North Carolina editorial roundup

Recent editorials from North Carolina newspapers:

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Oct. 12

The News & Observer of Raleigh on the state Supreme Court election:

When you take a seat on the state Supreme Court, you aren’t simply a judge, you’re a justice. That title would be especially fitting for Anita Earls.

Earls has sought justice, particularly for the poor, through most of her professional life. She has served as an attorney with the University of North Carolina’s Center for Civil Rights and later with the civil rights advocacy organization she created, the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

Earls, 58, of Durham, represented plaintiffs who challenged the state’s heavily gerrymandered redistricting maps and others who sued to overturn new state restrictions on voting, including a requirement that voters present a photo ID from a narrow list of valid IDs. Federal courts found for the plaintiffs in both cases, saying the maps were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders and the new election law sought to suppress the black vote.

Now Earls, a Democrat, is seeking to unseat Justice Barbara Jackson, 56, a Raleigh Republican who has served on the state’s Supreme Court since 2011. It is the only seat on the seven-member court up for election. Democrats obtained a 4-3 majority in 2016 with the election of Democrat Mike Morgan. Raleigh attorney Chris Anglin, 32, who in June switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, is also running, but without the support of his adopted party. Anglin says he wants to give moderate Republicans a choice while Republican leaders charge that his real aim is to split the Republican vote to Earls’ benefit.

Regardless of any political gamesmanship, Earls is the best choice to serve on the state’s highest court on the strength of her credentials alone. A graduate of Williams College and Yale Law School, Earls’ resume includes, in addition to her advocacy work, 10 years in private practice, two years as a deputy U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights and two years on the state Board of Elections.

Earls’ commitment to justice goes deeper than her legal work. Her brother and only sibling was stabbed to death by a woman in 2006 in Washington state. The woman was charged, but the charges were dropped. When Earls, who is biracial, gathered evidence against the woman and urged the district attorney to go forward with the case, she says she was told that the small, rural county wasn’t inclined to take on the expense of a murder trial, especially when it was highly unlikely that a jury would convict a white woman for stabbing a black man.

Being denied justice for her brother, Earls says, deepened her resolve to gain it for others. She founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice the following year.

Republicans argue that Earls’ advocacy weighs against her becoming a justice, a role in which one is expected to be dispassionate and open-minded. Earls says that’s a hollow objection. “Any lawyer who has been litigating is an advocate,” she says. “The only difference is who my clients were.”

Earls also notes that she showed judicial independence as a member of the State Board of Elections. She voted in 2009 to refer the board’s probe of alleged campaign finance violations by former Democratic Gov. Mike Easley to a prosecutor. Easley subsequently pleaded guilty to a felony.

Jackson has been a capable and collegial jurist on the great majority of cases the court decides unanimously, but in those with high political stakes, she has reliably sided with her fellow Republicans.

In the challenge to the state’s redistricting maps, she twice voted with the then 4-3 Republican majority to uphold the maps. The U.S. Supreme Court vacated both rulings.

In the challenge to state funding for school vouchers - a program strongly backed by Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger - Jackson joined a 4-3 Republican majority in 2015 that reversed Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood’s ruling against the program. Hobgood found that giving state funds to private schools without any accompanying standards violated the state Constitution in seven ways. The Supreme Court’s Republican majority nonetheless tortured the law to justify the program.

Jackson, a former Court of Appeals judge, stresses her experience on the court and notes that unlike Earls, “I won’t have a learning curve.” That may be true in technical and procedural aspects, but in terms of justice for the poor and people of color, a new Justice Earls could be the one teaching the court.

Online: https://www.newsobserver.com/

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Oct. 15

The Fayetteville Observer on river pollution during storms:

Hurricane Florence turned the Cape Fear River into more of an open sewer than it already was. The heavy rains and flooding added human waste, livestock waste, industrial waste, petrochemical runoff and other hazardous substances to a river that was already profoundly compromised by the waste streams that were somehow allowed by law.

The extent of the river pollution raises serious public policy questions that need to be addressed. It is urgent and procrastination should be punishable by losses at the polls.

We’ve heard a great deal about the problems caused by massive amounts of animal waste from the pork and poultry industries, which annually raise millions of hogs and tens of millions of chickens and turkeys in this region. Both use primitive technology for waste disposal and have been reluctant to upgrade to safer disposal solutions that are readily available but more expensive than old fashioned open cesspools and piles of poultry litter. The problem is compounded by the location of many of these factory-scale farms in flood plains, where they are vulnerable, especially to epic floods like those brought by hurricanes Floyd, Matthew and Florence.

Tighter regulation is needed and some of those factory farms need to be moved to higher ground. Gov. Roy Cooper’s proposed Florence relief package includes funding for farm buyouts and relocations.

While state lawmakers and regulators need to find better solutions to those problems, they turn out to be only one part of the danger we face from the growing number of flooding events that appears to be North Carolina’s new normal. Even more contaminants were released into the Cape Fear and its tributaries by sources we had previously believed to be under control: our municipal sewer systems.

As an Observer story reported Sunday, nearly 40 million gallons of untreated sewage was discharged into the river basin after Florence struck, as municipal sewer systems were unable to cope with the flooding. According to state records, the raw or partially treated sewage was spilled from systems from Greensboro down to New Hanover County. Another 2.1 million gallons of sewage were spilled into the Lumber River basin. Here in Fayetteville, about 6.4 million gallons were spilled from the Public Works Commission’s sewage processing systems.

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It should be clear to all our regulators and public officials that we need to make further investments in our sewage-treatment facilities to prevent this kind of toxic release in future storms. It’s going to cost money, but considering the public health risks, we don’t have much choice.

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Online: https://www.fayobserver.com/

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Oct. 14

Winston-Salem Journal on climate change:

After Hurricane Florence and Tropical Storm Michael left their trails of death and destruction across North Carolina, it’s time to clean up, repair, help those in need and move forward. But it also should be time to think about what environmental lessons these powerful storms leave behind. Maybe we can be smarter as we face the future.

One thing should be clear: When people in North Carolina, especially legislators and government officials, wrestle with issues such as how to handle hog waste and coal ash, how much development to allow on beaches and in other vulnerable areas and whether to promote the use of cleaner energy, the debates aren’t just abstract discussions about politics, money or being business friendly. They can also be about life and death and whether our way of doing things is sustainable.

It’s folly to ignore solid science about climate change when warming is already having noticeable effects, as the recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made more clear than ever. Among its dire projections, we can expect more frequent major hurricanes that, like Florence, are difficult to predict and extremely wet.

It’s folly, in other words, to continue the policies adopted in 2012, when the legislature passed a law ordering state and local agencies to disregard scientific models showing expected sea-level rise when setting coastal development policies. As a result, coastal development has boomed.

North Carolina could help slow climate change by adopting progressive policies such as encouraging clean cars and alternative power sources. The state also can be smarter about planning for the probability of major storms and flooding.

The full extent of the environmental damage from Florence will be discovered as we see how badly the state’s rivers, sounds and ground water have been polluted. …

Another hard lesson is that floodplain maps are outdated. Part of the problem is development - as open land is paved for development, more water runs off rather than soaking into the ground. Combine that with more frequent and wetter storms…

Many homes flooded by Florence did not have flood insurance. People who live in recognized floodplains are usually required to buy flood insurance, but many other people can and probably should.

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Even if we do everything possible in North Carolina, it might not be enough. Climate change is a global problem that requires a global response. …

But we’ve still got to do everything we can, including voting for candidates who take the problem seriously.

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Online: https://www.journalnow.com/