purple” or battleground state. As more people move to The Old North State for work or retirement, pundits often are unsure if the state will lean to the left or to the right in an upcoming election.

However, as Ecclesiastes 1:9 states, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

North Carolina many times has been a battleground state and a determining factor in national debates. A study of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and in particular what has become known as the “Connecticut Compromise,” provides an example of how North Carolina politics was divided during the debate over ratifying the Constitution and how North Carolinians provided key votes in the budding new union.

The Connecticut Compromise was a result of much deliberation and political maneuvering. Modern-day patriots often forget that the Founders disagreed on many issues at the convention and worked assiduously and sometimes cunningly for compromise.

They were not of one political mind, agreeing with all the proposed passages in the Constitution. Some even chose not to attend. Patrick Henry, for example, a staunch federalist (later branded an Anti-Federalist), believed he “smelled a rat.”

Convention delegates were divided concerning such things as the length of terms, the frequency of elections, and where power should be placed. Heated debates continued after the Philadelphia Convention, as evidenced by the ratification process that prompted Founders, using pseudonyms, to argue publicly whether the United States should adopt the Constitution. At one point, disagreements concerning government structure and the representation issue almost disbanded the convention.

To make a detailed and long history short, let me explain it as follows: The Connecticut Compromise evolved from the “Virginia Plan” and the “New Jersey Plan.” The former based representation in the legislative branch on population and called for a bicameral (two-chamber) legislature.

Many opponents argued that it favored the most populous states, letting them dominate American politics. The New Jersey plan proposed a unicameral legislature and equal representation for all states. To no one’s surprise, Virginia Plan proponents had problems with a governmental structure so closely resembling the Articles of Confederation favoring small states.

The convention seemed to be at an impasse, but the Connecticut Compromise proposed an overall structure that still exists today: a bicameral legislature, with representation in one chamber based on population and the other with each state having equal representation.

The Connecticut Compromise required political acumen and planning and what historian Forrest McDonald calls “backstage maneuvering” that recruited the North Carolina delegation — in particular, Hugh Williamson’s support. The representation issue involved much more, including approval of treaties, the budget, the origination of taxation legislation, the western land issue, slavery, and exports.

In other words, Founders disagreed over which powers should belong in which chamber and other lingering questions. The issues reflected regional, demographic, and economic concerns that affected the balance of power and the preservation of liberty.

Williamson reportedly had criticized the plan, but eventually he was persuaded to alter his opinion. Regarding representation and population, North Carolina’s delegates had been divided: Williamson, William Blount, and Richard Dobbs Spaight voted for proportional representation while Alexander Martin and William Davie opposed it.

Initially, North Carolina was a “large state.” Blount soon left to serve briefly in Congress, and, meanwhile, John Rutledge of South Carolina discussed the compromise with Williamson, among others, in informal meetings and dinners.

Eventually, Williamson, Martin, and Davie voted for states to get equal representation in the Senate. Historian William Powell said, “North Carolina’s vote contributed toward keeping the convention in session, as the small states’ delegates might have left if their cause had been lost.”

As evidenced by Williamson’s role, North Carolina was a battleground state during the nation’s founding years.

Troy Kickler is director of the North Carolina History Project (www.northcarolinahistory.org).

RALEIGH — For decades, energy costs have been manipulated by state government subsidies. Just like other subsidies, whether for the film industry, automobile manufacturers, or even specific companies, special treatments transfer the tax burden from the recipients of the subsidies to others, creating unfair advantages, interference in free markets, and barriers to prosperity.

There is some good news from recent legislative action, but still much work to be done.

After 38 years, North Carolina will stop one solar industry subsidy by ending a 35 percent tax credit for construction costs. Decades ago, renewable energy advocates swore a temporary “boost” was all they needed to get their industry started, but the industry has not ended its significant dependence on taxpayers and ratepayers.

Subsidizing renewables has driven up energy costs for North Carolina citizens: $224 million in tax giveaways and special treatment, 3,600 jobs lost because of higher energy costs, and $556 million in increased energy costs and money taken out of the economy this year.

High energy costs deter business startups and expansions, particularly manufacturing industries that long have been the backbone of the state’s economy. Higher energy costs affect all energy consumers. Low-income families are hit hardest.

Although the solar industry and its beneficiaries fought tooth and nail to keep the credit, spending millions on high-powered lobbyists, the General Assembly and the governor agreed it was time to allow the 35 percent state tax credit for renewables to sunset at the end of 2015.

But the special treatment won’t end when the tax credit sunsets. A mandate forcing North Carolinians to buy renewable energy remains in place. “Renewables” include solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and biomass — but in reality, the beneficiaries are wind and particularly solar.

The state renewable portfolio standard, enacted in 2007, requires 12.5 percent of our energy by 2021 to come from a mix of renewable sources and conservation measures. The mandate was phased in. It’s at 6 percent until 2018, when it is scheduled to increase to 10 percent, and finally reaching the full 12.5 percent level in 2021.

North Carolina is the only state in the South that imposes a mandate for energy consumption on its citizens. Electricity prices are 38 percent higher in states with mandates requiring consumers to purchase these more expensive forms of energy.

The special treatments don’t end with the RPS. North Carolina has 111 different financial incentives and policies that favor renewables. Renewable projects get an 80 percent property tax abatement, accelerated depreciation allowance, and a selling advantage called net metering, which allows renewables to avoid the costs of using the power grid.

All of these special treatments subsidize renewables even more at the expense of energy consumers, aka taxpayers.

Environmental concerns also arise when spent solar panels must be decommissioned. The panels contain dangerous toxins and pollutants. There are potential sedimentation and erosion control issues associated with solar facilities. And as solar farms expand onto native scrubland and former farmland, we lose natural ecosystems and open space.

Legislation repealing or phasing out the state mandate has been introduced in 2011, 2013, and again this year. House Bill 760, freezing the RPS at its current rate of 6 percent, passed the House 77-32 but never made it through the Senate. It is eligible for consideration during the 2016 short session of the N.C. General Assembly.

So we have large giveaway programs to lure new businesses to North Carolina while we mandate higher energy costs for existing businesses. Isn’t it time to eliminate the special treatments and instead lower costs for everyone? After all, that’s what free markets are all about, and they work pretty well.

Let’s give it a shot. Repeal the RPS and other special treatment for renewables.

Becki Gray is vice president for outreach at the John Locke Foundation.

The following editorial was published in the November 2015 print edition of Carolina Journal.

As the University of North Carolina system prepares to welcome Margaret Spellings as its sixth president, the former U.S. education secretary will lead a 17-campus system (including 16 traditional four-year colleges) that, according to UNC’s website, “houses two medical schools and one teaching hospital, 10 nursing programs, two schools of dentistry, and a school of pharmacy, as well as two law schools, 15 schools of education, [and] three schools of engineering.”

Are all these necessary, especially considering the growth of distance learning and the state constitution’s mandate for “the benefits of the University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education, as far as practicable, [to] be extended to the people of the state free of expense”?

We think not, and as Spellings begins her tenure, she would do well to consider a concept that could move the UNC system into the 21st century while honoring its historic mission: a realignment commission for UNC’s campuses.

Five rounds of military base consolidations under the Base Realignment and Closure process slimmed down the U.S. military as the Cold War ended. Under BRAC, an independent commission appointed by the president heard testimony from interested parties and visited bases that were considered to be redundant or candidates for consolidation. The commission submitted a list to Congress, which then voted to accept or reject the entire list. More than 350 installations have been closed or consolidated since 1988.

The UNC system — and all North Carolinians — would benefit if the university were subjected to a similar independent review. Ten of the 16 UNC campuses were founded in the 18th or 19th centuries, and many are operating under the same form of governance that was set in place when the system was consolidated in 1971.

Distance learning and other innovations are making those 1970s institutions into white elephants. President-elect Spellings, with the approval of the state’s political and educational leaders, may be the right person to lead a realignment of one of our state’s most important and most popular public institutions.

Much like military bases, independent education schools and nursing departments on university campuses develop powerful local advocates. Once established, these entities become nearly impossible to shrink or eliminate, even if they don’t serve the best interests of the public at large.

Spellings, who led a presidential Commission on the Future of Higher Education which had as a member former Gov. Jim Hunt, has expressed concerns about bloat and redundancy on university campuses.

“We have to get beyond this idea that we’re going to have a veterinary school or an education school or a medical school or a law school or a Spanish program on every street corner in America,” she said during a 2010 debate at the National Press Club. “We can’t do it like that anymore. We’ve got to use technology and be economically sensible about how we offer coursework.”

President-elect Spellings, Gov. Pat McCrory, and legislative leaders should consider UNC consolidation as a responsible approach to bolster the reputation and accountability of this essential $9 billion public institution.

RALEIGH — Finally. Now that the 2015 General Assembly has adjourned, there’s a lot for conservatives to celebrate. This was a session built on the principles that started to turn the state around in 2011. The third two-year budget passed by a conservative General Assembly (and second for Gov. Pat McCrory) adheres to fiscally responsible, transformational reforms and respect for individual freedoms. It was worth waiting for.

Restraint opened the final budget negotiations. The governor’s General Fund budget increased spending by 2.1 percent over last year. The House proposed a 6.2 percent increase, while the Senate was more in line with the governor at 2.6 percent. They ended up with a spending increase of 3.1 percent, staying within a fiscally responsible limit based on growth in population and the inflation rate.

Reforms to the tax system built on transformational changes started in 2011. This budget reduces the personal income tax rate to 5.499 percent, lower than our neighbors Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia. The corporate tax rate will go down to 4 percent this year and is expected to drop to 3 percent in 2017, making North Carolina’s rate the lowest of any state that imposes a corporate income tax.

The new state budget expanded the sales tax for services provided by companies that already collected taxes. Lower-income families will benefit from a $500 increase in the zero tax bracket. Our tax code is further simplified, and North Carolinians will be paying $2.2 billion less in taxes over the next five years.

Reserves are necessary to ensure funding for crucial services in case of a natural disaster or an economic downturn. This General Assembly is building a savings reserve that will exceed $1 billion.

Revealing government spending lets everyone see how much is spent and where the money goes. A new Internet portal will post budgets and expenditures for all state, city, and county governments — along with local school systems — with monthly updates. Technology and a commitment to open government make what was nearly impossible 10 years ago a reality in North Carolina.

Reform to the behemoth Medicaid system, difficult and long overdue, will begin to lower costs (it takes up 17 percent of the budget now and constitutes the fastest-growing piece of that budget), ensure budget predictability, and provide the 1.9 million North Carolinians under Medicaid (including more than half the babies born in this state) with quality care for the dollars spent.

The annual transfer of $216 million from the Highway Fund to the General Fund stops, and that money stays where it belongs: paying for roads. In addition, an update to the Division of Motor Vehicles fee schedule will provide a reliable stream of money to pave roads, shore up bridges, and relieve congestion.

The responsibility of ensuring every child receives the best education possible is taken seriously. More low-income kids whose needs were not being met by traditional public schools can attend a private school their family feels is best for them with a $4,200 voucher.

Resources are best spent ensuring every child gets a great teacher (rather than feeding a bureaucratic system), and this budget reflects that. It’s not how much but how money is spent.

Additional funding pays for reading camps, hiring more teachers to decrease first-grade class size, instructional materials, and broadband connectivity. Beginning teachers get a $2,000 pay increase, and all teachers get a $750 bonus and a step increase on the state salary schedule.

The budget offers relief from growing energy costs, with a realization that when government picks winners in the renewable energy industry, the rest of us lose as we pay higher bills. A 35 percent tax credit for renewable energy investments will expire at the end of this year. North Carolina citizens, taxpayers, and businesses can expect lower energy costs.

From restraint to relief to reserves, our state’s elected leaders have built on themes started in 2011 of reform, redirection, and rebuilding. It was worth the wait.

Becki Gray (@beckigray) is vice president for outreach at the John Locke Foundation.

Are the humanities in trouble on American campuses? That is certainly the impression one gets from the media today; articles in publications of both left and right describe the increasing flight from the humanities into other disciplines.

But is it all hype? To find out the real situation, I recently explored what is going on in one of the main humanities disciplines, English. Concentrating on English departments and their faculties in the University of North Carolina system, I used a mix of empirical and qualitative methods to look behind the rhetoric and wagon-circling.

The result is the newly released report, The Decline of the English Department. And as the title indicates, the decline is far from hype. By almost any measure, English departments are diminishing numerically, dropping standards, or calcifying into a hard-left intellectual status quo.

That is not to say that there are no pockets of excellence in the discipline. Nor does it mean that English departments will disappear anytime soon. But they are besieged by negative trends on almost every front, from politicized course content to ebbing enrollment.

At most UNC schools, there has not been a wholesale retreat from the English major, as there has been elsewhere. At the University of Maryland, for example, the number of English majors fell by 40 percent from 2012 to 2014.

Many English departments have tried to fend off the decline in enrollment, mostly by making drastic changes to the English curriculum making it more appealing to students. This means more emphasis on writing and technology courses that will help prepare students for employment. It also means more courses that are as much entertainment as education, such as UNC-Chapel Hill’s “CMPL 55: First Year Seminar: Comics as Literature.”

As the English discipline moves farther away from its core of the greatest works of English, American, and European literature, either to attract students or for political reasons, its very reason for existing is reduced. As New York Times columnist David Brooks put it, the humanities “are committing suicide because they have lost faith in their own enterprise.” And English may be leading the pack over the cliff.

Politicization is a particularly destructive force in the humanities because it directly affects what students learn. The left-wing bent of English department faculties is indisputable; I identified 261 tenured (or tenure-track) professors in the UNC system who teach literature and are registered to vote in North Carolina. Only 10 were registered Republicans, as opposed to 196 Democrats (55 were registered as Independent).

I found more than a few professors who openly put politics ahead of scholarship. For instance, Amanda Wray, who teaches writing courses at UNC-Asheville, states on her LinkedIn page that:
“In all the courses I teach, students can expect to talk and think critically about intersecting structures of oppression including racism, homophobia, sexism, and classism.”

Exactly how her hyperpolitical agenda makes students better writers is unclear. And it is very unlikely that these topics are discussed in an objective, even-handed manner from multiple perspectives, as controversial subjects are supposed to be taught in college.

Another example is UNC-Wilmington’s Alessandro Porco, whose master’s thesis and first book is comprised of obscene and childish poems, mostly written in honor of Porco’s favorite porn star. Porco was hired in 2009 over 100 other applicants, according to the then-acting department head.

With the older generation, which is more rooted in traditional scholarship, being replaced by younger Ph.D.s who are steeped in left-wing politics and a “pop culture as high culture” lowering of standards, it is hard to see a way out of the downward cycle.

Jay Schalin is director of policy analysis at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

Years of federally driven testing reform and a botched rollout of sweeping, federally incentivized standards have tried the patience of the American people. On their minds now: Downsizing the federal government’s role in education and shifting autonomy to states, school districts, and parents. Those are some key findings from a pair of polls providing the public’s pulse on K-12 education. No more classrooms manacled by mandates; the American public has a new directive — for choice, flexibility, and local control.

Queried about which unit of government should be most responsible for education, Americans overwhelmingly say decisions should be made by state or local officials. The 47th annual “Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools,” published in September, is unambiguous: Most respondents believe school accountability should be handled by states (44 percent) or local leaders (33 percent); similarly, most think determinations about the amount of testing should be made at the state (42 percent) or local level (31 percent). Only one in five favors a major federal role.

Disenchantment with the federal government’s leadership is pervasive. In another recent poll, the “2015 Schooling in America Survey” released in June by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, 77 percent rate the federal government’s management of education as “fair” or “poor.”

A top priority moving forward: reclaiming classroom time for teaching. Sixty-four percent of PDK/Gallup respondents say there is too much focus on testing. And 54 percent oppose Common Core; just one out of four favors the national standards guiding what’s taught in local communities.

The most fundamental way to localize control, of course, is to give more of it to parents. Americans know this, and largely support school choice: 64 percent of PDK/Gallup respondents favor allowing parents to decide which public school their child attends; a similar percentage supports charter schools.

Not all forms of choice elicit comparable support, however: 57 percent of PDK/Gallup respondents oppose vouchers. Some opposition may arise from the wording of the poll’s question, “Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?” Stanford University professor and political scientist Terry Moe long has suggested this question is biased.

Does wording make a difference? The Friedman poll — which defines vouchers as a system of allocating tax dollars to parents to pay tuition at a school of choice, including private religious or nonreligious schools — shows that wording matters quite a bit: 61 percent of these respondents favor vouchers.

Public consensus also is coalescing around customization and choice through education savings accounts. ESAs enable families seeking alternatives to public school to use public funds for certain educational expenses — such as private school tuition, online classes, or tutoring. Sixty-two percent of respondents in the Friedman poll favor ESAs.

So far, five states have implemented ESAs. Arizona passed the nation’s first ESA in 2011; Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Nevada have since followed suit, generally targeting students with special needs. However, Nevada’s program, signed into law in June, offers universal eligibility — the first in the nation to do so. Scheduled for a 2016 launch, the program is now, unfortunately, mired in court challenges. Stay tuned.

What about federal overreach? It soon may be curbed. This summer the U.S House and Senate finally passed bills rewriting the No Child Left Behind law; both bills would limit the federal role in education, shifting power back to states and school districts. The bills diverge in other areas, however, so a conference committee will attempt to reconcile differences this fall. Let’s hope they do. The American public is counting on it.

Kristen Blair is a Chapel Hill-based education writer.

The following editorial appeared in the October 2015 print edition of Carolina Journal:

One of the least costly but most valuable provisions in the recently enacted state budget could transform the way the citizens of North Carolina understand state and local government: the section requiring all state, county, and municipal agencies, along with local education authorities, to post online their budgets and spending in a user-friendly, easy-to-search manner.

To satisfy the law, agencies must format data in ways that can be downloaded and analyzed easily by citizens and decision makers. The information must include budgeted amounts and actual spending by each state agency or local entity, as well as information on receipts and expenditures from and to all sources, including vendor payments, updated monthly.

When this portal goes live, advocates of government transparency can claim a major victory. Putting all spending information in the hands of the public will help us understand how government works, make it more difficult to conceal questionable spending schemes, and allow meaningful comparisons among different units of government.

Two pathbreaking John Locke Foundation reports on economic development incentives highlight the need for that information. The first, released in July, showed that between the 2009 and 2014 budget years, North Carolina counties entered 776 incentive deals, committing $284 million in taxpayer subsidies to private businesses. The second, published in September, concluded that over the same period, the state’s largest cities (the 13 with populations of 70,000 or more) entered 240 contracts worth $65 million.

The mega-businesses enjoying taxpayer largess included Apple, Bridgestone-Firestone, Caterpillar, Great Wolf Lodge, Ralph Lauren, Lowe’s Home Improvement, and Malt-O-Meal. And, as you probably know, both the General Assembly and local governments have been eager to open the fiscal floodgates (and the taxpayers’ wallets) to attract an automobile manufacturer to North Carolina.

The JLF reports marked the first time any government organization, trade association, special-interest group, or nonprofit organization had collected or published economic development data for N.C. cities or counties.

The lead author of both studies, JLF director of fiscal policy studies Sarah Curry, found that local governments are not required to use any kind of uniform or even comprehensible reporting requirements for their economic development projects, making it very difficult for researchers — and nearly impossible for the public at large — to track spending on tax abatements and other subsidies to businesses.

The lack of a uniform reporting requirement also makes it challenging to compare incentive deals from one city to another or across county lines, since each government unit can choose how to report or obfuscate taxpayer spending on those projects.

Correcting that problem should be a top priority for the General Assembly’s 2016 short session.

The new budget requires the websites to be up and running by April 1, 2016. The state allocated $814,000 to develop the budget transparency portal — much less than the $6 million set aside by the House and the $16 million promised by the Senate in their original spending plans.

Even the lower amount should be money well spent.

RALEIGH — The 2015 long legislative session has proven to be just that: long. Many productive ideas have been discussed, among them whether we should take advantage of low interest rates and construction costs to borrow and address long-neglected needs; whether insurance companies or providers should administer Medicaid; and whether state government spending should be reined in or grow at will.

As the 2015 session draws to an end, one thing is clear: We need to keep talking.

I’d like to continue the conversation on how counties spend their money, increasing accountability in higher education, and expanding the pipeline for quality teachers.

One of the most controversial issues addressed this session has been the distribution of sales tax revenue. Discussing whether the revenue should be distributed based mainly on where purchases are made or where people live tries to address fairness. But it doesn’t tackle the main issue: How counties — rural and urban — spend the money they receive.

We heard a lot about a new formula creating winners and losers, and, of course, every county wants more. But are current spending priorities in line with taxpayer expectations? Do counties need more to spend, or do they need to spend better?

If, under a new formula, some counties got a windfall, how would they use it? Reduce property tax rates? Return it to the citizens? Build skating rinks, soccer fields, or theaters? School construction? And who gets to decide?

The same scrutiny is needed for those counties that stand to lose money under a new formula. Often the default is to assume that current spending priorities are the correct ones. Instead we need to discuss the appropriate amount of spending and prioritize from there.

Funding for universities and community colleges once was based entirely on the number of students enrolling — multiply per-pupil funding by the number of students to get the allocation for the school year. Recently, North Carolina joined 32 states making a portion of funding dependent on performance indicators such as course completion, time to degree, transfer rates, number of degrees awarded, and number of low-income or minority graduates. The baselines are reset every three years.

This is an important step toward regular review and accountability. Gov. Pat McCrory offers another good suggestion — a component for how many graduates get jobs.

But only a tiny amount of the funding is tied to performance — $1 million of the $2.6 billion UNC system budget and $24 million of $1 billion in community college spending. We need to talk about making performance funding a larger portion of the formula.

Funding for teacher assistants, maintaining student-teacher ratios, and ensuring a strong and steady pipeline of quality teachers were all part of the budget and accountability discussions. Solid research tells us that, particularly in the lower grades, a lower student-teacher ratio enhances student performance.

So where will we get new teachers? A pool of highly committed, quality educators may well be found in the ranks of teacher assistants. We should look at ways to transition teacher assistants into full-time teachers, for example, by offering some credit for working under a mentor teacher. We should remove barriers preventing the best, brightest, and most dedicated teacher assistants from becoming full-time teachers.

The discussion over proper teacher pay should include finding a balance between teaching and testing, opportunities for advancement, reducing red tape, and rewarding excellence. We need to ensure every student has a good teacher. Now we need to talk about how to get more of them.

This session has been long but productive with good ideas, discussions, and decisions. There’s much more to do. Let’s keep talking.

Becki Gray (@beckigray) is vice president for outreach at the John Locke Foundation.

Technological innovation changes industries. How fast such better ideas take hold often depends on government actions. And while new technologies raise difficult questions, poor economic logic never should be the justification for clamping down on new ideas.

As the Asheville Citizen-Times reports, the city of Asheville is poised to crack down on local homeowners who list their homes on sharing services like Airbnb and Vacation Rental by Owner. These services inform tourists or other visitors who would like to rent a house, apartment, or even a room for one or more nights (but not sign a lease) from homeowners who have space to rent.

The city is adding an employee who will do nothing but enforce its ban on short-term rentals. It also is considering raising the penalty for violations to $500 a night, up from the current $100.

Proponents of the crackdown offer a rather odd justification: Allowing people to rent a house for less than a month would drive up rents across the city, harming those in need of affordable housing. “There would easily be a significant number of houses being bought for the purpose of short-term rentals that would in turn drive up land values and housing costs and in turn increase the rental rates,” said Vice Mayor Marc Hunt.

Hunt’s rationale is either counterproductive or wrong. By all accounts, Asheville enjoys being a tourist mecca, and its economy is built in no small part around out-of-town visitors’ money. Now, local leaders appear to be saying that they like tourists and the money they bring — except when they don’t, when those visitors choose to stay in places that aren’t approved by city officials.

Though Asheville often is portrayed as a trendy, highly desirable place to live, the reality is a bit different. While the Asheville area certainly is growing, the Triangle, Charlotte, and Wilmington areas are gaining population at a greater clip. The per-capita income in Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, is below the state average; The region simply has relatively few high-paying jobs.

If there really is a huge, unfilled demand for lodging for potential visitors to Asheville, that suggests the city is leaving an awful lot of money on the table. More tourists should result in more sales by local businesses, more sales tax revenue, and, yes, more jobs and opportunity for residents. And the locals who stand to benefit most include those who need affordable housing.

One city council member who gets it is Cecil Bothwell, one of the city’s most liberal elected officials. “I think any attempt to regulate a business plan that permits local entrepreneurs to use international websites to attract business is a fool’s errand,” Bothwell said. Bothwell also questions how many people would buy houses in Asheville just to rent them for a week or weekend at a time.

In any case, Hunt’s argument sends an awful message to city landowners: He views home value increases as a very bad thing, even after the haircut they took during the Great Recession. Given that attitude, why anyone would want to invest in the city’s future by buying property there is a mystery.

Creating the proper regulatory framework for services like Airbnb and Vacation Rental by Owner is complex, as it necessarily involves addressing health and safety standards and zoning rules. Rather than relying in part on fuzzy economic logic to slow innovation, a much better way for the city to address rising housing costs would be to re-examine the regulations it places on new construction.

Unnecessary rules, excessive requirements, and burdensome zoning drive up new home prices.

Michael Lowrey is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.

Before you read the remainder of this column, estimate 1) how much North Carolina spends per student and 2) the average pay for a North Carolina teacher. Keep both figures in mind and proceed.

This year, Education Next collaborated with Harvard University to survey a nationally representative sample of 4,000 adults covering a variety of K-12 education issues. The ninth annual poll was conducted in May and June and released in August.

The most revealing aspects of the annual Education Next survey are respondents’ estimates of per student education spending and teacher salaries. The poll suggests that there is a growing gap between public perceptions and realities of taxpayer support for public schools.

According to the survey, respondents estimated that their local public schools spent an average of between $5,540 and $7,200 dollars per student. Parents offered the lowest average estimates, perhaps based on their perception of the value of instruction and services received. Unsurprisingly, teachers had the highest average estimates of per student spending. Neither group came close to the actual average expenditure in most states, including North Carolina.

In 2014, North Carolina’s public schools spent an average of nearly $8,500 per student. When including average spending for buildings and other capital costs, the total per student expenditure in our state approaches $9,000. In fact, no school district in North Carolina spent less than $7,200 a student and nearly 30 percent of the state’s school districts had per student expenditures of $10,000 or more.

1) Did your per-student estimate come close to the state average?

Similarly, respondents to the Education Next poll, with the exception of teachers, underestimated their state’s average teacher salaries by several thousand dollars. Survey estimates for average teacher salaries were between $31,850 and $39,700. The lowest salary estimates came from African-American and Hispanic respondents, although it is unclear why. Self-identified Republicans offered the highest nonteacher estimates.

The N.C. Department of Public Instruction estimated that the average salary for a teacher on a 10-month contract was just under $47,800 last year, a figure that does not include nearly $14,500 in Social Security, retirement, and health insurance benefits provided to each full-time teacher in the state.

2) Does the average teacher make less or more than you thought?

It should be no surprise that respondents would arrive at different conclusions based on the information they have. When pollsters asked whether public school teacher salaries should increase, decrease, or stay about the same, nearly two-thirds of the general public thought that teachers deserved an increase. (To be honest, I am surprised the percentage was that low.) When provided the average annual salary of teachers in their state, however, support for a salary increase dropped to less than half.

Furthermore, a majority of respondents said they were unwilling to pay higher taxes to increase teacher salaries, even when the pollster did not disclose additional salary information. The survey authors concluded that “it is hard to say whether the public really wants a salary increase for teachers or not. It all depends on how much members of the public know and whether they are keeping in mind that the increment has to be covered by themselves as taxpayers.”

The gap between perception and reality has political consequences. Uninformed voters inevitably will support candidates who call for blindly spending more on public schools. Candidates who advance a more thoughtful approach to public school budgets may find that their political fortunes depend on persuading voters that existing tax rates and public school expenditures are sufficient. The only way to do so would be to disseminate information that most voters do not possess — present company now excepted.

Dr. Terry Stoops is director of research and education studies at the John Locke Foundation.

The following editorial appeared in the September 2015 print edition of Carolina Journal:

The 2015 session of the General Assembly has not adopted a budget, even though the 2015-16 budget year began July 1. By all accounts, the session will stretch into September and perhaps beyond, as the honorables dicker over spending numbers, Medicaid reforms, sales tax policy, or a host of other concerns.

The issues that lawmakers haven’t resolved are important, and we’d rather they take their time arriving at sensible policies that are consistent with principles of limited, constitutional government than hurry out of town just to avoid public criticism and save taxpayers a few bucks.

That said, the General Assembly isn’t in much of a rush because they don’t have to move quickly. North Carolina is one of 10 states placing no limit on the length of the legislative session, according to a chart compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Without statutory, constitutional, or even informal session limits, leaders can keep their members in Raleigh interminably, and that has been the rule in recent decades. The General Assembly has enacted a budget on time only six times in the past 20 years, and sessions have lasted into the fall on a few occasions.

That’s a reason to push lawmakers to enact a statutory limit on legislative sessions, as is the practice in most other states. The prospect of a mandatory end to the session would tend to focus the mind. Some states use the calendar to set boundaries; other base the session on the number of working days lawmakers are around.

Another common-sense reason to cap legislative sessions: States with session limits tend to respect freedom more than those that do not. Using the First In Freedom Index created by the John Locke Foundation to rank states on their “freedom friendliness” based on a host of fiscal, regulatory, health care, and education policies, only two of the 10 states that do not limit legislative sessions — Wisconsin (11th) and Idaho (17th) — scored higher than North Carolina’s 23rd on the FFI.

All of North Carolina’s neighboring states impose session limits, and all score higher than the Tar Heel State on the freedom index. Correlation may not be causation, but it follows that states placing boundaries on lawmakers might show more regard for their residents’ liberties.

As a general matter, we’d be delighted if legislators weren’t around Raleigh nearly as much as they tend to be: There’s truth to the quip that no one’s life, liberty, and property is safe while the legislature is in session.

None of the states that limit legislative sessions prohibit the ability to call special sessions to handle matters including redistricting, responding to natural disasters, or reacting to federal court decisions. North Carolina should follow their lead. A law requiring sessions to end no later than June 30 is a good place to start the discussion.

RALEIGH — The new school year is fast approaching, but policymakers remain rattled by testing boycotts that swept the nation this spring. From New York to California, hundreds of thousands of parents pulled their children out of end-of-year tests.

Just say no, a mantra from another era, has been rebranded — now as the rallying cry of the testing opt-out movement.

Implications for test-based accountability are obvious: Exams are useless if kids don’t take them. Repercussions for parent-school partnerships are murkier, but worrying. Many parents feel disenfranchised. Ignored. For them, top-down reform, testing excess, and interminable test prep have coalesced into an intolerable mix.

Online, parents are blogging, sharing, and petitioning. Offline, they’re taking action. Their message to those in charge is simple, succinct: Standardized testing is out of control. Stop it, or we will.

New York is at the core of the opt-out movement. This spring almost 200,000 students skipped Common Core exams. In New Jersey, news reports indicate 15 percent of high school juniors boycotted Common Core tests. In other states, opt-outs surged.

Certainly, Common Core wars have fanned flames of test opposition. In some states using Common Core exams developed by federally funded consortia, parental resistance is particularly high.

But ire over testing predates Common Core. Opposition has grown steadily since No Child Left Behind’s onerous testing requirements took effect over a decade ago. The federal law also mandates 95 percent student participation in annual exams, so schools feel the heat as opt-outs rise.

In North Carolina, the opt-out movement is still “small and scattered,” says Pamela Grundy of Mecklenburg ACTS, a group opposed to high-stakes testing. Grundy, whose eighth-grade son hasn’t taken end-of-grade tests for two years, explains why parents are turning to activism: “Everyone talks about involving parents, but no one really does it.”

Unlike some states, North Carolina has no official opt-out procedure. Instead, families “refuse” tests, sometimes with unclear consequences for students. According to Tammy Howard, director of accountability services for the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, DPI isn’t tracking refusals in a database and is “not aware of a significant increase.”

Could refusals build? Yes.

Grundy says she hears from lots of dispirited parents of special-needs children, “for whom the tests are just torture.” This spring in a News and Observer op-ed, Mary Nelson, mother of a special-needs child, called on state lawmakers to pass an opt-out provision enabling her son and others like him to forgo end-of-grade exams they cannot pass.

Yet the wheels of change grind slowly. Nationally, Congress is debating long-overdue revisions to No Child Left Behind. Changes would provide states with greater testing flexibility.

In North Carolina, a State Board of Education task force on assessment just concluded its review. Recommendations encompass a three-year plan, leveraging assessments to inform instruction more effectively.

“We have to test smarter,” says task force chairman Buddy Collins. The task force is recommending a pilot study for this school year, looking at the “feasibility” of interim assessments for third- to eighth-graders.

Replacing end-of-grade exams with a test that compares North Carolina students to their peers nationally also may be an option. For high school, the task force recommends “a national assessment suite” in core content areas.

Testing smarter makes sense. So does testing leaner. Some assessment is necessary — for accountability and objective feedback. But what we have now is much too much.

That, and more, is what parents nationwide are protesting. Isn’t it time to listen? Common Core standards require students to “engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions” with “diverse partners.”

Now would be the perfect time for policymakers to show kids what that looks like.

Kristen Blair is a Chapel Hill-based education writer.

A major problem is facing state employee pension plans. While many private corporations cut back pension programs due to limited funding or decreasing contributions, pension systems for government employees rarely change.

The problem arises when public funding must be curbed to account for retirees living longer or in times of economic uncertainty. Coming out of the Great Recession, we have seen both in recent years.

With private-sector companies, liabilities must be offset with corporate assets for stable balance sheets. Government does not operate this way. Assets for a public pension plan come from taxpayers, so the unfunded liability burden falls on the shoulders of citizens.

The Pew Charitable Trusts released a study finding that the nation’s state-run retirement systems had accrued $968 billion in unfunded liability by 2013. This means that there is close to $1 trillion on states’ public pension balance sheets less in investments than the states have committed to pay retirees for their pension plans.

Each state discloses an amount needed to reach contribution adequacy, or an amount that includes expected cost of benefits earned and an amount needed to sustain the pension fund based on the discount rate. This is known as the Annual Required Contribution. Pew notes that only 24 states set aside at least the 95 percent of this adequacy number in 2013. North Carolina was one of those states.

The public pension system’s deficit is not a number that many researchers agree on. In fact, State Budget Solutions asserts that unfunded liabilities have actually hit $4.7 trillion in 2014, up from $4.1 trillion in 2013.

Where do the contrasting figures come from? The significantly disparate numbers are derived from different economic valuation methods used to calculate the present values of the pensions’ liabilities.

In order to determine the amount necessary to fund a healthy pension system, states must decide on a discount rate to use when estimating a pension’s present value. More simply, the discount rate is used to anticipate how much the pension will increase over time by discounting the presently required assets to fully fund the system’s future liability.

Since public pension funds are invested, many research organizations use the expected investment rate of return as the discount rate. That rate is often 6 percent to 8 percent. However, State Budget Solutions asserts that a rate between 2 percent and 4 percent is more realistic. Overestimating the discount rate means that states may not be contributing enough to pay benefits to retirees.

The contrasting unfunded liability amounts are a result of the use of these differing discount rates. The Pew study used the 6-8 percent rate and State Budget Solutions the 2-4 percent rate. The lower discount rate is approximately equivalent to the yield of a 15-year U.S. Treasury bond, which is considered a similar liability and therefore should be used in pension calculations.

The estimation of the necessary funding for the public pension system should be based more on the nature of the risk of liabilities, rather than any assets, and risk associated with government pension payments is minimal. This is because governments cannot file for bankruptcy and private companies can. Public pensions are a contract between the government and retirees funded by taxpayers.

The major pension shortfall has been studied extensively, and most researchers and economists acknowledge its existence. The two reports mentioned above illustrate the disagreement regarding the extent of the problem.

Using what it believes to be a more appropriate research method, State Budget Solutions is confident in its pension numbers. In citing a 2012 Boston College study, the group asserts that the average state pension system was about 75 percent funded in 2011 and projected to rise to about 82 percent funded by 2015.

Economists and citizens should be aware that although these percentages do not sound all that alarming at first glance, the remaining shortfall could reach nearly 25 percent U.S. gross domestic product.

Austin Pruitt is a research intern for the John Locke Foundation.

There are some really good things on the table as the budget conferees discuss, debate, compromise, and finalize the North Carolina’s government spending for the next two years. Allocating more $22 billion each year in General Fund revenue is a big deal. Adding money from the federal government and other sources, state spending each year becomes a $50 billion big deal.

Some things under consideration are very positive — restricting spending growth to 2.5 percent; raising starting teacher pay to $35,000 and adding nearly 6,800 new teachers over the next two years to reduce the student-to-teacher ratio; ending the transfer of highway funds to the General Fund for nonhighway uses; doubling the amount of money set aside in reserve accounts; getting serious about Medicaid reform; rolling back special treatment for special interests; and making smart energy plans. But one provision stands out as not only good but transformational.

Found in Section 7.17 of House Bill 97, aka the budget, you will find the Governmental Budgetary Transparency/Expenditures Online provision. This sets up a website on which all state agencies, counties, cities, and local education authorities will post their budgets and spending in a user-friendly, easy-to-search manner. Data will be provided in formats that easily can be downloaded and analyzed by citizens and decisionmakers. It will include budgeted amounts and actual spending by each state agency or local entity, as well as information on receipts and expenditures from and to all sources, including vendor payments, updated monthly. Yes, real open government and transparency would be just a click or two away.

The provision instructs the state controller, the Office of State Budget and Management, and the state chief information officer to prioritize information technology funding to establish and coordinate the transparency websites. The House has set aside $6 million in recurring and nonrecurring funds over the next two years, while the Senate has allocated $16 million. At some point between the two proposals, appropriate funding can be found.

The sites will be fully functional by April 1, 2016. Monthly updates are required, but smaller government entities that don’t compile their budgets monthly can file a notice stating “no update at this time” for the months between their quarterly filings.

Sen. Andrew Brock, R-Davie, introduced the transparency provision as an amendment to the Senate budget. The provision passed the Senate 47-2, while Speaker Tim Moore, Majority Leader Mike Hager, Reps. Jason Saine, Rick Glazier, and Chuck McGrady are just a few of the House members who have voiced support. State Controller Linda Combs “believes transparency is a key component to good government.” Lee Roberts, the state budget director, is “fully committed to greater transparency.” State CIO Chris Estes has said, “We strongly support using information technology to increase transparency.”

Budgets are a list of priorities. Are teachers a higher priority than film companies? What ranks higher — safe roads or solar companies? Is performance pay for teachers and other public employees a better investment with greater benefits than across-the-board pay hikes? The General Assembly and the governor will be finalizing North Carolina’s priorities over the next few weeks through the state budget. What could be a higher priority than full disclosure of where that $50 billion is spent?

What was a pipe dream for Gov. Jim Holshouser in his 1973 inaugural address — when he talked of opening government ledgers to everyone — is an idea whose time has come. The complexity and expense of government makes it necessary, the technology makes it possible, and now the commitment of today’s leaders to open and transparent state government can make it a reality.

Becki Gray is vice president for outreach at the John Locke Foundation.

The following editorial was published in the August 2015 print edition of Carolina Journal.

In July, a host of media organizations and a couple of left-leaning advocacy groups filed a lawsuit against Gov. Pat McCrory and a number of his Cabinet officials, saying the administration effectively had stonewalled a series of requests under North Carolina’s Public Records Law. In response, the governor issued a press release citing “exploitation” of public records requests by these organizations and saying his administration “is a champion of transparency and fair and legitimate news gathering.”

Governor, that’s not the way our system works. No public official has the power to determine what constitutes “legitimate news gathering.” That’s why the Founders and their successors insisted on the free-speech guarantees expressed in U.S. and N.C. constitutions and the open meetings and public records laws, among other measures of accountability. The government doesn’t get to decide how the public’s business is reported, nor whether it will comply with requests for public information.

The administration could have prevented this lawsuit merely by cooperating with inquiries from the media and other members of the public more openly. Too often, in Carolina Journal‘s 25 years of covering state and local government, the failure by public officials to answer basic questions can cause a simple query for information to escalate into a major document request — and, sometimes, costly lawsuits.

The current dispute names as defendants the governor and his secretaries of commerce, environment, health and human services, public safety, administration, transportation, cultural resources, and revenue, claiming that these officials and their subordinates have — among other things — failed to provide copies of public records in a timely manner, charged excessive fees for copies of those records, failed to acknowledge requests for records, and denied or concealed the existence of public records. If proven in court, any of these would constitute violations of the Public Records Law.

The complaint cites 11 potential violations. Of particular interest to CJ readers, in January 2014 the Southern Environmental Law Center requested public records from the Department of Transportation related to the proposed tolling project along Interstate 77 north of Charlotte. After repeated follow-up requests, NCDOT surrendered the records in May 2015 — after the administration had signed a contract with a private party to build the project.

The other violations as described in the complaint are egregious as well. The level of conflict between the executive branch and public watchdogs is unnecessary and avoidable — and the tendency to bicker about the volume of public records requests only fuels suspicions that the government is hiding something.

If we were betting types, we’d place a substantial wager that as this lawsuit moves forward, not only will the administration lose (and probably have to pay the media groups’ legal costs), but it also will be ordered to comply with future requests faster and more completely.

The governor may not like this outcome, but it’s the cost of doing business if you’re a public official.

RALEIGH — The U.S. Supreme Court might have saved Obamacare from having to operate as written, but the landmark decision in King v. Burwell has not deterred those on the right side of the political debate from focusing on making health insurance (and, more importantly, health care) more affordable for more Americans.

Doing away with many of Obamacare’s expensive regulations imposed on patients, providers, and insurers ultimately falls on Congress. State lawmakers can do only so much to slow the rise in health insurance costs. One thing they can do, however, is re-examine the number of state health coverage mandates licensed insurance carriers must offer. Such laws require insurers to offer or expand upon specific services that benefit particular populations and providers.

North Carolina currently imposes more than 55 coverage mandates — ranking in the top 15 states nationwide. The Council for Affordable Health Insurance estimates that each additional mandate increases premiums by an average of less than 1 percent, so the impact of any individual one seems small.

Consequently, additional coverage requirements are passed here and there, and collectively they contribute to rising premiums. The fact that there are now over 2,200 mandates nationwide — up from almost zero in 1970 — demonstrates that often it’s politically feasible for special-interest groups to get their way.

Throughout North Carolina’s present legislative session, a number of bills have been filed calling for insurers to expand coverage to include benefits such as oral cancer drugs, autism therapy, and reduced co-pays for chiropractic care. The Associated Press reports that the introduced bills could lead to an additional 16 percent rate increase if passed.

Keep in mind this doesn’t factor in a potential 25 percent average premium increase Blue Cross and Blue Shield seeks for 2016 individual policy plans:

“Rep. Gary Pendleton, R-Wake, an independent insurance agent handling employer health plans, stressed in an interview his sympathy for people with health needs seeking help. But he estimated that approving five pieces of pending legislation he considers mandates would increase insurance premiums by about 16 percent,” the AP reported.

“‘It’ll be a rate increase on everybody insured whether they use that benefit or not,'” Pendleton said, adding that even with the GOP protests about President Barack Obama’s health care law, “‘my fellow Republicans are not serious about reducing health care costs for corporations and nonprofits.'”

Proponents make the case that certain mandates like those requiring autism services curb overall health care expenditures in the long run. The Council of Affordable Health Insurance also cautions:

It is easy to assume states with the most mandates have the most expensive insurance premiums. While that may be true in some states, it is not necessarily so. Some mandates have a more pronounced effect on premiums than do others. For example, a mental health parity mandate, which requires insurers to cover mental health care at the same levels as physical health care, has a greater impact on the cost of premiums than a collection of mandates for inexpensive procedures utilized by relatively few people.

Curiously, businesses that self-insure (approximately 60 percent of North Carolina’s private firms) and the state government are let off the hook by the blessing of the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act, so they don’t have to meet all of the 55 state mandates. Unfortunately, this self-insured exemption puts an extra burden on everyone else — mostly policyholders in the individual market and small businesses that pick up 100 percent of their workers’ insurance premiums. A recent study published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University finds that while more coverage mandates may not reduce employment, they do cause an employment shift from small to large businesses. Consequently, the authors perceive this market distortion as an overall decrease in economic productivity.

Perhaps the legislature should extend those exemptions to all, leveling the playing field for individuals and small businesses.

Katherine Restrepo is health and human services policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation.

There was a time when one’s initiation into the fraternity of journalism included a profound indoctrination into the value of the First Amendment to the survival of our Republic.

Back in the heady post-Watergate days of the mid-’70s, editors and reporters were patting themselves on the back for saving the country, mainly due to the existence of these 45 words:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So, what the heck happened? Everywhere you look these days the freedoms of speech and expression are under attack, and too many of those in the journalism profession seem to be among the attackers.

Take Scott Simon of NPR, for example. As Baltimore was erupting in violence recently after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, he tweeted this: “The live pictures from Baltimore are unsettling, & I’m not sure pictures help.”

Would he have said that about the violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, or Bull Connor’s use of German shepherds and firehoses in Birmingham?

And then there’s the media’s reaction to the “Draw Muhammad” cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, on May 3, which resulted in two would-be jihadi murderers being killed by local cops. Think what you will of event organizer Pamela Geller and her tactics; she clearly has First Amendment protection for what she did.

But many journalists didn’t see it that way, even though stubborn defiance in the face of threats of violence has been, traditionally, a journalistic trait.

The Washington Post ran a headline, “Event organizer offers no apology after thwarted attack in Texas,” blaming Geller and not the two Islamist attackers. Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker’s column was titled “Pamela Geller’s abuse of free speech.”

Even conservative media types like Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham blamed Geller for inciting Muslim violence, as if to say, “We KNOW what these people are like, so don’t antagonize them.”

The notion of “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” has given way, even among journalists, to a multicultural fetish against offending anyone who is not Western, or who is among a media-anointed “victim class.”

One of the First Amendment’s oft-cited values is that, by permitting offensive and unsettling speech, we teach people to be more tolerant. After all, we wouldn’t need a First Amendment if all speech was inoffensive.

The corollary, that without a functioning and valued First Amendment we become less tolerant, cannot be disputed. Just look around.

Jon Ham (@rivlax) is a vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.

RALEIGH — Thirty years ago, the N.C. Supreme Court recognized the legality of homeschooling in Delconte v. State of North Carolina. Since then, the growth of homeschooling in North Carolina has been extraordinary.

During the school year immediately following the Delconte decision, there were about 800 homeschool students statewide. This year, the state’s homeschool population has eclipsed 100,000 students. The 106,853 figure published by the N.C. Division of Non-Public Education is an estimate based on random sampling of the actual number of schools operating during the school year. So the actual total is likely higher. Regardless, that should not discount this year’s achievement and its historical significance.

We know that the total number of homeschool students more than doubled over the last dozen years. But consider the following:

* The total number of homeschool students continues to grow rapidly. Over the last year, there was a 9 percent increase in the number of homeschoolers. The homeschool population has increased by a staggering 34 percent over the last four school years.

* If homeschools were their own school system, they would be the third-largest district in North Carolina. While their student population is far behind Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Wake counties, homeschool families are arguably a much more influential constituency than both.

* For the second year in a row, homeschoolers outnumbered private school students. Private schools enrolled 97,259 students in 2014-15, nearly 10,000 fewer students than homeschools.

* Last year, there were an estimated 10,407 homeschool students in Wake County. Wake has the largest homeschool population in the state and is the first county in the state to enroll more than 10,000 homeschoolers.

* Last year, 33 of the state’s 100 counties had more than 1,000 homeschool students, five more than a year earlier. Six years ago, only seven counties reached that enrollment level.

The factors driving the growth of homeschooling are not easy to identify. An insightful article published in The Economist highlights a factor that I referenced earlier — changes to state laws. Decades ago, homeschooling “was considered a fringe phenomenon, pursued by cranks, and parents who tried it were often persecuted and sometimes jailed. Today it is legal everywhere and is probably the fastest-growing form of education in America.”

After clearing the legal hurdles, homeschooling grew rapidly due to the movement’s ability to keep regulators in check and attract diverse populations to the movement.

As The New York Times recently noted, state regulations often impede the growth of homeschooling in states such as Pennsylvania. For years, North Carolina’s homeschool law allowed only parents and guardians to provide instruction. Two years ago, homeschool families led a successful effort to change North Carolina’s definition of homeschooling.

The revised law ensured that homeschool families have the option of utilizing alternative forms of instruction for a portion of their child’s education, including participating in co-ops, hiring tutors and specialists, and taking online courses.

North Carolina’s previous homeschool laws likely discouraged some families from homeschooling through high school. Many parents fear that they are not equipped to teach high school-level mathematics and science.

Because the previous home school law limited their ability to seek outside assistance, many opted to enroll their children in district, charter, or private high schools. The revised definition, however, made allowances for alternative forms of instruction. Arguably, this is one reason why homeschool enrollment increases among 16- and 17-year-olds outpaced every other age group since 2013 (with the exception of 6- and 7-year-olds).

Furthermore, the homeschool movement is no longer monolithic. North Carolinians from a variety of racial, political, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds make great sacrifices to homeschool their children. Some endeavor to provide an education consistent with their family’s religious or cultural views.

Others are dissatisfied with the academic quality of their local public schools. Still others homeschool due to concerns about bullying or potentially harmful social environments sometimes found in traditional school settings.

Regardless of the reasons why they decide to homeschool, more and more parents in North Carolina and elsewhere are making that choice. I believe that it is a choice worth celebrating, contemplating, and protecting.

Dr. Terry Stoops (@Terry Stoops) is director of research and education studies for the John Locke Foundation.

In an interview published on the Capital and Main website, former U.S. Labor Secretary and University of California at Berkley public policy professor Robert Reich opined that, despite the importance of their jobs, teachers are underpaid compared to supposedly less important professionals. He pointed out that investment bankers and Wall Street traders make thousands, millions, and even billions more than teachers. “The law of supply and demand in terms of wages is not repealed at the doors of our school houses,” Reich declared.

Some have tried mightily to ignore the law of supply and demand in terms of educator wages. But those “deniers” are not fat-cat privatizers warring against public education, as Reich suggests. Instead, teacher unions advance policies, including experience- and credential-based salary scales, designed to promote fairness, rather than market-based wages. After all, supply and demand matter little when union-friendly policies ensuring uniform pay regardless of teachers’ aptitude or training.

One need not be a public policy professor to demonstrate ignorance about the teacher labor market. For example, a recent Salisbury Post editorial contended that state legislators should boost teacher pay because starting salaries for educators are low compared to computer programmers, engineers, accountants, and registered nurses. Ironically, newspaper reporters did not make their list.

Computer programmers, engineers, accountants, registered nurses, as well as other professions requiring college graduates to complete rigorous and specialized training programs, enjoy higher starting salaries than teachers. According to Michigan State University’s 2014-15 Collegiate Employment Research Institute survey, the average annual starting salaries for computer programmers and engineers exceed $50,000. Accountants and nurses can expect average salaries of over $43,000 a year. In comparison, the annual base salary for a classroom teacher will increase to $35,000 next year. Some urban and suburban districts will offer even higher starting salaries when local supplements and extra duty pay are included.

Should all beginning teachers in North Carolina should make as much as a recent engineering graduate or a junior analyst on Wall Street? High starting wages in these professions reflect the fact that demand for competent engineers and account analysts often far outweigh supply. The same cannot be said for certain educators.

The National Council on Teacher Quality examined the most recent state and federal data to compare the supply and demand for elementary school teachers. The council found that in 2013 the United States produced 30,000 more elementary school teachers than were needed to fill all vacancies. Despite increasing demand in North Carolina, colleges and universities in the state oversupplied the teacher labor market with elementary school teachers. Additionally, college graduates from dozens of other states seek teaching positions in North Carolina because demand for jobs in their states is weak.

On the other hand, it makes sense to pay teachers trained in other disciplines a wage that is comparable to their private sector counterparts. The U.S. Department of Education report, “Teacher Shortage Areas Nationwide Listing 1990-1991 through 2015-2016,” indicates that the meager supply and strong demand for math, science, and special education teachers has been a persistent weakness in North Carolina for the last 25 years. This formula — identical pay despite strong demand and meager supply — is one of many impediments to improving the quality of our public schools.

This problem is not limited to public elementary and secondary schools. The law of supply and demand in terms of wages also is repealed at the doors of our colleges and universities. Reich’s annual salary at UC-Berkley is approximately a quarter of a million dollars, or $180,000 higher than the average public school teacher in California. It is a startling amount, considering that the supply of bloviating liberal college professors far exceeds demand.

Dr. Terry Stoops is director of research and education studies at the John Locke Foundation.

On June 25, the John Locke Foundation commemorated the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, (Latin for “Great Charter”). Magna Carta of 1215, I admit, is not an everyday conversation topic, yet its general principle, comprise many modern-day conversations in work break rooms, at dinner tables, on blogs, and in the media.

Americans often express statements such as “The president is not above the law,” or “It doesn’t matter how much money one has, everyone is equal under the law.” These sentiments can be traced back to Magna Carta. Several decades after King John and barons signed Magna Carta, Henry de Bracton, known as “the Father of English Law,” wrote in 1260: “The king himself ought not to be under man but under God, and under the law, because the law makes the king. Therefore let the king render back to the law what the law gives him, namely, dominion and power; for there is no king where will, and not law, wields dominion.” Or, in more contemporary terms, no person is above the law, and all must obey it.

What prompted Magna Carta, a watershed event in English history that eventually influenced U.S. history? There had been precedent: King Henry I’s coronation Charter of Liberties (1100). Later, in 13th century England, disagreements abounded. In general terms, King John disapproved of the Vatican’s appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton; there was unrest among many English barons, protesting heavy taxation, mismanagement of funds, and dispossession of land; and the French posed an imminent threat to England.

In all, circumstances compelled John to acquiesce to demands, abdicate some authority, and recognize liberties to barons, the Church, and the city of London. It must be remembered, however, all involved parties agreed to abide by the stipulations of Magna Carta, and in so doing, admitted that their authority derived from somewhere else — the law.

To be forthright, the document was “aristocratic” in scope; it was written for a feudal society of lords and vassals and barons and the crown. Even so, its principles soon spread across the English kingdom and influenced the development of an unwritten British constitution and English common law, and later an American resistance to the crown. Conservative scholar Russell Kirk has remarked in The Roots of American Order that Magna Carta was the “root of the Declaration of Independence.”

So, how did Magna Carta influence the American founders and the drafting and ratifying of the U.S. Constitution? After the American colonies withdrew from Great Britain in 1776, many founders started penning and adopting respective state constitutions. They contained declaration of rights, and this practice set a precedent that influenced concerns in 1787-89 that the U.S. Constitution should contain a similar declaration of rights. In other words, many Americans wanted a list preventing government encroachment on certain guaranteed liberties.

Alexander Hamilton, however, argued that what became known as the Bill of Rights was unnecessary; a declaration of rights applied only to kings and their subjects, and the United States did not have a king. In the end, advocates for a Bill of Rights and those skeptical of handing more power over to the national government prevailed.

Magna Carta’s principles can be seen in the Bill of Rights. For two examples, passages 39 and 40 of Magna Carta sound familiar to the Fifth and Sixth Amendment’s guarantees of a right to a timely trial by jury of one’s peers; and passages 28-32 seem familiar to the Fifth Amendment’s stipulation that no “private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

One has to read only various declarations of rights in state constitutions and the Bill of Rights (along with Magna Carta itself) to determine that America’s founding documents embody a longstanding legal tradition.

Dr. Troy Kickler is director of the North Carolina History Project (northcarolinahistory.org).

RALEIGH — Students nationwide are reveling in the pomp and pageantry of high school’s most joyous rite of passage: graduation.

The class of 2015, resplendent in cap and gown, silky tassels, and school colors, is poised for launch. After the cap toss, kisses from grandma, and photo ops fade to black, where will these graduates go?

Will they become captains of academia and industry? Or will they buckle under the strain of college coursework and a mercurial marketplace?

If trends hold, two-thirds of students striding across stages this spring will head to college campuses this fall. Once dorm-room decoration is done and classroom rigors have begun, some will flourish, finding passion and purpose.

Others may falter. In recent years, less than 20 percent of North Carolina high schoolers have met or exceeded all four “college readiness benchmarks” on the ACT college admissions exam in English, math, reading, and science.

Why are many missing the mark? In 2012 North Carolina joined a growing number of states in requiring all public school juniors to take the ACT, college-bound or not. Scores understandably have declined as the testing pool has diversified and expanded beyond college aspirants.

Still, results from multiple earlier years underscore our imperative. High school curricula must become more rigorous, rich, and relevant.

What about the financial forecast? Stories of students consigned to indentured servitude to pay off college debt — or worse, of those who default on their loans — are widespread.

And no wonder. At numerous private colleges, annual tuition and other expenses exceed $60,000. Debt is an albatross encumbering many, even students receiving grant-based aid or attending comparably affordable public universities. According to the Project on Student Debt, 61 percent of North Carolinians graduate from four-year public and private colleges with debt, owing an average of $24,319.

Is college worth it? While not for everyone, college nonetheless confers an indisputable employment and earnings edge. According to a 2015 report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, the unemployment rate for recent high school graduates is more than double that of recent college graduates.

And the earnings gap has widened: “The overall wage advantage of college over high school has held up and even increased slightly as the earnings of both college and high school workers have fallen over the recession,” notes the report.

Seniors have heard the job talk with each passing year, and it has affected their expectations. A Gallup survey conducted this fall of more than 800,000 students in grades five-12 in 48 states, including North Carolina, found high school seniors were the least optimistic of any age group about their future job prospects.

It’s time to nurture hope. Hope is, in fact, a more “robust” predictor of success in college than high school grade point averages or even ACT and SAT scores, Gallup reports. And while data are useful for understanding perceptions and trends, they are but part of the story.

The personal and particular remain. They comprise the rest and best of the story, and the students will do the telling themselves.

I write this as a parent, not a dispassionate observer. My son is a member of the class of 2015. As he grasps his high school diploma, I won’t ponder surveys or work force trends. I’ll remember the first day of kindergarten, middle school dances, late-night homework sessions, those unending college applications, and the irrepressible excitement of a college dream fulfilled.

And I’ll be proud, so proud.

To all of the other parents out there, and to the class of 2015, I have this to say: Well done. Anything is possible.

Kristen Blair is a Chapel Hill-based education writer.

Later this month, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether health insurance subsidies issued under the Affordable Care Act should be distributed only to insurance companies in state-based exchanges.

If the justices rule that states like North Carolina that enroll people in Obamacare through the federal exchange would lose their tax subsidies — as plaintiffs note is the plain language of the law — the ruling could affect Medicaid recipients, too. As written in the federal health law, federal Medicaid funding relies on states creating their own exchanges.

Modern Healthcare columnists Virgil Dickson and Lisa Schencker explain how current Medicaid enrollees in federal exchange states like North Carolina could end up being on the budgetary chopping block:

The first is a section of the law that says federal Medicaid funding is contingent on a state ensuring coordination and secure communication between its Medicaid program, its Children’s Health Insurance Program, and “an exchange established by the state.” …

“If the government loses and Congress does not revise the ACA, HHS might tell the states that they have to return to their former eligibility rules or lose future federal funding for their Medicaid programs,” said Jesse Witten, a partner at Drinker Biddle in Washington.

In the justices outlaw Obamacare subsidies in federal exchange states, a new set of lawsuits affecting the Medicaid implications of the ruling would be inevitable. In 2012, a 7-2 majority of the justices ruled Obamacare’s original expansion of Medicaid coercive and unconstitutional. The court may take a similar view of an HHS order requiring that states using the federal Obamacare exchange to refund all their traditional Medicaid money from Washington. (More than 75 percent of North Carolina’s $14 billion Medicaid spending comes from the federal government.)

Yet transitioning to a state exchange not only would entrench Obamacare further, but also could result in a financial nightmare. The seed money needed to establish a state exchange is no longer available. North Carolina planned to establish its own exchange under former Gov. Beverly Perdue, but more than $70 million in start-up grants were returned to the feds once Republicans took control of the legislature. State lawmakers also passed Senate Bill 4 into law — an act negating the decisions to create a state exchange and expand Medicaid.

In addition, state exchanges such as those in Massachusetts, Oregon, Minnesota, Vermont, Hawaii, and Rhode Island are failing or have failed to be self-sustaining, since planning and establishment grants awarded by the federal government expired at the beginning of the year.

The Washington Post reports that operating budgets are collapsing because most of the exchanges “are independent or quasi-independent entities. For most, the main source of income is fees imposed on insurers, which typically are passed on to consumers,” the Post notes.

In addition, the Post says, call centers, “where operators answer questions and can sign people up,” drive a lot of the costs at the exchanges. “Enrollment can be a lengthy process — and in several states, contractors are paid by the minute.”

Observers from all sides of the debate will watch the Supreme Court closely as its term winds down.

Katherine Restrepo is health and human services policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation.

RALEIGH — All kinds of deals are made during the legislative session. Whether a distillery can sell unlimited amounts or only one bottle to people taking tours; whether vehicle registration fees should increase 50 percent or 30 percent or at all; whether solar subsidies should be cut off now or extended for one year or two — solutions to complicated problems often entail compromises, concessions, and a little give and take.

One of the biggest deals to expect this session is Medicaid reform. Medicaid is a health insurance program provided by the state and federal governments for low-income citizens, the disabled, and children 18 or younger. Medicaid problems are numerous and complicated, but three major concerns must be addressed — ensuring quality patient care, cost containment, and budget predictability.

It’s a big deal. At stake is $3.8 billion in state funding (17 percent of the state’s General Fund budget), for a program serving almost 20 percent of North Carolina’s population. (Total spending including federal funds is almost $14 billion.)

Slightly more than half of the births in North Carolina are covered by Medicaid, and it is an entitlement program that must be paid for before other needs are met. When cost overruns occur, something else, like roads, schools, or tax relief, cannot be funded.

As far back as at least 2003, cost overruns have posed budget problems for lawmakers. Of the $1.3 billion increase in the new House budget, $400 million is for Medicaid alone. Projected enrollment growth next year is 200,000 new recipients.

Currently, Community Care of North Carolina is the sole primary care case management program for North Carolina’s Medicaid program. There is no competition, patients have no choice in service, and costs and utilization have increased. Medicaid reform should begin with addressing the concerns that arise from having a single, nongovernmental entity with such a large role in the market. (See editor’s note at end of story.)

Patients should be able to choose among several plans, excessive spending should be the responsibility of the health plan administrator, and health outcomes should improve as more tax dollars are invested in the program. That’s not the case right now.

Lawmakers are considering various reforms. Some suggest moving the administration of Medicaid out of the Department of Health and Human Services both to improve the program’s operation and address waste, fraud, and abuse.

Some suggest adopting an Accountable Care Organization model under which providers (hospitals and doctors) would administer the program and be paid for every patient service provided with any savings or cost overruns assumed mostly by taxpayers. Others prefer a managed care organization, operating much like a traditional insurance company, which would receive a flat monthly rate for each patient — allowing higher payments for patients who cost more to treat, like the elderly or those with pre-existing conditions. The MCO would have to absorb any cost overruns.

Medicaid reform negotiations to date have seen the governor and the House leaning toward an ACO model with the Senate preferring an MCO model.

Giving patients multiple plans would ensure better quality of care and drive down costs. But the best deal may well be a hybrid model, allowing ACOs and MCOs to compete for patients. Other states are having success with a hybrid system.

The key is not so much who offers services, but whether Medicaid is patient-centered, provides comprehensive care, gives meaningful choices, caps costs, and allows plenty of competition to ensure quality and drive down costs.

With Medicaid continuing to grow at alarming rates, taxpayers deserve and expect reforms that promise real cost savings. Patients should receive quality health care. Budget overruns should not crowd out other core functions of government. Competitive bidding and competition are the way to go for real reform.

Becki Gray (@beckigray) is vice president for outreach at the John Locke Foundation.

Editor’s note: This story was corrected after initial publication to clarify the role of CCNC in the state’s Medicaid program.