N.C. Senator Ellie Kinnaird's Newsletter

June 7, 2011 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Ellie Kinnaird

Greetings from the North Carolina Senate,

Continuing from my last newsletter on the budget’s death by a thousand cuts, Tryon Palace and the NC Shakespeare festival have lost their funding, along with reductions to many other cultural sites. The Palace is a beautiful place to visit and tells our history to every North Carolina and out-of -state visitor.

On the public school front, drop-out prevention, and mentoring programs are gone. Learn and Earn on-line courses will now charge fees to students who wish to take courses on the Internet, potentially shutting out those who can’t afford the fee. Work days for teachers are gone. (Teachers use work days to prepare report cards and lesson plans - now they’ll do it on weekends?) There are cut backs to minority male mentoring, clerical and janitorial staff, substitute teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, media specialists (whom we used to call librarians), and transportation personnel. Then there are cuts for textbooks, instructional supplies and maintenance of yellow buses.

At UNC, several programs are cut along with the Student Incentive Grant. Non-resident tuition waivers are eliminated for Special Talent undergraduate and non-resident teachers and prospective teachers. While some may feel that is justified because we need to serve our own first, contact with others outside one’s own sphere is valuable to students. The Future Teachers Scholarship-loan is eliminated. But the big picture is that our neighboring southeastern states have all raised spending on education, while North Carolina, that used to be the leader in education is cutting funding.

In other areas, the Rural Entrepreneurship program is cut, along with tuition waivers for Community College faculty and staff, Community Health Centers that treat the uninsured and poor, Public TV is threatened by funding for only one year at a reduced level while a review is made about its future. To see how the cuts affect Person County, the Person County Democrats are sponsoring a program to look at the local impacts of some of the cuts in the Council Chambers at City Hall on June 21 at 7:00 p.m.

A bill of interest that passed was a Study Commission to engage in talks with our Atlantic coast neighbors about energy supplies. It will study off-shore drilling and fracking, in addition to wind potential. I do not believe we should be considering either off-shore drilling close to the coast or fracking, and this opens the door to both.

Next Thursday, “cross-over” day, all bills (unless they have an appropriation or fee in it) must be passed by one chamber or the other or they die for the entire two year term. I have several bills that I would like to pass, but so far haven’t even been able to get heard (contrary to bills to devastate our viewscape by eliminating local control over billboards and reduce environmental protections that passed quickly.) After cross-over, we will be flooded by House bills, many of which are very bad, for example, voter-ID (for those of you who like voter ID, I’ll be glad to engage in a discussion), the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment, etc.

The big news of the week was the Governor’s announcement that she is issuing an Executive Order to release the unemployment checks for the 42,000 who have gone weeks without any income.

I hope no one was flooded out by the monsoon that hit us, but my garden did appreciate it. And now my flowers, if not the rest of us, love the hot weather.

Paid for by Ellie Kinnaird for Senate • Campaign Address: PO Box 668, Carrboro, NC 27510 • 919-918-3432
Legislative Office Address: Room 628 LOB, 300 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, NC 27603 •