Homelessness, Teen Takeovers and More Veto Overrides | Hour 2

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, I Daily Show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to thepeakclendarshow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. There's a lot going on. We're following a lot of news. Certainly, our thoughts are with our neighbors to the south. Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Donald Trump's closest allies in Congress, passed away over the weekend. It appears a tear in the inner wall of the order. It's called an aortic dissection was the cause of death. And they are now looking at who will replace Senator Graham in representing the South Carolina on Capitol Hill. You know a prominent South Carolina Republican, former Air Force lawyer. He served in Congress for three decades and had just turned seventy one before he passed away Saturday night. They're calling it a brief and sudden illness Trump. He was supposed to be on NBC's Meet the Press the next morning at Sunday, Trump took his spot there to talk about him and has ordered that flags across the country be flown at half staff until next Saturday evening. So if you see flags at half staff, that's what it is. It's in memory of Senator Lindsey Graham, noted foreign policy hawk and one of the folks who really felt like America's military had a tremendous power and role in peacekeeping around the globes. Certainly will be missed and will be following that story throughout the week. Meantime, North Carolinians are starting to see the effects of the state's new thirty four point three billion with a b billion dollar budget. It includes teacher and law enforcement pay raises, continued income tax reductions, and new funding about seven hundred million for Hurricane Helene recovery, plus some changes to how data centers are tax We've been talking a lot about that in the news. Governor Josh Stein signed the measure while criticizing a few provisions involving state government and executive authority. So Stein's signature ends months of negotiation between the two legislative chambers. Lots of speculation about what would be in, what would be out, but the fighting seem to come down to tax cuts, whether those income tax cuts would continue and continue at the same rate. And it's something that proponents of it have said, look over the last twelve years eleven twelve years, North Carolina has seen a huge economic turnaround and largely do to income tax reductions. So those tax cuts will continue on that schedule. Plus we have increased raises for law enforcement, teachers, and some earmarks. That was a big point of contention between the two chambers. So Stein praised some of the major provisions of the budget, but he also side some policy changes. Ultimately, he concluded that the benefits outweighed the objections signed the bill rather than allowing it to become law without his signature. Now it's important to note that Stein was able to sign the first budget that was sent to him by the state legislature. This is just such a difference from former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who I think signed one in two terms. That he was there, there's not doesn't appear to be quite as contentious of a relationship between the legislature and the governor's office this time around. Among the items Stein highlighted were what lawmakers described as the largest teacher pay in fifteen years, so as teachers head back to the classrooms, get ready to head back to the classrooms. This is the largest teacher pay raise in fifteen years. It's the largest starting teacher pay raise in fifty years, so it is interesting. The budget also contains about a billion dollars to fully fund the state's medicaid, has some double digit pay raises for state law enforcement officers, bonuses. For local police. This is about the big public safety push that we're seeing and concerns that we're seeing from North Carolinians about public safety in the state. So some extra money for law enforcement, and then of course the scheduled reductions in the state income tax. So you know, these are all issues that are going to be bubbling up here as we head into November and a midterm election. But North Carolina continues to see dramatic growth among unaffiliated voters. You know, this is a trend that's been going on. But a new data that Carolina Journal reported on nearly seven out of ten new registrations during the latest reporting period were unaffiliated seven out of ten. That's a huge number. Political analysts are saying that several factors are really contributing to the tend, among them North Carolina's semi open primary system. So our semi open primary system allows unaffiliated voters to choose either party. So if you're unaffiliated, you can go to the voting booth in the primary and you can pull a Democrat ballot, or you can pull a Republican in most elections, and it reduces the practical incentive to register with the party right, so if you can vote for either party in the primary, you know, folks are deciding they just would rather be unaffiliated. And that shift has really been building for years. Unaffiliated voters surpassed Republicans in total registrations back in twenty seventeen, and then unaffiliated voters exceeded Democrats in twenty twenty two. Since twenty twenty so just in the last six years or so, about twenty thousand more registered Democrats than Republicans have changed their affiliation to unaffiliated. So twenty thousand more Democrats became unaffiliated than Republicans. So the trend Republicans seem to be kind of even though their numbers are climbing. They seem to be sort of leveling off. The percentage of the electorate is staying roughly the same, even though their you know, numbers are climbing. Democrats are seeing more of a dip, more folks switching to unaffiliated. We have Doctor Andy Jackson said he'll be joining us later this week. Said that the rapid growth and unaffiliated registrations in North Carolina is expanding population or seeing stability among the Republicans, not so much among the Democrats. So in addition to the state budget, the governor. Governor Stein has also signed twelve bills into law this past week, vetoing one, vetoing one on homeless encampments. The legislation would have provided unauthorized camping or sleeping on most public property. They're coming back July twenty seventh, I believe, and I think that there is some speculation that they may override. The legislature may override this. So the bill would allow local governments to permit established It would allow them to be permitted established designated camping areas if they think that there is not enough shelter space for homeless folks, But it allows unauthor it prohibits unauthorized camping or sleeping on public priper so like some of the homeless encampments, sidewalks, parks, government buildings, public right of ways, and then those designated locations would be required to provide sanitation, restroom facilities, running water, security, drug free zone. Some of the language in this bill is important to this because it is crafted to allow municipalities who have limited resources to draw down some federal grants. Because the federal grant programs require these these encampments or these you know, sleeping facilities to homeless facilities to be certified drug free and safe. So supporters say the bill was designed to help North Carolina municipalities qualify for these federal grants. So that's something to think about as they go back through. Governor Stein said, look, it wasn't written well, it's it's it was poorly designed. It doesn't it doesn't provide additional money, even though the federal grants would be the money link in that. But supporters say that the state budget also significantly increases money for involuntary commitment, behavioral health services, things that kind of overlap with homelessness, and so they say that VETO the VETO delays their efforts. That governor signs veto delays their efforts to try and enact some help for folks who are living in these encampments and the treatment. And then while lawmakers have completed work on the state body, the legislative session is not over. It feels like it is because we've been talking about this for a long time, but they are scheduled to come back July twenty seventh to address some sort of unfinished business. We're gonna have a lot more information, including what is the latest on these teen takeovers. Charlotte is going to address this, Raleigh is dealing with it too. David Larson's going to be going to be coming in joining us in the next hour. All right. For over a year now, you've heard me talking about Create a Video. Great local company in mint Hill that has helped more than two million families preserve their memories by turning old photos via chess tapes, film reels, and slides into lasting keepsakes. Now creative videos helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. 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Check out Group travel Videos dot com. That's Group travel Videos dot com. Or call seven O four eight four six seventy eight seventy extension two O six. And when you do that, ask for Katie. But Pete, can I just email? Well, yes you can. You can email Katie Katie at group travel videos dot com. Group travel videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. Looking forward to spending the rest of the hour with you. I'm Donna King from Carolina Journal filling in for Pete Calender today on the Pete Calendar Show. We want to hear from you. Gu us a call at seven zero four five seven zero one zero seven nine. Also, you can give us. A text the WBT text line seven zero four five seven zero one zero seven nine. Text line is driven by Liberty Buick GMC. So, if you've been paying attention to these teas takeovers, know that Charlotte City Council's Safety Council Committee is going to hold a special meeting Tuesday tomorrow to consider some changes to the city's Youth Ordinance Youth Protection Ordinance. Trying to figure out what to do about these public safety concerns about team takeovers, Raley is struggling with it had a big one over the fourth of July weekend. What do we do about large gatherings like this with minors and violence that has been happening. Joining us now, David Larson, managing editor of Carolina Journals, on the line with me, So. What do you think about this? David? It is unnerving to see these massive crowds and the public safety threat that they might pose. Yeah, I think it's the unpredictability of it to a agree that you know, a lot of people show up. You know, often it's in a very public place, a very crowded place on a major event like Fourth of July. People they were coming to Briar Creek, which is a popular area right kind of between Durham and Raleigh, and about three thousand us stowed up. They had kind of linked up on social media and not a lot of you know, you know, you know foresight that this was about to happen, and so it took a lot of people by surprise. And then you know, that took off and went to they left there and went to Glenwoods South, another very popular, even more popular part of the Raleigh area. And you know, it's something that can be pretty pretty shocking to people. They're they're, you know, expecting to have a nice time at a restaurant, maybe have a couple of drinks, and then they see, I mean, they had to shut down these restaurants and hide. The workers were barricading doors and people you know not wanting to come back. I saw a lot of comments like that, so you know, it can just kind of form on the social media sites or you know, apps, and then then all of a sudden, you're dealing with something that appears, uh not too dislike a riot, right. Right, Charlotte's going through the same thing. You know, Raleigh really struggled with us. I think they had something like eleven nine to eleven arrests for this, because you're always going to draw some bad actors when you have such a large group in Charlotte said that they've seen some real increase in unsupervised minors and uptown h and and you know sometimes these gatherings have fights or shootings. Is that is the solution a curfew? Because there's also you know, some of these fundamental rights to gather and and uh you know and be out there and and do we just not have enough for teens to do that. They're all gathering and it's drawing some of those who might be prone to violence. I don't know, It's kind of unfortunate because you have a lot of people who want kids to get out more. You know, back when when you or I were coming up, you know Gen X kind of era and late millennials or you know, we people were we always mentioned, oh yeah, everybody was out and about much more. And so we want sure to give teenagers kind of the opportunity to have that kind of childhood where they can wander around and have some experiences beyond just sitting at home looking at screens. But at the same time, if there's situations like this, people start to think maybe the opposite, maybe we need to really restrict teenagers. And so there's been talk about curfews in a lot of cities that you know, it's unfortunate because there's a lot of good kids out there that are going to get you know, they're going to have plans they wanted to do and things get together on a Friday or Saturday. And if there's curfews, they're going to apply to everybody. And and so it is unfortunate. But I mean there's there's not a lot of answers to how to how to stop something like that. Yeah, I mean there's two things that come to mind. First, individual private businesses, can you know some of them Birkdale Village Camp North End, they've all started to impose a six pm curfew in the Charlotte area. But also where what are the parents in all of this. I mean, I tracked my kids ridiculously, and I know that. You know, everybody says, I'm you know, you're hovering, You're a helicopter parent. I just need to know where they are. I feel like they're just exposed to things that we were never exposed to. But I have to wonder, when you have five thousand kids gathering downtown in the middle of the night of in Raleigh, that's five thousand, ten thousand parents, you don't know where the kids are. I just don't understand that that that effort. I mean, you've got little kids, you know. Can you picture not knowing where they are in the middle of the night, you know, ten years from now. Well, I think part of it is just opportunity too. I mean, back in our day, we could call one person and say, or one person at a time they meet over there, and you could get a big gathering of teenagers, but it could only probably grow so big. Now they have these apps where you know, within a minute, everybody sees it's like a perfect storm for organizing rowdy youth. You know, they can oh, we're all at Briar Creek, three thousand people. But we're heading to Glenwood South, and then five thousand more comes. Now they have eight thousand. That just wasn't possible. I mean, so I don't think, you know, my my parents had a good idea where I was, or you know, a lot of teams back in the seventies, eighties, nineties, their parents probably didn't know where they were, but it wasn't They didn't really have the opportunity to create that kind of sudden, uh, you know, event like that. But I do think the parents are maybe the leverage point in that, you know, if you're gonna have somebody be able to have the kind of leverage over over the teams. I mean, because you do have juvenile records get expunged, and and you know, there's there's not always a way to charge a bunch of teams in the same way you would as an as an adult. But maybe at least there could be something with you know, finds on parents whose children damaged property, you could you could try to leverage that end of it. Doana King from the Carolina Journal sitting in for Pete Calendar today on the Pete Calendar Show. Thank you for joining us on this Monday, July thirteenth in the afternoon. Hope you're saying dry. We've had a lot of weather lately, but we also want to hear from you in case you want to get way in. We've been talking a little bit about teen tokeovers. Next up, we're going to be talking about a new bill that sets drug free zones and allows municipalities to ban unauthorized public camping or kind of homeless encampments. We're seeing that in the Charlotte area, certainly in the Raleigh area. Here's our call in number seven zero four five seven zero one zero seven nine. You can also text us seven zero four five seven zero one zero seven nine. WBT text line is driven by Liberty Buick gmc so the bill we're talking about. David Larson from Carolina Journal, the managing editor over here, is joining us. We're talking about Houseville four thirty seven drug free Zones on author rise public camping. It creates a limited framework for cities municipalities to regulate to establish regulated camping sites under state oversight. It has a certification process for drug free zones around homeless shelters service providers, but it would also prohibit local governments from allowing unauthorized public camping, sleeping on public property, sidewalks, parks, public buildings, that kind of thing. David Larson, Carolina Journal, Thanks for sticking with us through the break there. Tell me what you think about this, What are you hearing about this bill and what the chances are that the legislature could override Governor Stein's veto. Yes, thanks Donna for having me over to another segment. But yeah, so this bill, after Governor Stein decided to sign twelve bills and curiously enough he decided to veto this one. I think it would have a pretty good chance of being overridden. Though, so the legislature right now is adjourned until the end of the month and then they might not have any vote at the end of the months to to override any outstanding vetos. But I think if you know, if afterwards they when they do have an opportunity to do so, I think it could pretty easily. Because there's there's five Democrats and the two unaffiliated over there in the Charlotte area that lost their primaries as Democrats and switched over to unaffiliated. So all seven of those non Republicans voted for it, and and you know, they only need you know, a voter to generally from non Republicans, so that would be I believe, you know, they they could override that. They're they're very close to that, you know, veto proof super majority. They just need a voter too, so that that's on that side, you know, in terms of it's likelihood, you know, it passed with that bipartisan vote, and then it would have enough assuming everybody stays on and and keeps the same vote. Sure. Sure. So one of the things under this bill that local government, say you know, the city Charlotte, or you know a lot of the smaller municipalities that are dealing with us, you know those out west, that kind of thing. Local governments could establish designated camping areas if they determined that they are insufficient shelter beds available for the local homeless population. Those designated sites, you couldn't they couldn't be there for more than one year, and they would have to be states certified before they could become operational. Part of that certification process would be that they know it's drug free, that they know that it's safe. One of the one of the bill sponsors, said that in vetoing this bill, that this that Governor Stein allows the state to leave money on the table in the form of federal grants because that there are federal grant money available to help municipalities who just simply don't have the resources to deal with homelessness. It would allow allow them to draw down some federal grant money to help UH if they had this certification process in place. You know, there's also one of the one of the objections that Stein had was said that there was no money in this for for homelessness, and that there's not it's poorly written, that kind of thing, one of the and he also pointed out that if the criminal liability that it contains criminal liability for those who seek treatment and against the people or organizations churches that are setting these up, if there is drug use. Or violence in them. Are those concerns or do you think this is something we may see either overridden and corrected later at another bill. Yeah, I mean, I think it the crimes that were there seemed to be not really an imposition on the local governments too much. For example, you know, they're they're prohibited from allowing camping, but it doesn't necessarily, you know, mandate a certain level of enforcement of that law. They just they can't have that as as an allowed activity to do camps. I don't know in terms of an unfunded mandate. They it would just it would be on the book says as against law. And it does seem like a fairly reasonable law in my take in terms of it wouldn't allow public camping, which is taken as to mean uh, sleeping overnight in a tent or structure, on sidewalks, parks, right of ways, so places that you know people would be passing through on a sidewalk or in a park. You know, So it seems like that would that would make sense to most people. I believe that, you know, that's not something they want to see when they walk down the sidewalk have to go around that. And the same thing with the drug use, and you know, it created a Class E felony for drug use and a homeless delta, and you know, I think that is part of why you don't see the unsheltered homeless take those available spots, because often there's many available spots in homeless shelters, and yet though the group they call the unsheltered homeless will choose not to take those in those feets to sleep outside because there are rules involved in being at the shelter. So I think in a way, you could see this bill as kind of steering people off of the streets and to the shelters, and then also steering people off of drugs in general, off out of the lifestyle of sleeping on the streets and doing drugs, because it doesn't really leave that open path because they can't be on the streets, they have to go to the shelter, but they can't use drugs drugs at the shelter. So kind of forces them, in a lot of the unsheltered homeless, into a position where they have to leave that lifestyle pretty much. Sure. Sure, so we're talking about the House bill, House Bill four point thirty seven Drug freezens Erstein vetoing at SAM on our text line, asked why Governor Stein decided to veto SAM, he said that it didn't contain money to address homelessness and that he felt like it was poorly written it needed some tweaking. I expect that it could pass a veto override if that happens here at the end of July. All right, Certainly, our thoughts are with our neighbors to the south. In South Carolina after the sudden death over the weekend of Senator Lindsey Graham. If you haven't heard yet, it appears that Senator Graham likely died after an a or to tear. Medical examiners are saying now and now Governor McMasters is going to be deciding who will take his place, and then a primary in November to replace him. Graham really became one of Donald Trump's closest allies after running in the twenty sixteen primary as an opponent of the president. So you know, it's something that this has been coming for a while, and he really bec cam became a really trusted advisor in foreign policy, hawkish on his view on how the United States military could become a force for peace in the world, and who was coming from a visit to Ukraine. Certainly a loss for North Carolina, I mean for South Carolina and the country after spending thirty years in public office. So we'll be thinking about him and his family and South Carolina as we figure out what the next steps are to find out who's going to be replacing him on Capitol Hill. Meantime, here in North Carolina, CNBC has once again ranked North Carolina among the top in the top state in the nation for business. So last year we were number one, this year we're number two. So North Carolina CNBC is placing us at number two for business in twenty twenty six. This is the sixth consecutive year that our state has finished first or second in the rankings. Now we do drop one spot, but we're still continuing to rank in the top for nationally. For economic performance. We also scored high for workforce, technology, and innovation, access to capital, all very important things here in the city of Charlotte and across the state. Supporters say that North Carolina's economic approach is really just the last decade of tax reforms, regulatory changes, pro growth, state policy are really the reason the state has continued to attract new business and new residents. Seems like more and more every other week. But CNBC's ranking also pointed out areas where they say North Carolina faces some challenges. They said that the state saw declines and categories like education, infrastructure, business friendliness, quality of life, and cost of living. Cost of living certainly mean we're all seeing it. We're seeing housing costs going up, and certainly some of those things. But it all comes as these rankings all come as state leaders are making decisions on issues that will determine whether our state can keep pace with our growth. Preparing teachers, managing healthcare costs, creating a freer market for our healthcare system, preserving farmland. Can we feed our people? That is a huge issue going forward for our big agriculture industry. And how do we maintain the infrastructure brids, roads, bridges and roads and all of these things that we need for a growing population, particularly in Charlotte and the surrounding areas. As folks grow around Charlotte, around Raleigh, certainly down East down in New Hanover County, how do we make sure that our infrastructure can keep up. So the newly enacted state budget addresses. That one thing that farm land issue forty nine million dollars for farmland preservation over the next two years. They're saying to protect farms from residential and commercial development. Yeah, that's something that we've got to talk about. What do we do about housing affordability? If you build more houses, will the prices go down? Will we not be able to maintain farmland or feed our folks if we do allow it. These open spaces rural communities are really impacted by measures like this. Another another major policy decision that we've seen in the last ten days or so is North Carolina's future in our public schools. A growing economy really requires a strong workforce and that starts with classrooms with qualified teachers. So the new state budgets has some changes to teacher licensure requirements. We're going to be talking a lot more about that in the next hour, so please stick around here with the Pete Calendar Show and we're going to be talking about all of those changes plus a lot more. I'm Donna King filling in for Pete Calendar on the Pete Calendar Show, and we're going to be talking about everything that your state government is doing to save you money and how they're going to spend what they have. All Right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepeatclendarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening and break anything while I'm gone h