Research Brief

Yesterday, I saw a headline: “Cumberland County agrees to fund share of baseball stadium.”  I rolled my eyes, but I’d known this was coming and it was late in…

As I reported in a previous Legal Update, last year Chief Justice Mark Martin convened the North Carolina Commission on the Administration of Law & Justice to evaluate…

It seems that politicians and the media can’t stop talking about teacher pay. The claim that the average teacher salary will reach $50,000 this year has been the subject of…

This week, the News & Observer ran a piece titled, “Self-storage developers eye prime real estate in Wake.”  My first thought was that this sounded like good news.  Developers…

In the past, standard employment application forms almost always included a question asking about the applicant’s criminal record. Recently, however, some employers have begun using forms that do not ask…

It is well known that a huge part of the cost of labor for American business is health insurance. A small firm employing as few as 15 or 20 people…

The Henderson County website is currently displaying this lovely graphic on its homepage. Let’s start with things I like.  First, I’m a fan of charts and graphs.  I…

In 2017, a majority of North Carolinians who purchase health insurance on their own will have no choice but to pay their premiums to either Blue Cross and Blue Shield,…

Earlier this week, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction published the final 2015-16 student counts for all district and charter schools.  I used Average Daily Membership (ADM) data to…

North Carolina’s election laws haven’t fared very well lately in the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. On July 1st the Court struck down changes to Wake…