RALEIGH – The Asheville Civic Center is deteriorating and has lost nearly $1 million a year since 2000, prompting the city to convene a task force to find a solution. According to two John Locke Foundation analysts, the task force should focus on the most obvious solution: selling the Asheville Civic Center to the private...
RALEIGH – The Public School Forum’s annual Local School Finance Study provides little useful information for policymakers regarding funding disparities and educational equity in North Carolina, according to two analysts with the John Locke Foundation. Lindalyn Kakadelis, a former schoolteacher and member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, directs JLF’s school-reform project, the North Carolina...
RALEIGH – As North Carolina policymakers and analysts prepare for a major debate on reforming the state tax code, a new report from the John Locke Foundation calls into question the value of state estimates of “tax expenditures” that could be eliminated to raise additional revenue. Joseph Coletti, a fiscal policy analyst at the Raleigh-based...
RALEIGH – Two years ago President George W. Bush signed legislation that made tax-free “health savings accounts” possible. With many private businesses embracing HSAs as an alternative to traditional insurance arrangements, a new report from the John Locke Foundation urges the General Assembly to offer HSAs to North Carolina’s teachers and state employees. The cost...
RALEIGH – Business leaders in North Carolina increasingly think public policy in the state is headed in the wrong direction. That’s according to findings of a newly released survey of state business executives conducted for the Center for Local Innovation, a special project of the Raleigh-based John Locke Foundation. A majority of the 635 business...
RALEIGH — Medical providers in North Carolina must receive permission from the state — called a certificate of need (CON) — to add services such as extra hospital beds or a new testing machine. According to new research from the John Locke Foundation, these regulations restrict competition and harm consumers. Dr. Roy Cordato, vice president...
RALEIGH — North Carolina is the only state in the nation that requires counties to pay a fixed percentage of Medicaid costs. The General Assembly’s own Blue Ribbon Commission on Medicaid Reform recommended capping and reducing counties’ contribution to Medicaid. A JLF Spotlight report shows how the Medicaid requirement burdens counties. Carolina’s counties spend up...
RALEIGH — Attorney General Roy Cooper recently filed a lawsuit against a gasoline distributor for alleged price fixing, but if state officials were that concerned with restraints against trade, they would eliminate or modify state government’s many anticompetitive policies, according to a new report by a John Locke Foundation analyst. Daren Bakst, legal and regulatory...
RALEIGH — The state legislature created the North Carolina Global Warming Commission this year and gave it a mandate to investigate the science and economic impact of climate change, but an analysis of the commission’s membership by the John Locke Foundation found only one climate scientist and no economists among the 16 current members. Six...
RALEIGH – This fall, the John Locke Foundation announced plans to bring its trademark array of research programs, publications, and events to Wilmington and Southeastern North Carolina. Now area residents have two more ways to tap into the resources of the state’s largest think tank. On Friday, the John Locke Foundation unveiled its latest website:...
RALEIGH – Gov. Mike Easley has announced a costly initiative to raise average teacher pay in North Carolina to “the national average and beyond,” but a preliminary analysis by the John Locke Foundation shows that the state’s average teacher pay, when properly measured, already ranks 11th in the nation and exceeds the national average by...
RALEIGH – Wake County should not replace the North Wake landfill, closing in 2007, with a new county-owned facility, according to the author of a new analysis published Monday by the John Locke Foundation. Michael Sanera, local-government analyst and research director with the Raleigh-based think tank, wrote a Spotlight briefing paper on the scheduled close...