Sen. Tony Rand, who announced last week that he was stepping down from the NC Senate to become Chairman of the state’s Parole Board played a large part in reshaping the board to its current configuration.
In 2005, Rand introduced S 897 which changed the makeup of the parole board from three full-time members to one full-time chairman and two part-time associates and ended the term of the current board, requiring new members to be appointed.
The bill passed the Senate unanimously on April 13, 2005 and was later incorporated into the 2005 budget bill to be signed into law.
I guess the question becomes, is this just a coincidence or did Rand have this all planned out years ago?
Two members of the North Carolina House of Representatives from Gaston County have announced their opposition to the recent policy decision by the NC Board of Community Colleges to admit illegal aliens. Representatives Pearl Burris-Floyd and Wil Neumann, both Republicans, plan to introduce legislation when the General Assembly returns to Raleigh in May of 2010 to prohibit illegals from attending community college. (HT:Cory Friedman of Freedom Newspapers’ Gaston Gazette has a great story on the situation.)
Neumann gets it right on the funding angle:
“It will be a hot issue,” Neumann said, “but I think in these tough budget times, to ask the citizens of North Carolina who are out of work to continue paying for illegal students is unacceptable.”
Despite what the consultant’s report tried to lead us to believe (that admitting illegals was profitable for the colleges), Neumann knows that the taxpayer pays a considerable amount for the community colleges. Just 12% of their revenue comes from tuition.
Best line of the article:
“We must uphold the law of the land, and if we fail to do that, we are encouraging a lawless environment,” said Burris-Floyd. “In a lawless environment, no one is protected.”
The sad thing is that this bill was already filed during the long session this year and never received even a hearing despite Governor Perdue’s stated opposition to the policy of admitting illegals. Will the legislative leadership allow a vote on the bill this time? Not likely. The fix is in and the deck is stacked so don’t bet on it.
You can now vote for you favorite “Worst Bill” of the year. The polls are open! Over the course of this year Civitas wrote on 32 bills as our “Bad Bill of the Week.” Unfortunately 32 is really not enough to cover all the “Bad Bills” introduced this year in the General Assembly but these are bills that struck our fancy and help to illustrate some of the ridiculous actions of our elected officials.
Hope you enjoy and don’t forget to vote for you favorite team “Bad Bill“.