Valerie Foushee

It has been over a month since the Duke Energy coal ash spill and we are still finding new leaks. The cost of cleaning up this ecological disaster will be in the millions and North Carolina taxpayers should not have to shoulder the burden. 

New polling from PPP shows that 79% of Democrats and Republicans agree, Duke Energy shareholders, not taxpayers or customers, should pay to clean up the coal ash spill. 

With Sen. Valerie Foushee taking the oath of office today at the Chatham County Courthouse in Pittsboro, the appointment process for her replacement to represent House District 50 can officially begin.

If you've been following the news, though, you know that there are already several declared candidates for the seat, and that things have already unofficially begun.

With the newly-elected (and newly-districted) members of the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) sworn in, they have followed their annual tradition of selecting a new chair and vice-chair of the group. This is a leadership structure that is quite different from other elected bodies in the county in that the chair has similar responsibilities as a Mayor would have in a municipality, but the seat rotates among the members in a very egalitarian fashion so that every commissioner in recent memory has served at least one year at the helm.

What I found especially interesting is that this year's chair will be Valerie Foushee (an African-American woman) and the vice-chair will be Mike Nelson (a gay man).