CCTA ISSUES AND WATCHDOG COMMITTEES REPORT FOR MARCH 2011

CCTA

15 MARCH 2011

ISSUES AND WATCHDOG COMMITTEES REPORT

Committee Chairman- Hal James
National Issues & Watchdog - Lynn Childs
NC State Issues & Watchdog- Mark Griffin
Craven County Board of Commissioners- Tyker Gonzales
City of New Bern Board of Alderman- Tony Bonnici
Education & School Board- Jennifer Alcock,
Board of Election Mary Liz Hynes

We have won several major victories again this month with the help of newly elected members of the Craven County Board of Commissioners and our elected officials in Raleigh and the US Congress.

We have sent contingents to Raleigh three times already this year. The first time was to show our support our newly elected conservative representatives. The second time was to counter-demonstrate when the SEIU affiliated unions like the State Employees Association of North Carolina were demonstrating in support of the teachers union in Wisconsin.

The last meeting of the Craven County Board of Commissioners was a great success for us. We had many members of CCTA there and Raynor, Nancy, Tyker, Tony and I petitioned the Board or spoke at public hearings. We asked for more transparency in government and against the socialist tendencies of government these days to take from some people to give to benefit others. Examples of these are CARTS (Craven Area Rural Transportation System) and Community Development Block Grants CDBGs). CARTS is a multi-million dollar annually program and CDBG over another million dollar annually program. Lucy helped provide everyone in attendance with information on the CARTS program.

The Craven County Board of Commissioners has increased it’s efforts to provide more information to citizens on the county website. Notably the attachments to the Board meeting agendas that heretofore had been available only to board members and for the first time were posted on the county’s website. You can credit the Watchdog Committee for this.

Tyker and I attended a meeting of Craven County farmers held in the Agricultural extension office. There were about 40 or 50 people in attendance and Tyker made a presentation about how they can save tax dollars. It was very well received and I learned a lot about how much the federal government controls our farm production.

I also attended a meeting of the Council of Governments. Commissioner Tyson is our representative to that council. That is the agency that had its treasurer resign and the chairman was not reappointed to serve on the Council by the Commissioners of Jones County. A wise move on their part, I believe. I came away convinced that the Council should be done away with. A lot of nice people work there and should have help finding new jobs. Most of the meeting was behind closed doors and no announcement was forthcoming about what was discussed.

Commissioner Scott Dacey held a Town Hall Meeting at Trent Woods and Raynor and I had a chance to have a really good discussion with him about CCTAs concerns. It was very helpful to our cause.

Commissioner and Chairman, Steve Tyson has been helpful in providing information about agenda items and Commissioner Jeff Taylor has been a big help in getting fair treatment for the farmers of Craven County, many of whom farm in his district.

Assistant County Manager, Jack Veit, has helped by providing us with information about union activity in the county. I am continuing to pursue that. It appears that no union dues are being deducted from county employees pay to go to PACs and political parties. If you have any information to the contrary please let me know. State employees like judicial employees and teachers are a different story. They do make payroll deduction available and contributions to PACs most of which end up in the hands of liberal candidates. I have discovered that 55,000 state employees in North Carolina belong to a subsidiary union of the SEIU.

Much to their credit the county staff has helped the commissioners avoid the state pushing unfunded and mandated programs down to county level which is a huge concern in this time of reduced funding for many state programs.

Another issue of great concern to us is what is called “sunshine” legislation at the state level and often “transparency” at all levels. I guess open government and transparency would let the sunshine in. We certainly need that at all levels of government as they have a tendency to want to operate in secret. The Sun Journal has a good Editor’s Opinion article on that in the 13March2011 issue on page 33. We still have work to do on that the County Board of Commissioners level as well as the State and National levels.

The local talk show hosts on TV and radio have been very helpful in helping us get our notices of our meetings and speakers. They include Phil Knight, Lockwood Phillips and Ben Ball.

As I stated at the last meeting THE COUNTY, STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS ARE ALL IN THE BUDGET PROCESS NOW AND WE NEED TO WATCH THEM LIKE HAWKS!!!

Our members are keeping up the good work in writing letters to the editor of newspapers and using blogs and websites, etc. to keep presenting our philosophy of government to the public and taxpayers.

Hal James
Watchdog Committee Chairman