
{"id":772,"date":"2007-08-23T04:49:14","date_gmt":"2007-08-23T12:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2007\/08\/23\/exile-on-jones-street-82307\/"},"modified":"2007-08-23T04:49:47","modified_gmt":"2007-08-23T12:49:47","slug":"exile-on-jones-street-82307","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2007\/08\/23\/exile-on-jones-street-82307\/","title":{"rendered":"Exile on Jones Street: 8\/23\/07"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>By Kirk Ross\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing quite like cracking a freshly printed budget. Just look at all those finely crafted numbers and . . . ahh, smell those special provisions.<\/p>\n<p>This is the time of year when it becomes clearer what kind of last-minute \u00e2\u20ac\u0153language\u00e2\u20ac\u009d found its way into the budget and various other bills passed in the last few days of the session.<\/p>\n<p>Among the Easter Eggs this year was a lil\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 bit of legislation that sorta, kinda takes authority over part of Raleigh from Raleigh and puts it back in the hands of the legislature. Specifically, Senate Bill 1313 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d sponsored by Wake\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own Sen. Janet Cowell \u00e2\u20ac\u201d prevents the City of Oaks from imposing its building and zoning regulations over much of the state capital area.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the first time such a move was tried, and won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be the last. Local governments are, by law, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153creatures of the state.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And as one local budget officer recently told me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The legislature giveth and the legislature taketh away.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Several years ago, when UNC and Chapel Hill officials were locked in a sometimes-heated discussion over a rather large expansion of the main campus, a special provision floated into the budget one evening. It would strip the town of its zoning authority over the campus and pretty much everything else owned by the university. I think the math worked out to roughly 13 percent of the town at the time.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, the provision caused an uproar and a lot of finger pointing. The university said it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ask for it, and then-Sen. Howard Lee, who represented the town and was a co-chair of the budget-writing committee, had to explain to his constituents how it got there. Lee managed to get it removed, and the responsible party was later identified as Sen. Tony Rand, who told me afterward (and I swear he had a tear in his eye when he did) that he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bear the thought of the university not being able to expand and someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s child not being able to get into Carolina.<\/p>\n<p>As you might imagine, the university went into the next round of negotiations with the town in a slightly stronger position, what with the town officials very clearly aware that the recent whistling sound near Town Hall was a rather large caliber shell hurtling across their bow.<\/p>\n<p>There was a backlash, of course, and it likely cost Lee his Senate seat. But isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that a fine bunch of new buildings down on main campus?<\/p>\n<p>As the Raleigh episode illustrates, the state is not playing around when it comes to wielding its authority to shape cities and towns. Local governments might have won one by getting some local tax options this session, but Home Rule is still not a popular concept in the halls of the legislature.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Help wanted<\/strong><br \/>\nPlease, someone \u00e2\u20ac\u201d anyone \u00e2\u20ac\u201d sign up to run against Liddy Dole. The situation got urgent this week when Public Policy Polling announced that they had run out of possible contenders to poll folks about. Last week, they ran the numbers on N.C. Democratic Party chair Jerry Meek and then threatened to hoist Clay Aiken\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name up the flagpole. (The Independent Weekly, it should be noted, was way ahead of them with a recent parody of an Aiken campaign platform in the music section.)<\/p>\n<p>I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know about you, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one set of poll numbers that could shake my faith in the future of democracy. So, quick, somebody grab the mic. If only Mildred the Bear was still with us.<\/p>\n<p>As an FYI, I still got two dollars that says a big name \u00e2\u20ac\u201d like a former or soon-to-be-former governor \u00e2\u20ac\u201d gets into the race. Just a hunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Kirk Ross\u00c2\u00a0 There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing quite like cracking a freshly printed budget. Just look at all those finely crafted numbers and . . . ahh, smell those special provisions. This is the time of year when it becomes clearer what kind of last-minute \u00e2\u20ac\u0153language\u00e2\u20ac\u009d found its way into the budget and various other bills passed&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}