WCNC Television picked up on a recent John Locke Foundation report criticizing Salisbury for entering the fiber-optic cable market. A television crew interviewed John Hood this week for that report. Meanwhile, WBTV expressed interest in Jeff Taylor’s Carolina Journal article exposing the questionable math involved in former N.C. House Speaker Jim Black’s payment of a $500,000 fine in his corruption case. On the newspaper front, the Morganton News Herald picked up Carolina Journal columnist Andy Taylor‘s recent Carolina Beat supporting merit pay for teachers, while a letter writer in the Belmont Banner News picked up comments from JLF adjunct scholar David Hartgen questioning plans for the Garden Parkway road. (“One transportation expert said the road does too little and costs too much, at $1.25 billion.”
And “‘this is a road I have serious questions about,’ said David Hartgen, emeritus professor of transportation at UNC Charlotte. ‘I have seen no evidence this will reduce congestion.'”) In the General Assembly, Legal and Regulatory Policy Analyst Daren Bakst wrote a letter on behalf of 15 groups asking lawmakers to consider legitimate annexation reform before they adjourn this year’s session. Meanwhile, Policy Analyst and Research Editor Jon Sanders offered his thoughts to the Heartland Institute’s Environment and Climate News about a new study suggesting efforts to promote a “green” economy kill more jobs than they create.