RALEIGH — Local lawmakers say the session is winding down as the General Assembly turns toward the state’s spending plan and response to coal ash ponds.
Rep. Jimmy Dixon (R-Wayne) said legislators are set to make short work of the budget next week and are not likely to take up any other bills until the new legislature takes office in January.
“When we get through with the budget, it’s going to be a rapid closing down,” Dixon said Wednesday.
Last year it took the legislature until September to pass a budget, but Rep. John Bell (R-Wayne) said much of the hammering out of the budget was done last week in a stretch that kept him in Raleigh for three days straight. Both houses are calling for $22.5 billion in spending next fiscal year.
Bell said things were already wrapping up smoothly before the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality released its classification of the state’s coal ash ponds, five of which are located in Wayne County and classified for closure by 2024.
Bell said he aims to find a better use for the ash, perhaps selling it to be used to make concrete, but said even if that plan falls through his district should see some action concerning the ponds.
“If we can get something done, our area is really going to benefit,” he said.
Category Archives: Journalism
Cruz, Cornyn await report from VA
Revelations from Inspector General reveal culture of fear led to wait time manipulation
The Department of Veteran Affairs Office of the Inspector General has released reports from 49 investigations into whether patient appointment wait times were being manipulated throughout the VA Health Care System.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) talks to reporters ahead of a rally near Raleigh, North Carolina on March 8, 2016. Cruz is seeking the Republican nomination for president.
The release of the reports has led to additional pressure from Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas, who together passed an amendment last year requiring VA Secretary Robert McDonald to report to Congress on any corrective measures and share a timeline for remedying the problems, which surfaced first in Phoenix, Arizona in April 2014.
“Veterans in San Antonio deserve better than long waits and barriers to care after selflessly putting their lives on the line to serve this nation,” Sen. Cornyn said in a statement last November.
“Our veterans deserve the very best care our nation can provide,” Cruz said in a statement on the amendment, which became law in December 2015. ” Unfortunately, veterans in South Texas often do not receive timely access to health care.”
Cruz, Cornyn and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott authored a joint letter to McDonald last week asking for an update on the department’s progress in the wake of the reports.
“We remain troubled that the VA continues to fail to provide timely health care to our nation’s veterans, despite receiving enhanced authorities and funding from Congress to hire new employees and address additional problems facing the VA,” the letter reads.
There were 12 investigations into Texas facilities from Dallas to El Paso, all of which can be accessed online through the VA IG website.
“The IG reports indicate that improper training, lack of supervision and non-centralized scheduling are the primary causes of the data manipulation,” the letter reads. “However, some employees reported feeling pressure to change wait times or risk getting fired.”
In their letter, the senators and Abbott call for McDonald to make “more robust use” of his power “to remove any individual from the VA Senior Executive Service whose poor performance or misconduct warrants such removal.”
“These ongoing scheduling problems clearly evidence failures of leadership at senior levels of these Health Care Systems in Texas and, more broadly, within the Veterans Health Administration,” the letter continues.
The investigations were based on complaints filed by employees and former employees. One such investigation into Audie L. Murphy VA Hospital in San Antonio found that schedulers based patient’s desired dates on clinic availability to manipulate the system into recording shorter wait times for care.
While investigators at the Harlingen VA facility found no evidence that employees had been threatened with termination for not following the schedule manipulation policy — as one complainant claimed — the report did note a culture of fear that contributed toward the manipulation of wait times.
“There was evidence that the employees felt pressure from the TVCB Health Care System management official, which led to the manipulating of VistA in order to keep scheduling numbers within standard,” Quentin Aucoin wrote in his report.
Larry Smith, a U.S. Army veteran living in South Texas, said in 2014 that three veterans reportedly died while waiting for treatment at the Harlingen clinic. At least 40 veterans in Phoenix were died while enduring artificial wait times.
On the fence no more: Texas rejects Trump, wall
Border state officials ask for personnel; not wall
The Republican presidential primary blew through Texas last week, where Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) got a much-needed win in his home state.
The freshman senator received an endorsement from Gov. Greg Abbott one week before the Texas primary and went on to win all but five of the state’s 254 counties, earning half a million votes more than runner-up Donald Trump, who has suggested he’ll build a $12 billion wall along the state’s southern border.
Supporters in Myrtle Beach, S.C. cheered Donald Trump’s plan to build his ever-growing border wall, but Trump won just five counties in Texas, the only border state to have its primary so far.
The rebuff from the Lone Star State, while not unexpected because of Cruz’s popularity there, served to show that voters in a state with a third of the Mexican border running alongside it don’t want to see a wall running along it.
Abbott, still one of Cruz’s biggest endorsements as the March 15 primaries draw near, last year signed into law a first-of-its-kind $800,000 border security package and has made border relations a touchstone of his administration, even naming Mexican native Carlos Cascos as his Secretary of State.
Abbott’s election came months after the Rio Grande Valley saw the summer arrival of some 50,000 refugees, mostly women and children escaping violence in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The crisis reached such fever pitch that in summer 2014 the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security scheduled a field hearing in McAllen, Texas; the city where each day refugees were turning up.
Throughout testimony from then Gov. Rick Perry and state and federal officials, there was never discussion about continuing the Southern Fencing Strategy, the national plan to wall off the border from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Besides the cost of the fence and its inability to deter illegal crossings — there is testimony that it saves Border Patrol agents just 15 seconds — the fence has disrupted migratory patterns for a plethora of native wildlife and in some cases cut off citizens from their property.
The Texas Department of Public Safety “border surge” concentrated troopers in an area already bound on the north and south by U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints.
Perry sent the National Guard, militarizing further a region already bound on the north and south by border checkpoints.
The deployment was viewed more as a political stunt after Perry slinked toward another failed White House run, but the border continued to stay in the news long after hope for the Gang of Eight bill had faded.
When Abbott took office, he asked Washington for 250 additional U.S. Border Patrol agents to handle the influx of immigrants. When it didn’t happen, he sent 250 Texas Department of Public Safety troopers into Deep South Texas to support federal agents along the state’s border.
Trump sees New York, New Jersey in reach
Donald Trump signs autographs after a rally in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Speaking a day before he won the South Carolina primary, Donald Trump began listing off a number of prized states typically considered out of contention for Republican nominees.
“I have a chance to win New York,” Trump said. “Can you imagine? If you win New York it’s over.”
Trump may have been overestimating his popularity outside of Lower Manhattan, but New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s endorsement of Donald Trump Friday leaned support to the notion that the real estate mogul may be favored in the Garden State, where his name is still synonymous with Atlantic City. Continue reading
A selfish criticism of selfies
I was on the edge of America with my parents when the mood struck.
Staring across the Rio Grande from the Sabal Palms Bird Sanctuary I thought about how silly the boundary was, how the river was nothing more than a river that humans assigned special meaning to for no reason other than to mark territory.
Oh and I thought about taking a selfie.
I had recently been trying to use Instagram more for photo uploads in an effort to make it seem like I’m not this boring old dude that doesn’t know how to use filters.
And in this day and age, being hip and using filters means using hashtags.
I quickly realized this was my first opportunity to use, for the first time, that hallowed hashtag above all others: the #selfie.
So as I plopped myself down looking north into the lens and at my reflection in my phone, I had already decided this would be my fine ascension into the world of #selfie stardom.
It was then that my mom offered to take the picture for me.
I declined and told her I was taking a selfie. She laughed and said she knew what a selfie was, assuring for me that the term has permeated my generation to the point that my mother knows what it is. Continue reading
Spoiler Alert Part 2
Missed Part One?
This part actually contains a bit of a spoiler for Battlestar Galactica, so for any readers who haven’t seen the show, I have the following message: Stop reading this blog post right now and go watch it. It’s on Netflix. Don’t worry, this post will still be here when you get back.
*
Optional soundtrack to this post.
I had told myself I would watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica before interviewing him.
Photo Courtesy Paul Chouy
Or that I would watch Stand and Deliver, or something. Just as a fun addition. A way to make the moment that much more memorable when I shook his hand and interviewed him.
I got home that night and found Battlestar on Netflix.
Within the first episode, I was hooked. I watched the last of the human race, led by Olmos, flee from the Cylons while my digital clock counted down the hours until morning when I would ride to San Benito to interview him.
It was wild stuff.
I woke up the next morning and hurried as quickly as I could to the elementary school where he was due to speak to 5th-graders and found myself in the media center with my photographer and 30 kids, all watching scenes from Selena on YouTube.
It was obvious that a movie following a young Hispanic girl from childhood to stardom was a better way to connect with these 5th-graders than discussing a movie about advanced mathematics or a science fiction television series.
This one shot up on the screen and I found myself as entranced by it as the children.
And then (at the 1:01 mark of that video) he danced his way into the room.
Spoiler Alert Part 1
This two-part series chronicles the roughly 12 hours I spent chasing actor Edward James Olmos around South Texas for this story.
It was early May when I found out about the fundraiser and began putting together an advance story.
An actor, Edward James Olmos, was going to headline an annual event that raises money for the local Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children chapter.
My editor was freaking out about coverage, saying Olmos was one of his favorite actors.
Based on his reaction, I assumed there were dozens of movies starring Olmos that I had missed somehow.
I remembered watching Stand and Deliver in high school, but if I was being honest with myself, I couldn’t keep the plot completely separate from Dead Poets Society, another film about an inspirational teacher.
I shrugged it off as another actor that was before my time, but he and a colleague began discussing his work on Battlestar Galactica.
Those words, in my head, evoked half memories of cheesy sets and poor video quality akin to Knight Rider, only in a science-fiction setting. I remembered my dad attempting to explain the details of the wars between humans and Cylons, and something about a red eye, but everything else in the sci-fi compartment of my brain was filled with AT-ATs, Kessel runs and Kashyyyk history factoids.
But it turns out there was a second series. One that began in 2003. And Olmos was the star.
I wrote the advance, but assumed my editor would be covering the event. After all, I didn’t know Olmos from Robin Williams, so what warranted me being there?
He was busy the night of the fundraiser, though, so I headed to the event where Olmos’ speech was the keynote.
HIMEJO
The Edward v. Jacob debate.
Kids, did I ever tell you the story about how I told Edward James Olmos about the references to him in How I Met Your Mother?
It was May 2013 and I had just finished up an interview with the Golden Globe winner, when I asked him if he knew about the repeated references to him in one episode of HIMYM.
He kind of brushed it off, noting that Battlestar Galactica had once more pushed him into pop culture media, and even Will Shortz had taken notice.
“I knew we had come full circle when I ended up in a New York Times crossword puzzle,” he said.
I persisted, though, and explained to him how, in that one episode, two characters (Ted and Barney) were arguing about whether his name was Edward or Jacob.
“Whether it was Edward Jacob or Edward James?” he asked.
This, to me, proved he hadn’t seen the episode and that I was the first to tell him about it.
I corrected him, explaining that they were debating Edward vs. Jacob in a way akin to a discussion about Twilight werewolves versus vampires.
And then he, Paul and I all laughed together.
Want more Olmos? See my long-form blog feature on him here.
Lost en translation
“Your name doesn’t translate,” she said.
I knew it didn’t. I had asked Spanish-speaking friends about it back before I lived in South Texas.
Mark is Marcos. Paul is Pablo. Ty … Ty becomes just a variation of the pronunciation.
Either a long or short e sound takes the y’s place, leading to a “Tee” or a “Teh.” Hardly anything exciting.
But it wasn’t long before I realized that there are many ways that Ty doesn’t translate into Spanish. Continue reading
Undercover in plain sight
It was the first of many instances where I realized that after living in a state where I looked like everyone else, I now lived in a place where I stood out.
I am the exotic one here.
The cashier at the grocery store asked for my number.
Women passing me on the beach complimented my “highlights.’
I get looks in every bar or club I enter because besides being a head taller than most everyone else there, that aforementioned head is one covered in long blonde hair.
I opened a checking account and, by the end of the process, the financial consultant told me to let him know if I wanted to hang out.
A self-described attention whore, of course I am eating the attention up, but I cannot help but wonder if it could possibly have an affect on my ability to do my job.
In government reporting, we observe and report.
I typically sit in the corners of meeting rooms — wherever I can hear the most and get noticed the least…How do I blend in and do my job when everyone is painfully aware that this monolingual guero is there?
I guess I will just have to be better.
Ty W. Johnson 