Recent editorials from North Carolina newspapers:
___
Nov. 13
The Charlotte Observer on jailing the poor:
The poorest among us should not be responsible for funding the criminal justice system, nor should they be punished simply for being poor. That message is beginning to resonate in both Carolinas but needs to become a principle upon which more court officials and legislators abide.
In Mecklenburg County, judges are working with Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Debt Initiative to ensure that people who don’t belong in jail are no longer sent and stuck there because they are unable to pay fines on charges that aren’t supposed to include jail time. As The Observer’s Michael Gordon reported this weekend, Mecklenburg judges will start weighing defendants’ incomes and expenses, their housing status, and whether they can afford to pay for a lawyer. Given that more than half of defendants in North Carolina in non-traffic criminal cases were declared indigent last year - and that taxpayers pay the hefty bill to jail people who don’t belong there - the move is a wise one.
It goes against recent actions taken by the North Carolina General Assembly, which has made it harder for judges to use their discretion to find non-jail options for poor defendants. Legislators have increased court fees by 400 percent over the past two decades, and too many state agencies have come to rely upon the $700 million they generate for the general fund. That’s why it’s going to be difficult to reverse course. But other N.C. counties should follow Mecklenburg’s lead, even if it means more judges get placed on what court insiders call the “List of Shame” by refusing to sit idly while the state encourages a debtors’ prison. Judges should be proud to be named to the legislatively mandated list, ensuring fair treatment of the most vulnerable. They should not feel shame for doing the right thing.
South Carolina Supreme Court Justice Donald Beatty recently did the right thing when he removed an unfair burden from the poorest residents. Lower-level courts in the state had routinely been treating defendants unfairly, particularly those who could neither pay court fines nor afford their own attorney. The result was that thousands of people were rounded up and jailed over misdemeanors or for not showing up to court over traffic tickets. Many poor people were held responsible without ever being told that they had a right to an attorney. Others were jailed without evidence when they didn’t show up in court. Those decisions not only hurt them but made it harder for those on the margins to secure jobs. Going forward, they will be given payment plan options and be made fully aware of their rights; jail will become the final option and only when necessary.
We should have never built a justice system that routinely treated the downtrodden unfairly so towns and cities could fund their growing budgets. Municipalities, courts and other government agencies must find constitutionally sound revenue sources and stop preying on the poor.
Online: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/
___
Nov. 14
The News & Observer of Raleigh on North Carolina’s tracking of harassment:
The reports of sexual harassment over many years by a Hollywood mogul and allegations about a front-running politician in Alabama are only the latest such stories, as it seems rarely a week goes by without some new disclosures by the famous and infamous.
But The News & Observer’s Will Doran reports that workplace sexual harassment and allegations of it in state government in North Carolina are hard to track. There’s no current system, statewide, for knowing how workers are disciplined and how charges are reported. For one thing, such allegations are coded for reporting purposes as “misconduct,” which could be harassment or could not be. So if someone wants to track, through the Office of Administrative Hearings, some harassment case or its appeal, there’s no use of terms like “sexual harassment.”
It’s entirely possible that somewhere in the state government bureaucracy, there are people aware of how such allegations are becoming more prominent in the world at large - and sadly, how too-common they appear to be - and those people are working on a more efficient and more complete way of reporting and tracking such allegations when they occur in government offices. Certainly a better system is overdue.
The state’s human resources rules, to be fair, do address “discrimination and harassing conduct” and talk about “sexual harassment, discrimination or retaliation,” and that’s good. But the different ways agencies handle the issue can be a problem, and the rules of reporting need to be more uniform.
Online: http://www.newsobserver.com/
___
Nov. 12
The Fayetteville Observer on news surrounding GenX:
There seems no end to the recurring bad news about GenX, the possibly human carcinogen that’s been emitted in various ways for years from the Chemours plant on the Cumberland-Bladen county line. The chemical is used in the manufacture of some coatings that are made at the plant, including Teflon. Chemours is a spinoff of DuPont, which built the chemical plant near the Cape Fear River.
GenX has been found to cause some forms of cancer in animals but hasn’t been definitively linked to cancer in humans. There are no specific limits for its discharge into waterways or in drinking water, although state and federal regulators are developing guidelines. GenX is a comparatively recent substitute for another compound, called C8, that was long used in Teflon. DuPont faced court action in West Virginia for spills of C8 from its facilities there and settled a class-action lawsuit for more than $670 million for polluting the Ohio River.
As each week goes by, more GenX problems are discovered in this region. In the past few weeks, more tainted wells around the Chemours Fayetteville Works were discovered. GenX has been found in several spring-fed lakes both north and south of the plant, including the lake at Camp Dixie. And the state Department of Environmental Quality last week revealed that Chemours appears to have had a GenX spill into the Cape Fear River in early October. Monitors discovered a significant spike in the chemical in river water. DEQ officials said they will take enforcement action. The spill may be a violation of a partial consent order in which Chemours agreed to stop discharging GenX into the Cape Fear.
It appears that the state will be residents’ best hope for action against the company’s pollution. A Senate committee last month held hearings on the nomination of Michael Dourson, a longtime chemical industry consultant, to lead EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Dourson is a former consultant for the chemical industry who was involved in the West Virginia C8 case. He recommended allowing much higher levels of the chemical in the water supply than either the EPA or state regulators wanted. “Dourson has made a career as a hired gun for the chemical industry, helping clients play down concerns over toxic chemicals with known and potentially severe health effects,” said the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the groups opposing Dourson. “If confirmed to the top job at the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Dourson will be regulating his old industry friends.”
And it appears Dourson will be getting some North Carolina company in Washington. Former DEQ Secretary Donald van der Vaart has been named to the EPA’s science advisory board by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Van der Vaart led the DEQ under former Gov. Pat McCrory and he made clear from the outset that he was there to look out for industry’s interests and not to protect the health and safety of North Carolina residents. He echoed Pruitt in calls to restrict the EPA’s activities. The EPA’s new leadership is making it clear that it has little interest in controlling pollution and is dedicated to protecting the industries that may be emitting it.
Van der Vaart and one of his top deputies had until recently continued to work at high-level positions in DEQ and Gov. Roy Cooper had been unable to fire them. Van der Vaart has recently gone missing from his DEQ office and the state put him on “investigatory leave.” Pruitt is loading the EPA with former industry officials whose companies will benefit from lax federal regulation. This should be worrisome to anyone living around or downstream from the Chemours plant. It’s a sign that Washington isn’t likely to be much help with the GenX situation.
That leaves the ball largely in the DEQ’s court. A lot of North Carolinians are counting on a continuing vigorous state response.
Online: http://www.fayobserver.com/
Please read our comment policy before commenting.