“It was just sitting there, so I took it.”

The co-chair for the Senate appropriations committee, Linda Garrou, might be pulling a fast one. As “the Senate’s chief budget writer,” according to the Winston-Salem Journal, she quietly inserted a study proposal into the Senate budget for shifting the administration of UNC-TV from the university system’s general administration to the UNC School for the Arts, which just happens to be in her Forsythe County district. The provision was never publicly discussed before the budget vote.

Spokespeople for both UNC-TV and the School for the Arts expressed complete surprise at the action, and UNC-TV soundly condemned the idea, calling it “ill-conceived and unworkable.”