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Somewhere with a lot more tabs open. Create your first Monday agent in minutes at monday.com. It's 505 and welcome in to a Monday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT, I'm Nick Craig. Good Monday morning to you. Last week here on the Carolina Journal News Hour, we brought you details on a very interesting series of cases in front of the North Carolina Supreme Court that pit the Democrat governor in Josh Stein against the Republican-led General Assembly, in large part dealing with appointments across the state of North Carolina.
The most recent update we had last week dealt with some disagreements between the two parties as to whether to combine the cases, keep certain portions of it separate. It's kind of an interesting thing to discuss and bring us up to date on the latest. This morning, Mitch Koke from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, these are two different cases. And as you walked us through the details last week, there was some disagreement whether they should be combined entirely.
Maybe certain portions of one case should be combined into another. It was kind of an interesting thing to watch. What are you following as the latest? Yeah. That piece of the story has not yet been resolved, Nick, but the latest development, which is kind of important, is that the state Supreme Court signaled it is going to hear the oral arguments in this case in November.
A date has not been set as you and I are talking, but the earliest date that could happen based on the schedule that we see at the state Supreme Court is November 10th, which would be one week after the general election.
So this is not going to take place before the election, and we certainly won't see a resolution of these cases until 2027. And that would be the earliest, really, the Supreme Court could take as long as it wants. But no resolution of this case before the end of the year, and no oral arguments before voters go to the polls for the next election.
So that's the biggest development. The other thing that came out of some court orders that explained that we would have the oral arguments in November is that the court basically said to the parties on both sides, Governor Josh Stein on one side, Republican legislative leaders on the other side, hey, if you want to come up with some sort of arrangement of how you want to do the arguments, that's fine. We're going to give you a few days. days to come up with that arrangement. Tell us what you want to do.
Governor Stein had basically said, Look, there are two different types of arguments in these two cases. One involves appointments to boards and commissions and taking some appointments away from the governor or giving them to other people and whether that's something that's constitutional. And then the second issue was filling statewide judicial vacancies. Basically, what the challenged law says is that Governor Stein could no longer fill a vacancy on the state Supreme Court or the Court of Appeals with whoever he wants. He would have to choose from among three names submitted by the political party of the departing judge or justice.
So basically limiting his choices there. Stein said it would be wise to separate the two and have two separate arguments. The leaders of the legislature and also state treasurer Brad Briner, who is one of the parties in the case, said what the governor is proposing is too complicated. Let's either just lump the two cases together, have it be one case for purposes of oral arguments, and rather than having one hour of arguments, have two hours of arguments and kind of split the issues up that way, or just in the briefing, allow for some cross-references so there's no duplication. The state Supreme Court.
did not Make a decision one way or another on that, but basically said: look, if you all could come up with An arrangement that works for both of you will probably accept that. The court has already accepted a joint agreement that Stein's lawyers and the legislative lawyers had about the timing of the briefing in this case.
So they've already agreed on when the various briefs are going to be due, and the court accepted that.
So one suspects that if Stein's lawyers and the legislature's lawyers can come up with some sort of agreement about how they want to divvy up time and divvy up the issues for the oral arguments, the Supreme Court's probably going to be fine with that. Yeah, and as you just walked us through and as you same as you did last week, laying out some of the different sides as to how they want to move forward with these two different cases.
Some issues relatively similar, others a little bit different, especially when you get into some of those questions, as you noted, Mitch, about those judicial, statewide judicial vacancies that are very important and very influential here in the state of North Carolina. I guess if nothing happens, let's say these sides can't come to an agreement, we would just continue with, as we are right now, two separate cases that would have to be argued separately in front of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Yes, and what we do know is that they will be argued on the same day and back to back.
So even if they aren't lumped together, the Supreme Court said that they will be scheduled on the same day and they will be scheduled next to each other.
So there will be at least not a case where you'd have to argue one day and then a week or two later come back and argue some of the same arguments in a different case. They will be put together at least in the sense of being consecutively and on the same day. And it is probably good for all sides that that's going to happen because while they are two separate cases, there are some similarities in some of the arguments. And in fact, one of the things that the legislature's lawyers wrote a little bit of a jab at Stein was that Stein was the one who decided how to file these lawsuits. He, in one suit, lumped together judicial vacancies.
Changes to the Building Code Council and the appointment to the Utilities Commission. And that's one case. And then the other case is seven different state boards and commissions. The Utilities Commission piece, certainly, and maybe even the Building Codes Council piece, could have been with that other case dealing with boards and commissions. And that would have simplified things.
You would have had one case on appointments and another case on judicial vacancies, but that's not the way the governor went about it. And so I think the legislature was trying to get at the point that some of the confusion here is of the governor's own making.
Well, and so Mitch, let me ask you this. Are we splitting hairs at this point? I mean, if these cases are going to be argued on the same day, essentially back to back, and there will be the ability for some level of crossover with we don't need to re-explain the entirety of these arguments in these consecutive cases. Are we arguing semantics at this point? Or is this does combining these cases together and arguing them in one two-hour period, does that make any significant impact from your estimation?
It could have an impact in the sense that if the cases remain separate, then basically you have one case that's all about boards and commissions, and you're going to have an hour on that, and each side will have a half hour. And then on the other side, in the other case, you'll have. This building code council, utilities commission, and judicial vacancies all lumped together, and each side would have a half hour, and they'd have to decide how much do you want to talk about utilities commission and building code council, how much do you want to talk about judicial vacancies? I think the idea that was put forward initially by the governor and to some extent, but in a different way, also had some support from the legislature was to give the judicial vacancies issue a little bit more time than it would otherwise have. If you went with the proposal that was put forward by the legislators, the judicial vacancy piece would have a total of about 40 minutes.
Which would be much more than it would get. Under what's the status quo right now, because under the status quo, Each side would get 30 minutes, but... Only part of that would be for judicial vacancies, and that might end up only getting about 10 minutes apiece or 20 minutes.
So I think the main difference would be to emphasize a little bit more the judicial vacancies dispute, which I think I suggested when we talked about this last time, is probably the one that, on both sides of the table, is the most important because it's the one that really says. That you're going to change the way that an appointment is made in terms of. Is there going to be a political party element to it? Right now, if someone leaves the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court, the governor gets to appoint whoever. he or she, if we have another female governor, wants to appoint.
And there's no limitation. They're going to appoint someone from their own party. If you add this. Political element to it, that means that the voters' decision will remain in effect throughout the entire period of the term, which remember in a Judicial race when we're talking about statewide judicial race, it's an eight-year seat. And even though after an appointment they have to run again at the next The next cycle, you're talking about allowing the voters' political party preference to remain in effect.
Through in between entirely between the elections, rather than having the governor be able to step in and say, it doesn't matter to me that voters voted for a Republican, I'm putting in a Democrat, or vice versa. If you have a Republican governor, you couldn't come in and say, the voters wanted a Democratic judge, I'm going to put in a Republican. This would give the voters a greater say. Yeah, that is no question about it. The highest stakes discussion in here.
A couple of things that we'll be keeping an eye on. First, when exactly this date is going to be announced, we know it will be in November, but when exactly we'll be keeping an eye on that. And then, secondly, whether the lawmakers and the governor can come to an agreement as to how they want to argue this case as we approach that date in likely the month of November. We'll keep you up to date with all those details. We have continuing coverage over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com.
Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Hey, I've got the campaign brief ready, built from last quarter's data and the competitive landscape. Approved. Oh, agents, where would we be without you?
Somewhere with a lot more tabs open. Create your first Monday agent in minutes at Monday.com. Uh It's 521. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 FM, WBT turning our attention to some local news out of Asheville this morning. As Asheville police continues searching for suspects in a July the 19th downtown Biltmore Avenue mass shooting that killed two people and wounded seven others, Mayor Esther Mannheimer, a Democrat, is using the event to criticize North Carolina's firearm laws, arguing that recent legislative changes have made the community less safe, regardless of whether that legislation is actually in effect or not.
The comments came during a July the 24th press conference intended to update the public on the investigation as police reportedly emphasized repeatedly, rather, emphasized that the case remains active, identified several persons of interest, and continued to ask the public for help. To this point, after two people were shot and killed, seven others injured. No arrests have been made in connections with the shooting. Instead of announcing new investigation developments, much of the discussion shifted to gun policy after reporters asked whether the city had considered restrictions on firearms in bars or other public places. The mayor of Asheville and Esther Mannheimer pointed to Senate Bill 50, which we've talked about a lot here on the Carolina Journal News Hour, Freedom to Carry NC.
That is legislation that was approved by the General Assembly this year that would lower the minimum age for permitless concealed carry from 21 to 18. Governor Josh Stein vetoed the measure. Senate leaders have overridden that, but it has not been overridden in the House, meaning that even though the General Assembly approved the legislation, it is in fact not in effect here in North Carolina. The Asheville mayor said in part, when the governor was here last week, he talked about how he vetoed a bill. That would have allowed people as young as 18 to have concealed carry without a permit.
That was a law passed by our North Carolina legislature this year. The mayor argued that North Carolina has, quote, relaxed gun laws more and more and said that those policy decisions leave local governments with fewer options to respond to gun violence. The mayor went on to say, so when you have that kind of policy change happening on a state level, supported by the federal government, you leave it up to a community like this to try and deal with gun violence in our community, and that is what we are grappling with. Mannheimer, an attorney, also cited North Carolina's firearm preemption status, which generally prevents cities and counties and other municipalities from regulating firearms beyond authority granted by the North Carolina General Assembly. She went on to say, in addition, the state of North Carolina preempts local governments from Regulating where guns go for the most part.
She referenced legislation requiring local governments to allow firearms in certain areas, including things like public parks, saying that Asheville opposes the law but was required to comply. She concluded by expressing her own policy preference, saying in part, I think as a society, we've made a decision apparently collectively that we're going to allow pretty much anybody and everyone to carry a gun, and I think we're suffering the results of those decisions. According to the mayor, there saying, personally, I would like to see gun ownership and the ability to carry a gun greatly restricted. I don't think it makes a community safer. Again, regardless of some of the commentary there from the Democrat governor of Asheville, Senate Bill 50 is not law in North Carolina, and the argument there that it affected this mass shooting in Asheville back in mid-July is not backed up because, again, the legislation is not in effect.
While the governor stood on her, the mayor stood on her soapbox there. Police, however, described a very different set of circumstances surrounding the shooting. Interim Asheville Police Chief Jackie Stepp said that investigators believe the attack was a quote direct retaliatory act stemming from a July the 5th shooting that happened at an apartment complex in town. The interim police chief told reporters the evidence also strongly illustrates that this case is sadly the latest chapter in an ongoing Pattern of retaliatory violence that has been taking place across our community for some time. When asked whether the violence involved gangs, the intern police chief declined to characterize it that way, saying in part, I would say these are two groups of individuals.
I would say that there are ties to them knowing each other and committing ongoing retaliatory acts against one another.
So, not saying there is a gang violence involved, but describing gang violence. The intern police chief in Jackie Step also confirmed investigators recovered a Glock switch, which is an illegal conversion device that transforms a semi-automatic pistol into an automatic gun. According to the police chief, what a Glock switch does for those who don't know is it turns your weapon into a rapid-fire, high-capacity weapon, and that is what we saw here. We did recover one of those. She also said that the Bureau of Alcohol to Tobacco, firearms, and explosives.
That's the federal group known as the ATF, has been involved in the investigation from the start. The mayor's remarks highlight a broader political debate over firearm policy that extends beyond the facts of the Asheville investigation. Gun rights activists have continued to argue that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of people to be able to keep and bear arms. And in recent Supreme Court decisions, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, I should say, including the District of Columbia versus Heller, that was in 2008, and more recently, the North Carolina State Rifle and Pistol Association versus Bruin in 2022.
The courts have held that law-abiding citizens have a constitutional right to possess and carry firearms for self-defense, while also recognizing that governments may continue to prohibit firearm possession by convicted felons and other prohibited persons and regulate dangerous. Or unusual weapons. Police in the area have continued to urge anybody with information to contact the Asheville Police Department or submit anonymous tips through the department's mobile app as investigators continue to search for those responsible. With that, lawmakers are expected in Raleigh this week, where we could potentially see some movement on Senate Bill 50. The North Carolina House is expected to be back in Raleigh this week to take up multiple pieces of legislation, including a couple of what are called technical corrections to the state budget.
We'll have some details on that coming up here in just a couple of minutes. Also, dealing with a major voting bill that we covered in great detail last week, two different pieces of legislation that could make some changes to voting starting in 2027. And the veto override of Senate Bill 50 does remain on the House calendar. It has been there for months. Republican lawmakers still struggling to guard.
Garner enough support from members of the North Carolina House to override that veto and allow it to become law.
So busy week in Raleigh for the North Carolina House. We'll keep an eye on all of those details as we progress through the week. And as always, I'll keep you up to date over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com and right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Hey, before your Q3 call, I've got the campaign brief ready, built from last quarter's data and the competitive landscape. Great.
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Hmm, somewhere with a lot more tabs open. Create your first Monday agent in minutes at monday.com. It's 5:36. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT, I'm Nick Craig. A good Monday morning to you.
Over the last couple of weeks here on the Carolina Journal News Hour and over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com, we have continued to dig into details of a pretty massive $34.5 billion state budget here across the state of North Carolina, looking at a variety of different earmarks and state spending that is going to be taking place here in North Carolina for the years to come. One of the interesting things are these smaller dollar amounts that we continue to find as we dig through the massive state budget. To walk us through some details on a gated community that was slated to get $300,000. Colin Tierney, CarolinaJournal.com joins us this morning on the news hour. Colin, this is a major budget, $300,000 to a private gated community.
Tell us how you first found out about this. Yeah, Nick, thanks for having me on this morning. This is something that Dylan, who's one of the other interns at Carolina Journal, it's something that he and I have been working on for a couple of weeks now. When the budget came out, we sat down and we printed out all 727 earmarks in this year's state budget. We were just going through them one by one.
The vast majority of them are for a lot of local governments, for a lot of towns and counties, also a good number for local nonprofits. Overall, a lot of these earmarks are going to governments and organizations that are creating a lot of public benefit. And then we came across these two that were for the Carolina Lakes Property Owners Association, and we flagged them because it was kind of interesting that this gated community of 1,700 homes, seven lakes, they have a ton of amenities. They've got a marina, a beach, a clubhouse, a swimming pool, numerous athletic facilities. The list just goes on and on.
And so it's kind of interesting that this private community was receiving public funding. And so we just kind of wrote that down and then we wrote a story about it. One of the biggest questions we had is we wanted to know how they were going to spend the money. But of these 700, 227 earmarks at the state budget. It doesn't say who requested any of them, including the two for this community.
You know, it's important to note for those that are maybe just getting into North Carolina politics or relatively new to the state, these earmarks are what a lot of people would call in state government, Colin, taking home the bacon. You elect lawmakers to the General Assembly in a variety of different communities across the state. And one of the ways to continue to get elected is to bring things back to your community. And as you noted, a lot of that is in the form of funding for local governments and local programs, a very beneficial thing for the local areas and the lawmakers.
However, as we have continued to watch this play out over the last couple of weeks, and as you just detailed a little bit of, it's hard to argue that a private gated community of 1,700 homes is helping out the broader citizenry in the state of North Carolina. Right. And I don't think we were the only ones who felt that way either. Within just a few days of us putting that story up, that was on July 2nd. Just a couple of days later, we received messages from members of a private Facebook group who said that our story had been posted in the group and they were sending us screenshots of comments.
And in those comments, they were crediting Representative Joe Pike, who we later learned lived in the community. We were able to confirm that through multiple state and county records. And the community seemed very divided. Most of them didn't know that they were receiving these two earmarks until they read our story. And there were many who were thanking Representative Pike for, as one user put it, for going to bat for the community, like you were saying, Nick, bringing home the bacon.
And so there were a number of residents who were excited and happy about the money that their community was getting. But there were also a number who were questioning, kind of asking that same thing that we've been talking about. Why is this private community getting public funding? And so there was one member of the group who questioned whether it was a conflict of interest to have a state representative living in the community. Others who were saying, This would set a really bad precedent moving forward, really opening the door for any HOA, whether it's a gained community or not, across the state to receive funding like this in future budget cycles.
And so, I thought one of the interesting things here that when we were reading through a lot of these comments, one thing I do want to point out, though, is that Representative Pipe, we don't know for sure if he was the one who requested the funding or not. We, Dylan, and I reached out to his office multiple times by call and email, never received a response from him.
So, again, the only indication we have that he requested it is from the residents themselves. And, you know, I think the logical conclusion there would be Colin, his wife is the one that technically owns the property in that community. It would seem highly unlikely that another member of the North Carolina General Assembly would put this kind of money in the state budget to facilitate some of these amenity, I think, structure repair and some emergency shelter replacement, things in that community for people that do not live there and have really no vested interest at all. Correct, yeah. And that was one of the things that when Dylan and I were reading through the budget and these earmarks, it's pretty vague.
The first earmark was $160,000 for what they called emergency services needs. The budget didn't really say what those needs were. We learned through those private Facebook comments that those needs seemed to be installing a new gate at one of the entrances to allow emergency vehicles to have faster access to the community. Then the other $140,000 for what they called various needs that they said included replacing, repairing, and maintaining some shelters in the community. We learned through the Facebook comments that apparently at least one of the shelters had been closed for a long period of time now to what a resident described as safety hazards.
But one of the notable things that Dylan found on their website is that. Anyone in the community can rent that shelter for just $60 plus a $100 deposit. You know, and it's interesting when you look at the traditional structure of an HOA. In this case, it's an HOA plus a gated community. You listed off some of the amenities, which seem pretty high-class con.
I don't think most neighborhoods across the state of North Carolina have access to private beaches, RV parks, private disc golf, all the other amenities in this neighborhood. You know, HOAs typically charge a pretty hefty fee every month. That is one of the things that potentially a benefit of living in one of those areas. Yes, you pay for it, but you do get access to some of these amenities. And I think the logical question would be, why is the HOA, if there's issues with the gate and emergency responders or some of these structures, why are the HOA dues not funding this?
Why are taxpayers paying for it across the state? Right. That was something that we spoke to a couple of residents off the record who both said they pay around $900 anywhere to up to about $1,500 a year in dues to the HOA, depending on how close their property is to the lake itself. And it was really interesting in one of the Facebook comments, a member of that group seemed to suggest that the HOA had turned to the state. for this funding because they had repeatedly failed to try to raise dues.
So it seemed the indication there was that the board had requested the funding. There is a letter that the board sent out that we obtained a copy of where they say they did not know they were getting the funding until July 16th.
So that's almost two weeks after the budget was passed.
So a little bit of back and forth and disagreement between what residents are saying, what the board is saying. But it does seem pretty clear there that they've got some financial problems in this community. And it seems to indicate that the state might have been their way out. The Carolina Journal was the first to break this as we're joined this morning by Colin Tierney and his cohort in Dylan Combs, who first released this information and published it over at CarolinaJournal.com. Colin, this thing has picked up some wheels over the last couple of weeks as well.
The Senate in the session last week. The House expected back in Raleigh coming up here in the next couple of days. What's been the reaction from lawmakers in Raleigh, as I'm sure this story has been floating all throughout the chambers of the General Assembly? Yeah, last Tuesday evening, state House and Senate budget writers introduced a conference report to House Bill 562. They're now calling it the budget technical corrections modifications.
So, this is now the third budget technical corrections bill this month to make modifications to the budget. And this four-page bill includes language that will redirect the earmarks from the Carolina Lakes Property Owners Association to Harnett County instead. And the bill includes language that says the county can only use the money for quote any public purpose.
Now, we don't really know why they're redirecting the money. The legislation does not explain why lawmakers decided to change the recipient. Nick, like you mentioned, the Senate approved the conference report last week on july twenty ninth, and then the House is expected to take it up this week. Then it'll have to go to the governor. He'll have to sign it or veto it before this money could actually be clawed back and sent to the county instead.
Yeah, these budget technical corrections are a relatively common thing when you, as you mentioned, Colin, printed out all 700-plus pages of the budget and start combing through the details. It's inevitable that there will be a few things that need to be changed in there. We're seeing one of those things here. Let's talk about the transparency side of this. You're an intern over at the Carolina Journal, digging into some of these details.
Pretty fascinating that you're able to dig this up and bring this to light. And it seemingly obviously had an effect here on lawmakers because they're stripping that money out and giving it to the county itself. Yeah, honestly, when I think when Dylan and I wrote the story, we didn't expect it to really go anywhere. We were writing just about some of these earmarks, letting voters know and taxpayers know, like, hey, this information is in the budget. This is where some of your money is going.
We have questions about where it's going. You probably do too, but we don't really know who to ask those to because, like we were talking about earlier, we don't know who sponsors these earmarks. And so, one thing that Dylan and I wrote about in our first story is now former state representative Verla Insko. She was a Democrat who retired from the House a few years ago now. But she really led a push for more transparency and accountability in the earmarks process.
She introduced legislation back, I believe, in 2017, that would have asked state lawmakers to identify who requested each earmark. It didn't go anywhere. She tried to introduce it to the House rules. It was voted down. Sessions since then, other members, including I think most recently now former Senator Terrence Everett have introduced similar language as well.
But it's kind of an ongoing battle within the General Assembly about whether lawmakers should be claiming credit. House leaders and senate leaders have given various reasons for not wanting to do that. Everything from it just simply being too logistically complicated to put everyone's name on that in the budget document to also concerns that every member might want to take credit for the same appropriation, which could create some headaches as well. Another interesting part of kind of the transparency angle of the story is where the money comes from. There were over six, I think, I believe the number was 634 earmarks that came out of what is called the Regional Economic Development Reserve.
It totaled more than $200 million in earmarks in this year's state budget, but none of those counted against the general fund or the total spend in this year's budget because they're technically moving this money out of a savings account to pay for a lot of these earmarks.
So it can be a little bit misleading to taxpayers to know how much the state is truly spending on these earmarks when it doesn't. counts were the total spend in the the budget. Yeah, and there's no question about that. As we look at the $34.4 billion budget, none of those additional earmarks that you're talking about are reflected in that final budget total. It is significantly higher than that.
And of course, going back to the transparency element of this, this is something that the North Carolina General Assembly has struggled with over the last couple of years. There are some very questionable policies as it relates to lawmakers being the ones that are in charge of their own public records. There's definitely been a lot of questions there and hopefully some improvements as we move forward. Colin, thanks for the information and the update this morning. We have continuing coverage of this over on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com.
Colin Tierney joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. Reese, our content agent, wrote the copy based on our best practices, like mentioning Monday.com three times. That was the second. Johnny, our coordination agent, built the timeline and kept everyone aligned.
Olivia, our human creative director, stayed in the loop because agents are great, but they don't always know when a joke lands. She had one note: Tell listeners it only takes minutes to build an agent, so minutes. Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. Uh Good morning again, and welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT: Nearly 1.7 million North Carolina children, or about 93% of the state's K through 12 population, would qualify for scholarships under a new federal school choice tax credit. This is according to a national analysis released last week by the school choice advocacy organization, the American Federation for Children, also known as AFC.
The report by AFC senior fellow Patrick Graff offers the first state-by-state estimate of eligibility under the Education Freedom Tax Credit. That was a federal program created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed in July of 2025. Nationally, the report estimates that 51% of the United States. 1.7 million children, around 92% of students eligible to enroll in a K-12 public school or private school, meet the program's criteria. Graf's estimate also counts homeschooled students, of whom North Carolina has roughly 153,000.
According to the state's Division of Non-Public Education, the report places North Carolina among 22 states, where it concludes that state laws treat homeschools as private or religious schools, but cautions that final rules from the United States Treasury Department could resolve the question differently. North Carolina's estimated 1.7 million eligible children rank nine among the states. The Tar Hill State's 93% eligibility rate sits at a point above the national average or national figure, with six of the 10 states with the largest eligibility populations, including Texas, Florida, New York, Ohio. Georgia, and North Carolina have opted into the program. California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan have not.
North Carolina joined the program in June when the state Senate completed a veto override of House Bill 87 that was over Democrat Governor Josh Stein's objections. Donations have begun donations will become credible in January of 2027. According to the CEO of AFC, Tommy Schultz, he said, for governors and states who have taken swift action to opt in, thank you. And for governors still considering opt-in, what are you waiting for? Children and families in your states by the millions are waiting for educational resources that will support them through this tax credit.
The new program will begin in 2027 when individuals can claim a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700 a year for donations to groups that are called scholarship granting organizations or SGOs. Those organizations can then issue scholarships for things like tuition, tutoring, dual enrollment, special education therapies, transportation, curriculum material, testing fees, and other qualified education expenses. Under the statute, a student must be eligible to enroll in a public elementary school or secondary school and live in a household earning no more than 300% of the area's median gross income. A published report by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development adjusted for household size. You can read more details on that report this morning over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com.
The headline: 93% of NC students qualify for federal school choice tax credit. That's going to do it for a Monday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning BT. We're back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT.
