“Let us hold it our sacred duty and our inestimable privilege on this day to decorate these graves ourselves — with a fervent prayer and a pledge of true allegiance to the cause of liberty, peace, and country for which America’s own have ever served and sacrificed.

“Our pledge and our prayer this day are those of free men and free women who know that all we hold dear must constantly be built up, fostered, revered and guarded vigilantly from those in every age who seek its destruction. We know, as have our Nation’s defenders down through the years, that there can never be peace without its essential elements of liberty, justice and independence. Those true and only building blocks of peace were the lone and lasting cause and hope and prayer that lighted the way of those whom we honor and remember this Memorial Day.

“To keep faith with our hallowed dead, let us be sure, and very sure, today and every day of our lives, that we keep their cause, their hope, their prayer, forever our country’s own.”

— President Ronald Reagan, May 20, 1988

Thanks to a new state law, this summer you’ll be able to do something you’ve never been able to do before in North Carolina: enjoy a big thick steak grilled over an open flame — at your favorite restaurant.

Senate Bill 24, which unanimously passed both chambers of the General Assembly last week, now allows restaurants to use outdoor grills; up until now, food establishments could not use outdoor grills for cooking. Instead, grills had to be located inside (and comply with a long list of regulations).

The North Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Association (NCRLA) praised the legislation in a May 18 press release: “It will allow the state’s restaurants and hotels to use outdoor grills to better serve their patrons especially during the approaching summer months,” said Lynn Minges, NCRLA’s president. “Our members, and in turn their customers, will benefit from the added flexibility to grow their services while lowering overhead costs.”

“Allowing restaurants to use outdoor grills gives thousands of small businesses flexibility to expand their services, lower overhead costs or open new establishments in North Carolina,” commented House Speaker Tim Moore following passage of the bill. “By listening to our constituents and improving their quality of life through private sector growth instead of government regulation, Republican reforms are getting government out of the way of business so North Carolina’s economy can thrive.”

The legislation does have a few common-sense rules regarding a restaurant’s operation of an outdoor grill: including keeping the grill attended at all times and storing the grill indoors when not in use. Meat cooked on the grill must first be prepared inside the restaurant and may only be handled indirectly with utensils.

North Carolina is one step closer toward raising the age for juvenile offenders.

House Bill 280, Juvenile Justice Reinvestment Act, on May 17 passed the state House in a sweeping 104-8 vote.

The bill would move 16- and-17-year-old nonviolent offenders out of adult court and place them under the juvenile justice system, effective December 2019. North Carolina is the only state that hasn’t raised its juvenile age limit to 17 or 18.

Cost is a main reason for lawmakers’ hesitation.

Raising the age would cost roughly $25 million during 2017-18, and $44 million annually beginning in 2020.

North Carolina’s juvenile justice system has saved the state more than $40 million in recurring funds since 2008. System reforms and dropping delinquency rates have led to the savings.

The state can afford to make the investment, said Rep. Chuck McGrady, R-Henderson, the bill’s primary sponsor.

Kids charged in juvenile court are offered state-provided counseling and rehabilitation. Parents or guardians are also required to join in the process.

When charged in adult court, parents are removed from the process.

Reform is costly up front, but it will help reduce recidivism among young adults, saving the state money in the long run, McGrady said.

It’s also the right thing to do.

“By saddling our youth with their youthful mistakes, we limit these youths potential for educational and [vocational] success.”

While the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of H.B. 280, a handful of members worried the bill would let juveniles off the hook for more serious crimes.

If 16- and-17-year-olds are old enough to drive, they’re old enough to know that they shouldn’t break the law, said Rep. Larry Pittman, R-Cabarrus.

“I came to protect citizens and their rights. I don’t believe we can do that by going soft on crime,” he said.

Juveniles convicted of any violent crime, Class A-E felonies, would be punished as adults. So would those who commit motor vehicle infractions.

Rep. Jeff Collins, R-Franklin, said some F-I felonies are too violent to be included, and the bill should cover only misdemeanors, such as “jaywalking or pranks.”

“Only 3.3 percent of 16- and-17-year-olds are convicted of violent felonies,” said Rep. Duane Hall, D-Wake. “It’s a small percentage, and this bill does not include those.”

Charging juveniles as adults doesn’t mean they’ll get the appropriate level of retribution and incapacitation, said Jon Guze, director of legal studies at the John Locke Foundation. At times, doing so can even result in a lighter punishment.

“Very few adults who are convicted of such crimes are sent to prison; instead, the majority are sentenced to some sort of intermediate punishment — like supervised drug treatment or house arrest — or to some form of community punishment — like community service or unsupervised probation,” Guze said.

Guze said the punishments are similar for these offenses in the adult and juvenile systems. “In the juvenile system, however, they would be forced to participate in education and counselling programs that have been repeatedly shown to be effective at rehabilitating juvenile offenders and helping them become productive citizens.”

Several lawmakers say H.B. 280 is a work in progress.

The legislature’s fiscal analysis has overstated some of the cost projections, said William Lassiter, deputy commissioner of public safety.

State researchers have estimated the Department of Public Safety will need $10.8 million to build a 96-bed detention center.

There aren’t enough sentenced kids to fill that space, Lassiter said. The department has said it could work with 60 beds and add more later if needed.

The Senate last week adopted a similar, raise-the-age provision in its budget proposal. But that measure did not include any funding. Unlike H.B. 280, the Senate version did not include 16- and-17-year-olds convicted of nonviolent felonies.

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The preceding article was written by Kari Travis for the Carolina Journal Online and first appeared on its website on May 18, 2017. Follow Ms. Travis on Twitter at @KariLynnTravis.

Legislation has been introduced in the General Assembly that will save local governments money by giving them the option to post legal notices on the internet — rather than in a so-called “newspaper of record.”

Cities and counties are required by law to officially notify the public when certain things are about to occur, including public meetings and hearings (e.g. a proposed change in zoning), purchase and contract bids, and, of course, elections. They do this by taking out notices in a newspaper (much like a classified ad). These cost money, and taxpayers foot the bill — to the tune of millions of dollars a year. It’s a significant source of revenue for media corporations, and local governments aren’t given a special rate.

House Bill 432 and its companion bill, Senate Bill 343, would allow cities and counties to publish anything they are now required to publish in old-fashioned newspapers directly on their own websites. It would be up to a city or county to decide if  they want to post these notices in addition to or instead of using a print newspaper.

Representative Chuck McGrady, the primary sponsor of the House bill, says that public notices “have little or no value but generate plenty of money for newspapers — I don’t think government ought to be in the business of subsidizing pretty much anything.”

The legislation would also allow local governments to host legal notices from attorneys and non-government entities on their websites, including things like the disposition of property (such as a foreclosure sale), probate, and estate proceedings. This, of course, would provide another revenue stream to cities and counties: the bill mandates that 50 percent of the money would go to additional teacher pay, 40 percent to the city or county’s general fund, and 10 percent for administrative costs.

But not everyone is thrilled about these proposed cost-saving and revenue enhancing reforms. Critics claim that cities and counties who might choose to only publish notices online would exclude any people who do not have internet access, who are not inclined to visit government websites, or who are used to getting their notices the old-fashioned way: in print. This limitation, they claim, would effectively infringe on a citizen’s right to know about government activities that affect their communities.

“Newspapers continue to reach an overwhelming amount of citizens compared to county websites,” said the North Carolina Press Association in a recent statement. “This bill would bury notices on a website that few if any citizens visit and effectively would kill the public’s right to know.”

Senator Andrew Brock, a co-sponsor of the Senate bill, countered by saying that not everyone subscribes to a newspaper, that some publications charge too much for public notices, and that some people don’t read newspapers at all.

“We used to have a town crier that would stand on the corner and shout public notices,” Senator Brock told the Salisbury Post. “There wasn’t much outcry when the newspapers put him out of business.”

And not many people outside the legal profession really pay attention to these notices anyway, added Representative McGrady .

“There’s a whole range of things that get published, much of which no one but a group of lawyers has interest in,” he commented in a recent News & Observer article. “Technology has changed. We shouldn’t be wed to a notice system that was designed a century ago.”