As soon as I voted to pass the New Hanover County budget (no tax increase and fully funded core services!), I traveled to DC to advocate for our county to our federal leaders. Over the last few days, working alongside the American Flood Coalition, I met with Senators Budd and Tillis as well as the offices of Representatives Rouzer, Murphy, Davis, and Harris. I advocated for needed FEMA reform and flood resilient infrastructure investments. These issues are critically important to every single citizen of our county and our state. Hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters are NOT political and are, unfortunately, not "ifs" but "whens." My job as your local representative is to make sure we are ready. I will go wherever and talk to anyone to make sure we are.

Over the last three years, together with NC House appointee @LawrenceShaheen , I’ve co-chaired the NC State Bar Review Committee, tasked with evaluating, among other things, the @NCStateBar ‘s enforcement practices. The NC Bar is a state agency that, for the most part, has operated since the 1930’s as relatively independent of any real public oversight, and charged with regulating NC lawyers. If we’re being honest, the way the Bar has gone about its business is not an optimal paradigm under which to operate, if due process, transparency and public accountability are foundational principles with which we prefer government agencies to follow. The Bar would, and does, argue that it is a “self regulating” system governed by dozens of bar councilors, elected by private members of the legal profession, and that everything under its control functions perfectly well, in an objective and even-handed manner, and any suggestion to the contrary, is unwarranted. And in some ways - re: licensing, corporate structure compliance, continuing education - perhaps this is true - that the Bar operates effectively and serves the public well, although as a 31 year member, I remain unconvinced. But in other ways - ways the public doesn’t see or fully grasp - in private matters, and situations where discretion is in play, where public lives and vocations are on the line, many lawyers our committee heard from, persuasively suggest the power the State Bar has deployed over the years has been heavy-handed, uneven, politically motivated, and that it has used tactics towards enforcing rules that support one way of thinking, against another. Which, if true, is anathema to all the core tenants of a free society we hold dear: ideas such as objectivity, fairness, equal protection under the law, and justice that underpin every other facet of American life. And which is another way of saying that, if it’s true that the state agency charged with overseeing the legal profession has been biased in how it goes about regulating the very industry that upholds these ideals more than any other industry in the western world, this is an issue worth addressing. Our committee wasn’t fully equipped to review and resolve all of these concerns, nor to canvas and conclude whether or not they were all warranted. But it was asked to review them, which is what we did, in public meetings, for everyone to see, and enough evidence emerged via the public record and the invitation to field complaints, to give us grave concern about the ‘state of the union’, so to speak, of the NC State Bar leadership and governing structure. So much so, that our committee adopted a comprehensive list of recommended reforms and adopted a report that we hope the legislature takes up in the short session. (You can find the report on our website at the nc general assembly). This is all to say, that Today’s revelations by @NCAuditorBoliek raise similar questions about the very nature of what, I surmise, the state legislature had when it created our oversight committee. Is the State Bar a truly unbiased and transparent institution that deploys its power, influence and money in an even handed and fair manner, without regard to any of its members’ political views? In its hiring practices and enforcement practices, does it ensure diversity of experience and thought so as to optimize the understood objectivity as a state agency? And if so, how do we know, for sure? Because the @NCStateBar says so? They’ve offered no empirical evidence to suggest they operate this way, although, as a member, I wish it were the case. But I doubt it is. And today’s report by the State Auditor is just one of many examples of how important it is to review the ways state agencies go about conducting their business and meeting their intended objectives. I look forward to continuing this work and thank legislative leaders for highlighting its importance. #ncpol

Attorneys in North Carolina have no choice but to allow the North Carolina State Bar’s IOLTA program to take interest from their trust accounts. As our audit shows, IOLTA grants are going to organizations with clearly partisan, political agendas. With IOLTA’s revenues and grant payments surging, it’s incumbent that the flow of dollars is met with additional scrutiny to ensure proper use.

How did the State Bar’s Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA) program track if the grant dollars they awarded were used as intended? IOLTA uses revenue generated from certain lawyers’ general trust accounts to award millions of dollars in grants to select nonprofit organizations and other justice-related programs. A performance audit recently released by the NC Office of the State Auditor concluded that while IOLTA awarded grants in compliance with eligibility requirements, it did not have adequate oversight controls implemented. Not all grant applications included measurable, outcome-based goals and post-award monitoring relied on self-reported information. The lack of adequate monitoring practices comes as IOLTA’s revenues and grant awards have risen significantly. IOLTA’s revenues increased from $3 million in 2018 to $16.7 million in 2024. Examples of grants awarded by IOLTA in 2024 that were not subject to independent verification include: - $4.5 million to Legal Aid of North Carolina for various programs. - More than $1 million to the North Carolina Justice Center. - More than $1 million to Pisgah Legal Services. - $555,000 to the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy. OSA’s report provided recommendations to help strengthen oversight and provide reasonable assurance that grantees use grant funds appropriately. The audit also includes a breakdown of IOLTA grant recipients and award payment amounts for 2023 through 2025. 🔍 Read the full report for yourself (link in bio)!

Crazed homeless man accused of slaughtering Iryna Zarutska on train found incompetent to stand trial trib.al/GsJMZC8