It's Friday, November 14, 2025 and in this morning's issue we're covering: Arizona veterans protest federal workforce cuts and veteran deportations, Challenger alleges Orleans clerk Lombard lost hundreds of thousands of dollars for court, D.A., Every NYC neighborhood saw more voters show up to vote for mayor than in the last election. See who put the winner over the top, Virginia’s Rural Voters Shift 12 Points Toward Democrats, Worker’s comp bill with first raise in a decade for permanently disabled up for public hearing, Simple, short-term solutions to Asheville’s Black population decline are difficult to find, implement, NC invests $9.5 million in teams to help people with serious mental illness after their release from incarceration, McIntosh spends $491K, so far, to defend rezoning of Hogg Hummock, How Alabama Power Kept Bills Up and Opposition Out to Become One of the Most Powerful Utilities in the Country.

Media outlets and others featured: Cronkite News, Verite News, Carolina Public Press, THE CITY, The Daily Yonder, Wisconsin Watch, North Carolina Health News, The Current, Inside Climate News.

Arizona veterans protest federal workforce cuts and veteran deportations

by Gabrielle Wallace, Cronkite News
November 11, 2025

PHOENIX – Veterans laughed and teased each other outside the Arizona State Capitol, but the reason for their gathering wasn’t so chipper. Dozens joined with lawmakers and community advocates to denounce the federal government’s treatment of veterans. 

Their main message was loud and clear on the shirts many wore: “Stop Firing Vets.” 

"The same government that thanks us on Veterans Day turns its back on us the other 364 days of the year,” said Omar Algeciras, a 20-year Air Force veteran and vice president of the American Federation of Government Workers Local 2391, a union representing federal employees.

At the rally Monday morning, he and others called for the federal government to do more for people who had been willing to sacrifice their lives for their country. They demanded more job support, improved social services and an end to deportations. 

They chanted “si se puede,” Spanish for “yes we can” or “we can do it.” It expressed the theme of the rally which was the third and final destination of a three-stop tour across the state.

Only a dozen states have more veterans than Arizona. Roughly 515,000 live in the state, 7.4% of the population. Those veterans haven’t been exempt from workforce cuts – in fact, they have been disproportionately affected, veterans said, because about one in four federal workers is a veteran.

“The firing of these federal workers sends a message that our service, our dedication, does not matter, and that is wrong,” said Signa Oliver, an Army veteran and member of the Phoenix Union School Board, choking up as veterans behind her waved signs and American flags.

At the beginning of his second term in office, President Donald Trump promised sweeping federal job cuts to curb spending. The Office of Personnel Management has projected a reducting of 300,000 federal jobs by the end of the year.

The veterans felt betrayed, they said.

“The benefits and services that we earned are being stripped away from us,” said Algeciras. “Veterans who fought for this country are now fighting to keep their jobs. Veterans who risk their lives are being told they are expendable.”

Apart from job losses, the rally also focused onDepartment of Veterans Affairs services and veterans facing deportation. 

The rally came as the longest shutdown in U.S. history is winding down. The Senate approved a plan to reopen the government on Monday and keep it funded through Jan. 30. The House will vote Wednesday afternoon on the deal, which includes an agreement to freeze federal job cuts. until the stopgap funding bill runs out. Democratic holdouts in the Senate also wrested a small concession on Affordable Care Act subsidies, a promise that the Senate will vote next month on the expiring subsidies. 

The deal promises respite for federal workers through the holidays. But it doesn’t make complaints and concerns disappear altogether, they said.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who served in the Marines, said veterans won’t stand for being used as political pawns  any longer. 

“We will fight for the dignity of veterans,” he said. “We will fight for the livelihood of their families, and we will continue to fight for that sometimes unfortunately elusive American Dream that has been trampled under the politics of the day.”

Rep. Aaron Márquez, D-Phoenix,  took to the podium as well. Márquez co-founded VetsForward, a liberal advocacy group, and served two deployments in Afghanistan in the Army. 

“I don't think we make America great again by firing the people that serve the country in uniform and continue to serve our federal government,” Márquez said. “I think we can make America great again if we remember what's happening right now, in about a year from now, when we have elections again and we fire the people that are trying to fire our veterans.” 

Rally attendees poked and prodded at each other, making fun of rival military branches. 

The rally fell on the Marine Corps' 250th birthday, and several “oorahs” erupted from the crowd. The playful jeering and cheering didn’t take away from the central message, calling on veterans and community members to speak out and to pressure their state and federal representatives..

“We are warriors,” Oliver said. “Through our voices, through our organizing, through our activism, we won't give in, and we won't surrender.”

Márquez encouraged civilians to support veterans throughout the year, not just the one day dedicated to their memory.

“I think for those of you that are not veterans,” he said, “the best way you can celebrate veterans over this next year  is to find a way to make a difference.”

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

‘I didn’t know it was this bad’: Challenger alleges Orleans clerk Lombard lost hundreds of thousands of dollars for court, D.A.

by Robert Stewart, Verite News New Orleans
November 12, 2025

Amid an already contentious and tight race to determine who will win the seat for Orleans Parish Criminal District Court clerk, challenger Calvin Duncan dropped a bombshell last week alleging dysfunction in the clerk of court’s office under incumbent Darren Lombard.

Last Monday (Nov. 3), Duncan’s campaign released several emails, obtained through a public records request, in which the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office alleged that Lombard’s office was doing work that was inconsistent and not thorough in reviewing, documenting and filing records. According to the emails, sent between January and October, those problems played a role in the improper release of defendants from pre-trial detention and forced the court and the DA’s office to leave hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table.

The uncollected money was from bail bonds that DA Jason Williams’ office claimed should have been forfeited after defendants who were out on bail missed their court appearances and were ordered jailed. But in order to collect that money, which is split between the court and the DA’s office, prosecutors have to prove that the court — through the clerk or the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office — sent court appearance notices and arrest warrants to the defendants, their bail bond agents and bail-bond insurers, called surety companies.

According to a letter sent last month, between August 2024 and August 2025, the clerk’s office failed to ensure those notices were sent on time in dozens of cases, totaling more than $600,000 in unforfeited bond money.

Through court records, Verite News confirmed that at least $200,000 was uncollectible due to problems with court notices.

The DA’s office also claimed that poor record-keeping in Lombard’s office imperiled appeal outcomes, oversights led to defendants being wrongly released on bail and alleged a number of instances where the clerk’s office failed to properly send out notices of arrest warrants.

“I take every concern raised by our justice partners seriously, and I’ve worked directly with the district attorney to identify and resolve the issues outlined in his correspondence,” Lombard said in response to the allegations.

The release from Duncan’s campaign comes in the final days of the race to lead the clerk’s office. After a tight October primary in which neither candidate secured enough votes to win outright, Duncan, a political newcomer who spent 28 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder, will face Lombard in a runoff election on Nov. 15.

In an interview with Verite, Duncan described the DA’s office’s emails as indicative of dysfunction at the clerk’s office.

In an emailed statement responding to Duncan’s remarks, Lombard described the emails from Williams’ office as not representative of the full scope of his work in the office. He pointed to an ongoing modernization effort that he said can strengthen accountability, ensure accuracy and minimize the potential for clerical error.

Williams has not formally endorsed either candidate in the race. Keith Lampkin, a spokesperson for the DA’s office said the clerk’s thoroughness or lack of it has a direct impact on the entire criminal justice system.

“When these clerical duties aren’t carried out with precision, defendants who fail to meet their court-ordered obligations escape legal accountability, and the system forfeits revenue owed to the city,” Lampkin said. “The clerk’s office’s failure to properly notice criminal defense and surety agents makes it legally impossible to collect.”

The letter from the DA’s office

An Oct. 6 letter from the DA’s office lays out the alleged financial losses accrued from bond money that should have been forfeited to the court — and split with the DA’s office — but was instead not collected from bail bond companies or the insurance agencies backing the companies as a result of alleged clerical errors.

When defendants don’t show up, the court issues an arrest warrant, which triggers a legal countdown for the bond companies to find the defendant or risk forfeiting the bail money. In Louisiana, the clerk has 60 days to notify the defendant and the bond companies of the arrest warrant as part of that process. If the clerk does not do so, the bond companies are off the hook.

The Oct. 6 email highlights 43 cases involving $610,000 in allegedly lost bond money, but in many instances Verite could not independently verify by time of publication that forfeiture judgements were reversed and that there was an error attributable to the clerk’s office.

https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/26222666/pages/1/?embed=1

Through court records, Verite confirmed that bail bond or surety companies were allowed to keep at least $200,000 between August 2024 and August 2025 even though defendants in those cases failed to appear during court proceedings.

Most of that money was connected to one case, a multiple-count charge where the bail was set at $155,000 — the largest bond amount in all of the cases the DA’s office highlighted.

According to court records in the case, the defendant didn’t show up for his arraignment and the court ordered an arrest warrant. The following year, the DA’s office moved to have a judge order the bond forfeited. The judge granted the request, but the defendant’s attorney moved to nullify that judgment, saying that there had been no proof that notices were sent in time filed into the record. They also pointed out that the defendant had already been in custody roughly a week after the arrest warrant was issued. The bond ruling was subsequently overturned.

In another case involving a $27,500 bond, the DA’s office moved for bond forfeiture after the defendant failed to appear for his arraignment, and the court issued a warrant for his arrest. But the DA withdrew the request after the attorney for the defendant requested proof that notifications were sent out.

“As best our staff can recall,” Lampkin told Verite News, “in each of the cases with SDTs (subpoenas duces tecum), the judge read the return in open court, and [the DA’s office] then orally withdrew the RTSC (rule to show cause) due to the clerk’s office being unable to prove that notice was sent when asked to verify the certificate of notice.”

In six other cases, in which bond amounts totaled $19,000, court records appear to show that after defendants failed to appear for their hearings and the court issued arrest warrants for them, the clerk’s office sent the warrants out after the 60-day deadline had expired.

Lombard, in a statement sent by his campaign team, said that attempting to generalize or group these cases together for political purposes is “misleading and irresponsible,” and he categorized the email as containing numerous factual inaccuracies and errors. When asked for specifics, his campaign said that many of the cases had a lag that could be attributed to the DA, a judge or the state, pointing out cases where bond forfeitures were not requested.

“The only responsible way to evaluate this matter is by reviewing each case individually,” Lombard said. “Attempting to generalize or group these cases together for political purposes is both misleading and irresponsible.”

But Lampkin told Verite News that if the DA’s office cannot provide proof or if it's clear that more than 60 days has passed between the warrant being issued and the clerk sending notice, they cannot pursue bond forfeitures.

“When there is no proof of service or no notice within 60 days, a prosecutor cannot legally move forward. The law is very strict and very clear on this. A court ruling is not required to say the bond forfeiture was unenforceable. It’s simply the black letter of the law,” Lampkin said.

In the other 35 cases highlighted by the DA’s office, things were unclear for a variety of reasons, including there not being a consistent online record of an overturned bond forfeiture ruling or of the DA withdrawing their attempt to obtain the forfeited bond.

As of press time, Verite News has not reviewed the full files — which the clerk’s office maintains in hard copy at the courthouse — for all cases mentioned in the Oct. 6 email.

“In each instance, we’ve outlined what the law requires to lay out and emphasize the clerk’s legal obligations and to help ensure his staff are properly trained and equipped to meet those mandates,” Lampkin said in an email statement to Verite News. “Unfortunately, these issues have persisted.”

What does this mean for the Nov. 15 runoff?

While incarcerated, Duncan worked as a “jailhouse lawyer,” assisting fellow prisoners with appeals and requests for post-conviction relief. He continues that work today as the director of Loyola University’s Light of Justice program and said that through his work assisting incarcerated people with their cases, he was aware of what he described as a certain level of dysfunction at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court.

He said that learning about how the office functions made him want to run for office and seek a better understanding of issues in the office through filing a public records request.

But the public records request revealed new details, which required his campaign to get a thorough grasp of before sending out a press release Monday morning (Nov. 3).

“I didn’t know it was this bad,” Duncan said.

Robert Collins, political analyst at Dillard University and contributor for Verite News, said that the impact of the revelations on the clerk’s race depends on how soon voters learn about it. Unlike an October surprise, where voters still have time to be persuaded by an argument against one or the other candidates, this November surprise came while early voting was already underway.

The number of people who go out and vote in early elections fluctuates. Collins estimates between 15 - 30% of voters may vote early, but the majority of people still vote on Election Day.

As of Nov. 11, more than 20,500 people have already cast their ballots in the November elections, according to data collected and published by the Louisiana Secretary of State.

But Collins said that most people already know whom they’re voting for, and that the challenge for the candidates at this point is persuading voters who didn’t vote for them or cast a ballot in the primary to vote for them. During the October elections Duncan won by less than 700 votes. More than 6,000 voters selected Valencia Miles as their choice, and about 7,000 more people cast a vote for mayor than for the clerk’s race.

According to Collins, the undecided voter or the voter that did not cast the vote for either candidate in the last election is more likely to lean toward Duncan.

“I think those that show up to vote, I think the majority will tend to vote for Duncan, simply because I think all of the Lombard voters have already shown up,” Collins said about voters still on the fence.

Lombard acknowledged that challenges can arise in an office handling the magnitude of filings the clerk’s office does. In response to allegations, he emphasized the work his office is doing to modernize record-keeping and to collaborate with criminal justice partners in training on new technology and resolving issues raised by the DA’s office.

“The true measure of leadership is not whether issues occur, but how quickly and effectively they are addressed, and that’s what my team and I have consistently worked to do,” Lombard said.

Duncan said that the problems highlighted in the emails touched on some of the “basic duties of that office.”

“I understand the significance of those duties and of that office,” Duncan said. “I would make sure that it runs like it should.”

This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

 NC hospital out of Immediate Jeopardy. Critics question whether regulatory system works.

by Jane Winik Sartwell, Carolina Public Press
November 10, 2025

This fall, Asheville’s Mission Hospital faced Immediate Jeopardy, the most serious citation federal regulators can deliver, for the second time in two years. Once again, the beleaguered hospital system appears to have wiggled its way out of meaningful consequences. 

The hospital has submitted a plan of correction by Sunday’s deadline, CMS told Carolina Public Press. The citation has now been removed, according to hospital CEO Greg Lowe. Now, CMS will send surveyors on an unannounced visit to Asheville to see whether Mission is really fixing its problems.

This year, those problems included preventable patient death, unsafe patient transport, patient misidentification and harmful infection protocol.

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The hospital failed to provide a safe environment for patients, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and CMS. That finding put the hospital at risk of losing its Medicare and Medicaid funding — which would be a death knell for the biggest hospital in Western North Carolina. 

Now, elected officials and nurses at the hospital are raising questions about whether Immediate Jeopardy findings have enough teeth to actually hold the hospital accountable. The punishment — which would likely result in the hospital closing — is so draconian that it may not be realistic to actually enforce, they say.

Last year, the follow-up survey visit was successful and Mission emerged from Immediate Jeopardy with only a spat of bad press to show for it. That will likely happen again, according to Sen. Julie Mayfield, D-Buncombe. 

“I am 100% sure that Mission’s corrective action plan will bring it into compliance,” Mayfield told CPP. “They know how to do that all day long. Our assumption has to be that they may surge resources now and then allow staffing levels to abate over time. And then we'll find ourselves in this situation again.”

Immediate Jeopardy accountability questions

Is it still possible for the follow-up visit to go so disastrously that the agency considers revoking critical funding? Yes. Is it likely? No, say both Mayfield and Mission cardiology nurse Kerri Wilson.

“We are the critical hospital between Charlotte and Knoxville,” Wilson said. “It’s not realistic for them to take that Medicare and Medicaid funding away. It would be detrimental for the people of Western North Carolina. People would not survive without Mission Hospital. I think (hospital owner) HCA counts on that, and they exploit it.”

So what would an actionable punishment look like for the hospital after repeated Immediate Jeopardy findings?

Mayfield thinks HCA should lose control of the hospital, and it should be taken over by a third-party administrator. That’s never happened with a hospital, but CMS has done similar things with nursing homes, she said. 

“We are asking for the imposition of a third-party administrator,” Mayfield told CPP. 

“Three Immediate Jeopardies in six years is too many. It shows too much of a pattern. We will continue to be in this pattern until HCA is forced to make changes that it does not want to make. We think a third-party administrator for some period of time is the thing that makes the most sense.”

On the ground at Mission

For now, though, HCA is still in control. Wilson says conditions at the hospital have felt more punitive than productive since the Immediate Jeopardy finding. 

The focus of the corrective plan so far seems to be re-educating nurses on proper protocol, rather than relieving them of the stressed staffing conditions that lead to unsafe scenarios, Wilson said.

Mission announced that it spiked staff by 200 nurses over recent months to combat shortages. But the staffing spike is “not keeping up with the nurses that we're losing every day because of the unsafe situations they're put in,” Wilson told CPP. In late summer, 140 nurses left Mission in 90 days, she said. The spike doesn’t even help them break even, staff wise.

“My hope, as a nurse, is that we see real changes and real accountability from this, rather than it being a temporary solution to make things look good and get us out of trouble,” Wilson said.

“But what we’ve seen so far is very similar to what we’ve seen in the past. HCA is putting the blame on the staff, rather than taking accountability for systemic issues.”

Mission Hospital in Asheville is the flagship hospital of the Mission Health group, a chain of six rural hospitals across the region, all part of the formerly nonprofit Mission Health group that for-profit HCA acquired in 2019. It's the only hospital in the group to face Immediate Jeopardy.

But Mission Hospital is also the only one of this group where nurses have unionized. It’s actually the only unionized hospital in North Carolina.

“The focus right now is on Mission Hospital’s main campus, because we are the ones who have been speaking out and getting surveyors in the building,” Wilson said.

“One can’t help but imagine that our other regional hospitals that are run by HCA are having the same issues. They aren’t being vocalized because nurses don’t have the same union protections we do. They’re not reaching out, but I feel like they probably have the same situations and we don’t just know it.”

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How Mamdani Won, By the Numbers

Every NYC neighborhood saw more voters show up to vote for mayor than in the last election. See who put the winner over the top.

by Haidee Chu and Mia Hollie Nov 6 4:54pm EST

Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory in the mayoral race Tuesday night broke records in more ways than one.

Not only will the Queens Assembly member become the city’s first South Asian and Muslim mayor, and the youngest in more than a century, he also hauled in nearly as many votes — more than 1,036,000 — as cast in entire mayoral elections in recent years. In all, voters cast more than 2 million votes, the most since 1969.

Nearly 39% of the city’s registered voters turned out to vote in this election. The last election to see that level of turnout was in 2001, when Michael Bloomberg won his first term as mayor and 41% of voters cast ballots.

Not a single neighborhood in NYC had a smaller turnout this election than in the last.

Many of Mamdani’s most loyal bases showed up in numbers. Mamdani won 60% of the votes in election districts where there are more South Asians than people of any other ethnicity. Young voters also showed up in droves, with Millennials casting 29% of the votes this election — a larger share than any other generation, according to voter history records obtained by THE CITY Thursday.

But the mayor-elect didn’t just win the general election on the strength of voters who had already cast ballots for him in the June primary. His campaign also mobilized voters in communities that had turned out heavily for Cuomo in the primary, which only included registered Democrats. (In 85% of election districts, more than half of all voters registered as Democrats.)

Here are four constituencies that Mamdani flipped Tuesday night that catapulted him to success:

1. Black Neighborhoods

During the primary, Mamdani was bested by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by nearly 6 points in neighborhoods with more Black residents than those of any other race — a crucial voting bloc in New York City mayoral elections.

Mamdani won 64% of the votes in those areas this time around, up 25 points from his 39% in June. The top 10 neighborhoods where he gained the most since the primary are all located in either southeast Queens or the eastern parts of Brooklyn — in historically Black neighborhoods where Mamdani turned his focus to after the primary.

While registered voters in Black neighborhoods were less likely than those in heavily white or Asian neighborhoods to have turned out for the election, they were also much more likely to have voted for Mamdani. Mamdani won more decisively in those neighborhoods than in areas where other races were the plurality, crushing Cuomo by 32 points.

2. The Bronx

Of all five boroughs, turnout was lowest in The Bronx — where just 28% of registered voters cast a ballot. But that didn’t stop Mamdani from reversing his 18-point defeat to Cuomo in the primary to take The Bronx by 11 points during the general election, winning 51% of the votes there.

While some of Mamdani’s closest races with Cuomo also came in The Bronx — including in Co-op City, North Riverdale, and Clason Point, where he narrowly took by four, six and eight points respectively — his triumph in the borough was helped by large-margin victories in areas where his canvassers had left their mark. That includes Parkchester, home to a large Bengali population, where he bested Cuomo by 29 points to win 61% of the votes, and in nearby Westchester Square, where he won by 42 points, with 68% of the votes.

Mamdani also made some inroads with Latino voters, many of whom live in The Bronx. He gained 8 points from the primary to win 58% of the votes, widening the margin since the primary and defeating Cuomo by 24 points in neighborhoods where more than half the residents are Latino.

While direct comparisons between the Democratic primary and general election results are not possible because different groups of voters were eligible to cast ballots — for instance, Asian voters are less likely than those in other groups to be registered Democrats — the shifts nonetheless suggest how Mamdani’s base has evolved since June.

3. Public Housing

The mayor-elect has vowed to double the city’s capital investment into NYCHA, which is heavily funded by the federal government and has been overseen by a court-appointed monitor since 2019. On a subway ride with THE CITY the day before the election, Mamdani said he was looking forward to “a return to the city’s understanding of its own fiscal responsibilities to NYCHA.” 

That message may have resonated with NYCHA residents: Mamdani gained 18 points in election districts that include NYCHA developments — winning 55% of the votes in the general election where he had gotten just 38% in June, when Cuomo took the lead there by 6 points.

He made 30-point improvements in election districts covering 25 of the 335 NYCHA developments. But his biggest gain came in districts that cover Baisley Park Houses in Jamaica, Queens, as well as Glenwood and Woodson Houses in Flatlands and Brownsville, Brooklyn, where he made improvements of 40, 38 and 37 points respectively.

4. Lower-Income Neighborhoods

Mamdani struggled to capture a majority of votes from lower income New Yorkers in the June primary despite his affordability agenda, marked by promises to freeze rent, make buses free and provide universal free child care. But on Tuesday he ultimately took 51% of the votes from neighborhoods where most households make below median income — up 10 points from his 41% there during the primary.

He gained more than 30 points in 12 of these neighborhoods compared to the primary, including Flatlands in Brooklyn, Edenwald, Wakefield, Williamsbridge and Eastchester in The Bronx, as well as South Ozone Park in Queens.

Virginia’s Rural Voters Shift 12 Points Toward Democrats

by Tim Marema and Bill Bishop, The Daily Yonder
November 7, 2025

Rural voters in Virginia were part of a statewide shift toward the Democratic Party since the last gubernatorial election in 2021, according to a Daily Yonder analysis.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by 15 points this week, a marked turnaround from the 2021 governor’s race when Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe by 2 points.

Rural Virginia moved 12 points toward the Democratic Party compared to 2021, from a Republican advantage of 40 points in 2021 to a Republican margin of 28 points in this week's election. In the 2024 presidential election, rural Virginians supported Republican Donald Trump by 34 points.

The graph above compares the shift toward the Democratic Party in this week’s election to both the 2021 governor’s race and the 2024 presidential race. The graph is broken out into the Daily Yonder’s standard geographic categories, which are defined at the bottom of this article.

The Democratic shift in voter preferences occurred statewide but was largest in the state’s metropolitan areas, especially the Northern Virginia suburbs outside Washington, D.C., and the Tidewater region.

In large metropolitan areas, voters shifted toward the Democratic Party by about 17 points from 2021 to 2025.

Voters in the state’s small metros moved 16.1 percentage points toward the Democrats, the largest shift outside the major metropolitan counties. This group of cities – including Fairfax, Harrisonburg, Radford, and Staunton – gave 44.3% of their vote to Democrats in 2021. Tuesday, Democrats earned 52.4% of the small city vote.

Turnout was a major factor in the shift toward the Democratic side of the ticket. Democrats turned out more voters in 2025 than they did four years ago in every type of county. Democrats saw their biggest turnout gain (24%) in small metropolitan areas. Republicans, meanwhile, had fewer voters in 2025 than in 2021 in every category of county, with the biggest loss (20%) in the core counties of major metropolitan areas.

A similar pattern in turnout was apparent when comparing the 2025 governor’s race to the 2024 presidential election. (Turnout is always lower in off-year gubernatorial races in Virginia than in the preceding year’s presidential election, so the numbers are negative.)  

Republican turnout statewide in 2025 was 30% lower than in the 2024 presidential election, while Democrat turnout was just 16% lower.

Daily Yonder County Categories

• Major metropolitan areas have 1 million or more residents. These include the cities and surrounding counties of Richmond, Northern Virginia (Washington, D.C.), and Norfolk/Virginia Beach. Major metros are separated into core counties and suburbs.
• Medium-sized metropolitan areas have 250,000 to under 1 million residents. These include the cities and surrounding counties of Lynchburg, Roanoke, and Bristol. Medium-sized metros are separated into core counties and suburbs.
• Small metropolitan areas have under 250,000 residents. These include cities such as Charlottesville, Blacksburg, Harrisonburg, Staunton, and Winchester, plus nearby counties. 
• Nonmetropolitan counties, which the Daily Yonder classifies as rural, do not have a city of 50,000 or more, and they aren’t generally within easy commuting distance of a county that does.

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Worker’s comp bill with first raise in a decade for permanently disabled up for public hearing

by Tom Kertscher / Wisconsin Watch, Wisconsin Watch
November 10, 2025

Legislation is being introduced that would, for the first time in a decade, increase benefits for the most severely injured workers in Wisconsin. 

The bill, if adopted by the Republican-majority Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, would make a number of changes to the state’s worker’s compensation system. 

In particular, it would give raises to people declared permanently and totally disabled such as 77-year-old Jimmy Novy and paraplegic Scott Meyer.

They were featured in a September Wisconsin Watch article. It reported that more than 300 PTD recipients haven’t gotten a raise in their worker’s compensation benefits since 2016.

Novy, who lives in southwest Wisconsin, receives a worker’s comp check of $1,575 per month. Had his benefit kept pace with inflation, which rose 34%, he would have received nearly $21,000 more over the past nine years.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin employers have seen their premiums for worker’s compensation insurance decrease 10 years in a row, saving them $206 million in the past year and over $1 billion since 2017.

Unlike most workers injured on the job, who get temporary worker’s compensation benefits before returning to the job, Wisconsin PTD recipients get worker’s comp checks for life. Twenty-three states provide automatic cost-of-living raises for PTD recipients. But Wisconsin PTD recipients get raises only if worker’s comp legislation proposed every two years, known as an “agreed bill,” becomes law. 

The new agreed bill was proposed by employers and labor leaders on the state Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council. The Assembly Workforce Development, Labor and Integrated Employment Committee will hold a hearing on the bill Thursday. 

The bill would make these changes for PTD recipients:

• Make an estimated 210 more PTD recipients eligible for raises, known as supplementary benefits. Currently, only PTD recipients injured before Jan. 1, 2003, are eligible for raises. The bill would change that date to Jan. 1, 2020.
• Raise the maximum weekly benefit for PTD recipients by 57%, from $669 to $1,051, effective Jan. 1, 2026.
• Give PTD recipients annual raises, with the amounts set shortly before taking effect. The raise amounts would vary based on when the recipients were injured and their earnings at the time. 

One example, provided by the state Department of Workforce Development when the agreed bill was proposed: A PTD recipient injured in 1985 and receiving $535 a week would get a 57% increase to $840. The increase would amount to nearly $16,000 per year.

Spokespersons for the Assembly committee chair, Rep. Paul Melotik, R-Grafton, and for Sen. Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, Labor and Economic Development, said the lawmakers had not yet reviewed the bill.

Novy, while in his late 20s, learned he had been exposed to manganese, a key component in batteries, from working in a battery manufacturing plant. He suffered neurological problems that affected his left leg, severely limiting his ability to walk or even maintain his balance.

The bill would raise Novy's monthly worker's comp check to about $2,450 from $1,575, an annual increase of about $10,000.

“That’s about time,” Novy said Friday about the bill, eager to hear when he might see a raise in his check.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O_lgkhdtYWisconsin Watch’s Tom Kertscher explains how permanently and totally disabled workers haven’t seen a raise to their worker’s compensation benefits in nine years. (Video by Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)

The money for worker’s compensation checks comes from worker’s compensation insurance companies and from employers who are self-insured for worker’s comp. No tax dollars are involved.

Agreement among employer and labor members on the Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council on the bill was reached after a “fee schedule” for worker’s compensation medical services was included in the 2025-27 state budget adopted in July. 

The schedule limits how much health care providers can charge for worker’s comp care.

Meyer, who lost both legs following a workplace accident in 1993 and now lives in Colorado, said he hopes that for PTD recipients on fixed incomes, the proposed raises make “a meaningful impact on their day-to-day lives.”

Appleton lawyer John Edmondson, who represents worker’s comp recipients, said the raises would be “a very nice step in the right direction, albeit coming far too late for those PTD workers who economically suffered and some who simply died waiting.”

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Simple, short-term solutions to Asheville’s Black population decline are difficult to find, implement • Asheville Watchdog

The last of four parts The steady dwindling of Asheville’s Black population shows no sign of abating, but slowing or reversing this decades-long decline has no simple solutions. As Asheville Watchdog’s four-part series has shown, young Black people are leaving the city for better opportunities, and residents who remain are fragmented, lacking the cohesion that […]

Asheville WatchdogJOHN BOYLE, DAN DeWITT

Simple, short-term solutions to Asheville’s Black population decline are difficult to find, implement

With reparations effort under threat, city and county focus on broad problems; private sector, nonprofits look for ways to provide help

by JOHN BOYLE and DAN DeWITT November 9, 2025

The last of four parts

The steady dwindling of Asheville’s Black population shows no sign of abating, but slowing or reversing this decades-long decline has no simple solutions.

As Asheville Watchdog’s four-part series has shown, young Black people are leaving the city for better opportunities, and residents who remain are fragmented, lacking the cohesion that once thriving African American neighborhoods provided.

A diverse, well-rounded populace benefits everyone, experts and others say, and the Black population decline has contributed to Asheville losing its soul.

To attract and keep Black residents, they say, the city needs more and better jobs, lower-cost housing and the kind of cultural vibrancy that existed before urban renewal and gentrification drove out African American businesses.

City and county government officials are addressing some of the broader problems that affect all races – a lack of affordability and economic opportunities. But efforts aimed specifically at Black residents have been stymied.

The Buncombe-Asheville Community Reparations Commission provided a blueprint in September with 39 recommendations that could improve living conditions and opportunities for Black residents, the culmination of a five-year effort to acknowledge and redress historic inequities. But the Trump administration immediately sent a letter to the city and county, threatening them with the loss of federal funding if they undertook any initiative that favored one race over another, and it’s unclear how they will proceed.

There is hope, some Black leaders say, that white-owned businesses are increasingly aware of past injustices and the role they can take in redressing them. Private foundations, businesses and nonprofits have stepped in with funding, grassroots programs and other support, but their efforts are not on a scale to stop the decline of Asheville’s Black population.

Former Reparations Commission chair Dwight Mullen said he thinks it might take 20 years to reverse the decline.

“I think it will bottom out, but I don’t think it will be within 10 years,” Mullen said. “On the other hand, I do think that to keep a community as white as Asheville is an act against nature.”

Bruce Mitchell, who has studied gentrification extensively as the principal researcher for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said one crucial step to containing displacement, seeking input from Black residents about the future of their neighborhoods, can be simple and inexpensive.

Far costlier initiatives, while important, don’t typically produce quick results, he said. Over a 25-year period private and public organizations poured more than $1 billion into improving education, housing and infrastructure in a predominantly Black Baltimore neighborhood with mixed outcomes, according to a 2022 study by the Urban Institute.

“It’s really difficult to find the magic solution for residents,” Mitchell said.

The aging of Asheville’s Black population

Population data shows just how difficult a challenge it will be to stem the tide.

In 2020, 18 percent of Black Asheville residents were 65 and older, compared with 13 percent in 1970, according to U.S. Census data. The percentage of children 14 and under shrank from 29 percent to 19 percent during that period. Meanwhile, the prevalence of working age adults increased slightly from 58 percent to 63 percent.

Asheville Watchdog’s panel discussion about the Losing Our Soul series has reached capacity, but you can watch a live stream of the event on our Facebook page. Tune in at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 12

The North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management projects an increase in the number of Black residents in Buncombe County by 2040 but a continued slide in their percentage of the population, said Tom Tveidt, a research economist and founder of Syneva Economics. Black people will comprise 5.6 percent of Buncombe’s population in 2040, compared with 5.9 percent this year, according to the office.

The Black population is projected to grow by 9 percent during this period – a slower rate than other racial groups and one that won’t keep pace with Buncombe’s overall rate of 16 percent, Tveidt said.

Also, what small growth there will be in Buncombe’s Black population will mostly come from older people, Tvedit’s analysis found.

Though the reparations effort didn’t directly address the decline in Asheville’s Black population, it offered a path to making the city a place where African American residents could stay and build a life.

Its recommendations included major education reform, the creation of an economic development center, neighborhood hubs and business corridors to spur economic growth, direct cash payments to those displaced by previous policies and repurposing of land bought from Black families for pennies on the dollar during urban renewal. Buncombe set aside about $3 million for the effort and the city another $3.4 million.

City and county leaders say they are reviewing the recommendations to identify those that can be feasibly advanced.

Neither Asheville City Manager Debra Campbell, who is African American, nor City Attorney Brad Branham said it’s the city’s job to stem the tide of Black population loss.

Branham said directing benefits to one specific group “runs the risk of being legally discriminatory,” but thinks the city can identify recommendations that would continue efforts to boost affordable housing, diversify the economy, improve public safety and support “neighborhood partners that provide programs to lift up the community.”

“The reality is that the data shows many of our neighbors are leaving, and that is likely true for a variety of reasons,” Branham said via email. “But the city should always ask itself why. What might be broken, and how can we fix it?”

Mullen disagrees that it is illegal for public agencies to provide “benefits for specific populations.” It happens all the time, he said, pointing to government aid targeted for the elderly, children or native Americans. Lifting the prospects of such groups, he said, lifts everyone.

Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer acknowledged that “threatened federal interference creates concern about our ability to do all kinds of affordability and equity work.” But the city will still try to address problems affecting all citizens, she said.

“The City of Asheville and City Council recognize the past harms to legacy communities and the need to address those wrongs through the tools available to us,” Manheimer said. “We continue to do that by investing in communities and creating opportunities for the communities torn apart by urban renewal.”

Those efforts include investments in affordable housing, infrastructure in historically marginalized communities, use of matching grants to support neighborhood revitalization efforts, “and listening to those most impacted through our reparations process,” Manheimer said. After Tropical Storm Helene, the city secured $225 million in federal Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery funds, much of which must be used in areas of low or moderate income, she added.

City Council member Sheneika Smith stressed that any reparations that are adopted “are going to have to be coupled with some type of housing incentives.”

She cited the Dollar-a-Lot program, which offered residents displaced by urban renewal a chance to buy cleared lots for a dollar or a deeply discounted price. While the program sometimes fed lots to white developers, Smith said it worked well in some parts of the city.

Nathan Dollar, the director of Carolina Demography at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, said tax policy can be used to address displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods, and earlier this year Raleigh’s Wake County eased the tax burdens of more than 600 residents of historically Black communities, according to the Southeast Raleigh Promise nonprofit.

Branham said he and other city staffers have also researched a request from a group of minority communities, the Legacy Neighborhood Coalition, to create overlay districts intended to prevent displacement with measures such as limiting development density. 

Similar programs are in place in several North Carolina cities, including Raleigh, he said, but they are legally complex, especially because a state law passed last year limits local governments’ power to impose zoning changes, especially rules calling for reducing the intensity of development. 

And any effort at protection can have unintended consequences such as limiting density that can promote affordability, he said.

Gene Bell, the retired chief executive officer of the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville, said an expansion of the federal Section 8 voucher program (Housing Choice Vouchers), a subsidy that helps low-income people afford private market housing, could help local residents break into more housing markets.

“The voucher program could probably balance more things than any one thing going,” Bell said. “It gives people a chance to live in different places, and then the community lives together, so to speak. And it deters the ongoing segregation of Black people and white people.”

Bowen National Research, which published the “Housing Needs Assessment” report for the Asheville region this year, found that as of March 2024, Buncombe had 3,128 housing choice vouchers issued, 70 that were unused, and a waitlist of 3,754 households.

Buncombe County Board of Commissioners Chair Amanda Edwards noted that the county’s 2030 Strategic Plan addresses affordability issues by proposing pathways to high wages and expanding education and workforce training. She said the county also needs to reduce cost burdens on all residents, lobby for full federal funding of programs that support the most vulnerable, attract higher-wage employers and build more affordable housing.

“These are years-long efforts, not quick fixes,” Edwards said.

Providing an economic boost

In 2023, the average annual income of Black residents of Asheville was about half that of white residents –- $24,311 compared with $44,119, census data show.

With public aid to meet the Reparations Commission’s economic development goals off the table, at least for now, nonprofits and other private groups are taking on this role.

The mission of Dogwood Health Trust, which was created from the proceeds of HCA Healthcare’s $1.5 billion purchase of Mission Health in 2019, is to “dramatically improve the health and wellbeing of all people and communities” of western North Carolina, said Rebecca Noricks, vice president of communications at Dogwood, adding that “many of those efforts support people and communities that have experienced historical disinvestment and disconnection.”

“Dogwood Health Trust invests in efforts to help people find safe, affordable housing, to find good jobs or create businesses, to educate and care for their children, to access healthcare they need, and to work together to create the change they want to realize,” Noricks said. 

“Many of the commission’s recommendations are consistent with work Dogwood is actively funding – education, work with older adults, doulas, health access and more.”

Spectrum, the communications company, has provided the Black-led YMI Cultural Center with $90,000 in cash and in-kind contributions to partner in a jobs training program, said YMI Executive Director Sean Palmer.

Nonprofit KL Training Solutions, best known for its My Daddy Taught Me That mentoring initiative, has operated an apprenticeship program for teenagers (most but not all of them African Americans) for 11 years, founder Keynon Lake said. The nonprofit pays its apprentices $15 to work with experienced professionals in a range of fields. 

Offering direct financial support to Black entrepreneurs can require efforts on several fronts.

Khiyara Wynn and her mother, Rhonda, opened the Sistas on Montford soul food restaurant about two months ago, and have already established a large following. At 3:30 on a recent afternoon their counter at the Montford Convenience store was crowded with customers.

To reach the goal of replicating the success of the New Ritz Restaurant her grandmother Margaret Harrison owned in the historically Black neighborhood of East End, they need a full-sized restaurant where patrons can eat, Khiyara Wynn said.

“This is kind of like remembrance … to keep her legacy going,” she said. But “to try to expand to where we have seating is very hard right now, trying to run a full-service soul food restaurant out of a convenience store.”

They have looked at the former Laughing Seed Cafe space downtown, she said, but need a grant or a loan to secure the location.

Sistas on Montford could definitely fill a gap in the Asheville food scene, said JeWana Grier-McEachin, the executive director of the Asheville Buncombe Institute of Parity Achievement, a nonprofit that promotes economic, social, and health equality for African Americans and other underserved Buncombe communities. ABIPA regularly hires Sistas for catering as a way to support minority businesses.

“Because one of the things that we know when people come to Asheville they’re always looking for (is), ‘Where’s the soul food restaurant?’” she said.

The Eagle Market Street Development Corporation is connecting the restaurant to more direct financial assistance, said Chief Executive Officer Stephanie Swepson Twitty.

Named for the streets that were at the historic center of East End’s hub of Black enterprise, the corporation aims to help BIPOC businesses, Swepson Twitty said, using the acronym for Black, Indigenous and People of Color, especially enterprises run by women. In 2019, Eagle Market’s Community Equity Fund provided $780,000 in deferred loans to 12 entrepreneurs but hasn’t issued any since then. 

So Swepson Twitty has reached out to Institute Capital (ICAP), a nonprofit community development financial institution that opened an Asheville office in the East End in March. She and Aaron Soto, ICAP’s commercial loan officer, plan to meet with the Wynns, she said.

ICAP will consider lending to all businesses that apply, Soto said, but focuses on assisting minority- and woman-owned enterprises. Though the interest rates of institution’s loans are slightly higher than those offered by conventional lenders, he said, it can offer loans “to businesses that are not quite bank-ready.”

“We can work with lower credit scores, as low as 600, and we only ask for about a 10 percent injection from the business owner,” he said, compared with the 20 or 30 percent required from banks.

Closing the achievement gap

Housing and economic opportunity were just two elements that the reparations commission identified as inequitable. Another was education.  

Lake, the KL Training Solutions founder, called the racial achievement gap in Asheville City Schools the “worst in North Carolina,” an assessment backed by the nonprofit Southern Coalition for Social Justice’s most recent Racial Equity Report Card for Asheville City Schools.

Just 4 percent of the district’s Black high schoolers achieved “career and college-ready” scores on end-of-course exams during the 2023-24 school year, compared with more than half of whites, the report said. Black students were 8.4 times as likely as whites to serve short-term suspensions.

Asheville has already seen one community-led program address this problem – PEAK Academy, a charter school geared toward increasing minority achievement, especially among Black children. Mullen and Bell, who also served eight years on the ACS board, including six as chair, helped found the school.

Bell, formerly PEAK’s board and a current member, cited the ACS achievement gap as one of the most serious problems facing the city and said “education would be No. 1” when it comes to attracting and keeping Black people in Asheville.

PEAK, which opened in 2021, quickly narrowed the difference in test scores between white students and those of color. As The Watchdog previously reported, for the 2022-23 year for end-of-third-grade tests, PEAK’s students earned a 72.2 percent proficiency rate on math, and 44.9 percent on reading, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI).

Just 15.5 percent of Black third graders in ACS showed proficiency in reading for that time frame, compared with 75.6 percent of whites. The gap was even greater in math, with 13.8 percent of Black third graders showing proficiency, compared with 80.1 percent of whites.

But PEAK’s mission has been challenged by WNC Citizens for Equality, which filed a federal complaint against the school alleging racial discrimination against white students and faculty. The local group bills itself as a “volunteer coalition dedicated to defending constitutional rights to equal protection under the law.”

PEAK maintains that all applicants for student and faculty positions are welcome, regardless of race, and that the school does not discriminate in any way. The complaint remains listed on the Citizens for Equality website under “court cases,” but the status of the complaint is unclear, as the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has undergone mass layoffs under the Trump Administration and is currently closed because of the federal shutdown.

Another education initiative comes from Lake’s organization. It began offering summer school classes in 2020 to address COVID-19 school closures, which were compounding the achievement gap.

The nonprofit hired three city school teachers to lead the program’s math, reading, science and history classes, and paid its students to attend the program 12 hours per week. Doing so relieved them of the need to find minimum-wage jobs that might not teach them valuable skills, Lake said, while passing on basic lessons of employment.

“If you’re not performing academically, we dock your pay. If you’re late to school, we dock your pay,” Lake said. “And we don’t reward bad behavior in any way,” he said.

The program, which has been extended to 16 hours weekly, has continued to grow and this summer paid 60 students $15 per hour. “This was our biggest year yet,” Lake said.

Shaniah Robinson, a 14-year-old eighth grader at Erwin Middle School, said she developed into a more fluent reader during the last session, which allowed her to build on academic skills she had learned the previous school year.

“It helped me remember stuff from seventh grade,” Robinson said.

Building a sense of Black community

Many African American residents see the need to rebuild Black culture as crucial in stemming the departure of young people.

“One reason this place is a very transient place for professionals, there is not a strong Black middle class community,” said Palmer of the YMI Cultural Center. “That means in a lot of ways you’re here by yourself … It’s easy to feel like you’re the only Black person in the room.”

But Black people won’t feel that way at YMI, he said.

Founded in 1893 as the Young Men’s Institute, it bills itself as one of the oldest African American cultural centers in the country. Over the past decade, the center, located at 39 S. Market St., has endured funding issues and executive turnover, but has regained its footing. It closed in early 2022 for a $6.2 million renovation, but reopened in February.

To further the sense of belonging and to create professional connections, Palmer is also working with more than a dozen other members of the Alpha Phi Alpha Inc. to revive the fraternity’s local chapter. 

“What we are seeking to do, is to ensure that African American communities have a place to go, have a place to socialize and connect,” he said.

The Black Business Alliance, which was recently launched by the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, also aims to create connections among African American entrepreneurs.

The effort is led by Ava Smith, founder and president of a Greenville, South Carolina-based recruitment company that recently opened an office in the Grove Arcade.

The alliance will create a forum for Black-owned businesses, and help them become “more integrated and visible because they’re hidden gems,” she said. “They’re hidden gems that just need a platform to be flushed out.”

Raising awareness of injustice

Along with connections, Black Asheville residents need a unified voice to make public officials aware of their concerns, said Justin Blackburn, the president of the Asheville Branch of the NAACP since August.

Blackburn is helping revive the organization’s chapter, which had been dormant for several years. Now that the chapter has been reactivated, he said, its members will decide what issues it will tackle.

Dwelling on past injustices can be counterproductive, said Smith, the City Council member.

“I’ve heard this growing up repeatedly,” she said about urban renewal. “It’s almost like the wound that keeps us stuck … I’m ready to heal and repair.”

But spreading the word of past injustice can lead to healing, said Priscilla Robinson, 64, who has been researching and speaking out about urban renewal for more than 15 years.

She is encouraged that white elected officials and business leaders seem increasingly aware of urban renewal’s destructive impact and other injustices, and are reaching out to redress the harm they did.

Despite the DOJ threatening a loss of funding, she said, she remains encouraged that both the City Council and County Commission recognized the need for reparations in 2020, when they also apologized for past injustices. 

Another good sign, she said, was a recent meeting held at the Black-owned Grind AVL coffee shop. Unified RAD, a group of River Arts District businesses owners, artists and other stakeholders, hosted a meeting to talk about its RAD Planning and Visioning Project, which is mapping out post-Helene recovery goals.

Its members recognize the district includes part of the historically Black Southside neighborhood, said hospitality business owner Joe Balcken, the co-leader of the project. They realized the need to invite a range of Black leaders, including Robinson.

Too often, white business and political leaders have imposed plans on Black neighborhoods without considering residents’ wishes, Robinson said. At the meeting, the RAD group listened to Black attendees and made changes based on their input.

“That was the best community meeting I’ve ever been to, because it was diversified, with people from all – not just color – but age and position,” she said afterward. “Everybody was just meeting and networking, and it was just awesome.”

Asheville Watchdog welcomes thoughtful reader comments on this story, which has been republished on our Facebook page. Please submit your comments there.

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Dan DeWitt is The Watchdog’s deputy managing editor/senior reporter. Email: ddewitt@avlwatchdog.org. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. The Watchdog’s local reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

NC invests $9.5 million in teams to help people with serious mental illness after their release from incarceration

by Rachel Crumpler, North Carolina Health News
November 10, 2025

By Rachel Crumpler

Trying to get back on one’s feet in the community after leaving prison or jail is rarely easy. People often face steep hurdles finding housing, employment and health care. For those with serious mental illness, the transition can be even more difficult.

About two in five people who are incarcerated have a history of mental illness — roughly twice the prevalence of mental illness within the general adult population.

Many of them leave prison or jail without a job or even a place to live. Some may have a single outpatient mental health appointment scheduled and a 30-day supply of their medications. Others might just get handed a list of resources and phone numbers.

Too often, it isn’t enough. 

Ted Zarzar, a psychiatrist who divides his time between UNC Health and Central Prison in Raleigh, previously told NC Health News the period where people reenter their communities is especially critical — and high-risk — for people with a mental illness. 

Without a direct handoff to care and support, Zarzar said staying stable in the community is nearly impossible. Many people end up right back in a jail, prison or the hospital in a frustrating — and costly — cycle of recidivism. And taxpayers foot the bill: Incarceration in a North Carolina prison costs more than $54,000 a year. 

It’s a cycle state leaders want to break — and they’re trying a new approach.

On Nov. 3, North Carolina officials announced a $9.5 million pilot program to provide intensive support to people with serious mental illnesses — such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder — as they reenter the community after incarceration. The goal: to reduce repeat encounters with the justice system and guide people to the help they need.

These Forensic Assertive Community Treatment, or FACT, teams will deliver personalized clinical and social support to justice-involved individuals with serious mental health needs who also present a medium to high risk of repeated criminal behavior. 

“​​We want to make sure that they are effectively connected to the treatment and supports that they need,” said Kelly Crosbie, director of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Use Services. “It is good for them, it is good for their families and it is good for our communities.”

High-risk, high-needs population

The first FACT teams will be based in Pitt, New Hanover, Wake/Durham, Buncombe and Mecklenburg counties. Each team will receive $636,000 per year for three years — funding that comes from the $835 million in behavioral health funding the state legislature appropriated in the 2023-25 state budget to improve the state’s mental health system.

Teams are designed to tailor care based on a person’s needs — from mental health and substance use treatment to housing and employment support and assistance with daily living tasks.

North Carolina’s first lady, Anna Stein, has focused on supporting rehabilitation and reentry programs for people leaving incarceration and on reducing stigma against people with substance use and mental health disorders as two of her top priorities during her husband’s time as governor. She helped announce the new program at NC DHHS headquarters in Raleigh.

“It is critical that we address the intersection of mental health needs and the criminal justice system,” Stein said.

While the pilot program has been in the works for more than a year, its launch comes amid increased public attention on gaps in North Carolina’s criminal justice and mental health systems. On Aug. 22, Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska was stabbed to death on a Charlotte light rail train. The man charged in her killing had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was homeless at the time of the incident. He had been arrested more than a dozen times over two decades and spent more than five years in prison for armed robbery. 

‘People want support’

Data shows that people with mental illnesses are overrepresented in incarcerated, probationary and paroled populations nationwide. Crosbie said that many people have mental health concerns and behaviors that contribute to their criminal involvement, and others see their conditions worsen behind bars. Some even develop new mental health conditions once they’re incarcerated. 

That’s turned jails and prisons into de facto mental health institutions — even though they’re ill-equipped to manage the growing, complex mental health needs of those in their custody.

The FACT model builds on Assertive Community Treatment — a model of care developed in the 1970s when psychiatric hospitals across the nation closed and care shifted into the community. ACT uses multidisciplinary teams who constitute “walking hospitals” to bring treatment directly to community members with the most serious mental health challenges.

Forensic assertive community treatment, or FACT teams, adapts that model to serve a justice-involved population by pairing treatment with interventions to reduce risks for future criminal behavior.

Each North Carolina FACT team will include nine roles: a team leader, psychiatrist or nurse practitioner, nurse, mental health counselor, substance use counselor, peer support specialist, housing specialist, vocational/educational specialist and forensic navigator. The team members work collaboratively to go beyond traditional outpatient care and “wrap” services around them. 

“This program in particular is for people with very severe mental health issues,” Crosbie said. “These are folks that probably need more than once every two weeks a 45-minute counseling appointment. They really need intensive support through that peer who can be with them every day if that’s what they need, through a doc who they can talk to every day if they need to, a clinical social worker who’s directing the rest of the team and providing counseling services to them. 

“It’s just a much more intensive level of clinical services, in addition to some of those other life supports, like housing and employment.”

Crosbie said teams can meet clients anywhere — at home, in a park, a doctor’s appointment or even at a job interview.

That flexibility is key for client engagement, said Lacey Rutherford, FACT team lead in Buncombe County. 

Each FACT team has the capacity to work with up to 30 clients — a smaller caseload to allow staff to meet each person’s intensive needs. Team members are available around the clock, with no time limit on how long they can work with someone to become stable in the community.

The Buncombe and Mecklenburg county teams are already operating and accepting referrals, Crosbie said. The remaining teams are expected to launch by the end of the calendar year. Referrals can come from law enforcement, court officials, community corrections, behavioral health care providers and even family members who think someone would benefit from FACT services.

Rutherford, who previously worked for two years on an assertive community treatment team in Buncombe and had clients with histories of incarceration, said she believes the specialized teams to serve justice-involved individuals will help better address unmet needs. 

“People want support. They really do,” Rutherford said. “Of course, we’re going to have situations where people are going to be resistant to this — to treatment — but overall,  this is something that these individuals haven’t had. They haven’t had support. They haven’t had people in their corner fighting for them.”

An emerging strategy

While FACT teams are new to North Carolina, the approach has been in limited use elsewhere since the 1990s.

One early FACT team was created in 1997 in Rochester, New York, by psychiatrist J. Steven Lamberti, who is also a professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Lamberti saw the gaps between the mental health and justice systems when many of his patients landed in jail. The program is still operating today, with Lamberti serving as team psychiatrist.

“FACT brings together best practices in community mental health with best practices in crime prevention,” Lamberti told NC Health News. “It’s a mobile one-stop shop to meet people’s needs medically, psychiatrically and socially.”

He described a typical FACT client as someone with a serious mental illness who may not recognize their condition and has previously refused treatment, living on the streets without stable housing or income — conditions that lead to frequent encounters with the justice system.

“At some point, they get involved in a survival crime like stealing food or aggressive panhandling because they’re starving and trying to get money,” Lamberti said. “If they get arrested, they’ll go to jail. It’s usually a misdemeanor charge, and they’ll be right back out on the streets.” 

Breaking the cycle, Lamberti said, requires treatment, along with addressing the “criminogenic needs” that drive justice involvement — issues like housing instability, food insecurity, poor family relationships and more.

Lamberti published the first paper on forensic assertive community treatment in 2004. At the time, he identified 16 teams operating in nine states — though he noted differences in their structure. The number of teams has grown in recent years — aided by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration naming FACT among best practices in 2019, Lamberti said.

A recent June 2024 survey led by UNC Chapel Hill researcher Lorna Moser, who has spent her career providing training and evaluation of assertive community treatment, found FACT teams may be operating in 19 states.

In the past year, Lamberti said at least four states — including North Carolina — have launched FACT teams as state leaders look for better ways to serve this high-need population.

“People that are appropriate for FACT services are high service utilizers because they’re cycling in and out of jails and hospitals,” Lamberti said. “That’s very costly, not just financially but emotionally. These are human beings with families, and they and their families are suffering immensely by watching a loved one become homeless, cycle through and become incarcerated.

“For a variety of humanitarian and financial reasons, there’s really great interest [in FACT teams] on the part of the states.”

FACT is a relatively new service delivery model, so its effectiveness is still being gauged. So far, Lamberti said, the growing evidence base is showing that “outcomes are generally positive.” Evaluations have shown that FACT can help reduce days spent in jail and promote greater use of outpatient mental health services.

It also appears to be cost-effective. A 2022 study published in Psychiatric Services found that the Rochester FACT program was associated with a $1.50 return on investment for every $1 spent — largely by preventing hospitalization and incarceration. And that was without factoring in potential savings from other sources such as crime-related damages. 

North Carolina health leaders said they’ll be monitoring the outcomes of North Carolina’s FACT teams closely.

“Our goal is that this is incredibly successful, and we’re able to replicate this in more counties,” Crosbie said.

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

McIntosh spends $491K, so far, to defend rezoning of Hogg Hummock

by Mary Landers, The Current
November 8, 2025

McIntosh County has spent almost half a million dollars defending its 2023 rezoning of Hogg Hummock, a small neighborhood on Sapelo Island that’s traditionally been home to a Gullah Geechee community.

Through open records requests, The Current GA gathered attorneys’ invoices and county purchase order summaries from October 2023 through August 2025. The payments, connected to Sapelo-rezoning-related lawsuits, add up to more than $491,000 and continue to accumulate in a county where the 2026 fiscal year budget comes in at about $21 million.  

The county commission passed the rezoning in September 2023, in a tumultuous meeting packed with citizens opposed to the changes, which were designed to allow larger houses to be built in the enclave thus increasing the rural county’s tax base. Longtime residents, many of them descendants of people enslaved on Georgia’s sea islands, feared the resulting gentrification and higher property taxes would drive them out of their homes and sweep in wealthy developers. 

In litigation that is ongoing, the residents sued the county claiming the zoning amendment violates state law and their constitutional rights to due process and equal protection.    

Through August, county taxpayers have paid Cumming-based Jarrard & Davis $254,604 in this case, Grovner et al. v. McIntosh. 

The spending could be slowing, however. Earlier this week Senior Judge F. Gates Peed issued a 30-day stay requested jointly by both parties to allow them to negotiate a settlement. 

“The parties in our case are discussing settlement, and our case has been stayed, and we're going to give the court an update in 30 days about where we are,” said Senior Attorney Miriam Gutman of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is representing the Sapelo residents.

Preliminary talks have touched only on logistics, Attorney Ken Jarrard, who represents the county, told The Current GA.

“The County welcomes the opportunity to sit down with all parties and work in good faith toward solutions,” Jarrard wrote in an email.

Paying for both sides

In a separate attempt to undo the rezoning, community groups in the summer of 2024 successfully filed a petition in probate court to force a countywide vote to repeal the zoning change. Early voting was already underway last year ahead of the scheduled Oct. 1 referendum when a Superior Court judge granted the county’s request to shut down the special election. But that decision was appealed to the state Supreme Court, which in September ruled to put the referendum back on the ballot. A special election is scheduled for Jan. 20, 2026.

The cost to hold the referendum – previously estimated at $20,000 – was cited as one reason the county shouldn’t be forced to conduct it. But fighting against it in court ultimately cost the county at least $236,681 in legal fees. Most of that money went to Jarrard & Davis. But because the county was suing its own probate judge, Harold Webster, it was required to pay for his legal fees, too. Those fees totaled $54,020 for the services of Attorney Kellye Moore of Perry-based Walker Hulbert Gray & Moore. In October 2024, Moore informed the county that her rate for defending Webster was increasing to $375 an hour. 

“I confirmed with attorney Ken Jarrard the hourly rate that McIntosh County is paying him for his representation in this litigation and have adjusted my hourly rate accordingly,” she wrote.

McIntosh has increased its budget for legal fees significantly over the course of the zoning litigation. In fiscal year 2024, before any of this litigation began, the county expected to spend $132,750 in legal costs. The next year it bumped that number up to $230,000. In the current 2026 fiscal year budget, it’s $300,000. 

Encouraged by talks

Josiah “Jazz” Watts,  a Sapelo descendant and One Hundred Miles Justice Strategist, is encouraged that talks are underway. 

“I would hope that they would come to the table in good faith with an understanding of doing the things that can protect the culture, the heritage of the community,” Watts said. “This community has brought so much to not only McIntosh County and the state of Georgia, but I also see people from all over the world come to visit the island. If we can all come to the table with that understanding, then everybody wins.”

Watts sounds wistful talking about how the Hogg Hummock community, which suffered the loss of seven Gullah-Geechee festivalgoers when a ferry dock collapsed last year, could have benefitted from the tax dollars that instead went to the zoning fight. 

“This is nothing that we asked for,”  Watts said. “This is something that we responded to that still is threatening our way of life. So I'm glad that somebody is finally saying, ‘You know, maybe we do need to sit down and have a discussion and see if there's a possibility of working this out.’”

Parties from both the referendum litigation and the ongoing zoning litigation will be involved in the settlement talks.

It’s unclear how the upcoming referendum will be affected if a settlement is reached before Jan. 20, 2026, when voters again go to the polls.

Attorney Dana Braun, of Savannah-based Ellis Painter, which represented Sapelo residents in the state Supreme Court case, said if the parties can reach an agreement that obviates the need for a referendum they’ll still have to determine if there’s a legal way for the referendum not to go forward. 

It’s uncharted territory, especially given how new the use of the referendum process is, the attorneys noted.

“I think there's a lot of complexity here, and I'm hoping –  I think the parties are hoping – that through settlement negotiations we can resolve it,” Gutman said.  

This article first appeared on The Current and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How Alabama Power Kept Bills Up and Opposition Out to Become One of the Most Powerful Utilities in the Country

In one of the poorest states in America, the local utility earns massive profits producing dirty energy with almost no pushback from state regulators.

By Dennis Pillion, Lee Hedgepeth

November 3, 2025

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Wired for Profit: First in a series about Alabama Power’s influence over electric rates, renewable energy, pollution and politics in the Yellowhammer State.

MCCALLA, Ala.—Mary Rosenboom is fed up.

Like 1.5 million other Alabamians, Rosenboom is forced to pay ever-increasing electricity prices set by Alabama Power and approved by the state’s Public Service Commission. Each month, Rosenboom forks over hundreds of dollars to the utility—and a massive hyperscale data center proposed near her home, she fears, will make the situation even worse.

Her electricity costs are already a huge financial burden. Rosenboom, who works as a sales professional, said she chooses not to run her air conditioner during much of the day to prevent an untenable power bill. Even that isn’t enough. Often, Rosenboom said she must turn to high-interest credit cards to keep the lights on. 

“I’m robbing Peter to pay Paul,” she told Inside Climate News. “It makes me sick.”

Rosenboom’s plight isn’t unique. 

Inside Climate News examined the 2024 federal filings of 100 of the largest electric utilities in the country. 

None reported higher total residential electric bills, on average, than Alabama Power.

Because Alabama is one of the poorest states in the nation, that hits especially hard. Electricity customers here are among the most financially burdened in the nation, the U.S. Department of Energy found. And an analysis by think tank RMI showed that among households with extremely low incomes, Alabamians pay nearly a quarter of their earnings for electricity—the highest percentage in the country.

So why are power bills so high? 

Experts point to lax regulation by the Alabama Public Service Commission, which is charged with regulating Alabama Power and overseeing any large spending or rate increases proposed by the utility. 

Robert Blanton, chair of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has been digging into the mechanisms that allow Alabama Power to earn record profits in such an impoverished state. 

Ultimately, he said, there’s strong evidence that Alabama Power has effectively “captured” its regulator, the PSC. Academics use the concept of regulatory capture to describe a situation in which regulators are more beholden to the entities they are charged with regulating than the public they represent. 

The commission conducts much of its regulation of Alabama Power behind closed doors, with little to no access for the public or outside interest groups. It has consistently granted Alabama Power unusually high profit margins. The company’s return on equity was 11 percent in 2023, according to a utility analysis by financial firm S&P Global. 

That’s down slightly from the company’s historical average of around 13 percent, but still among the highest of any utility in the country. Nationwide, the average rate of return approved for electric utilities in 2024 rate cases was 9.74 percent, according to S&P.

“I don’t think there’s a single utility in the country that would be upset with an 11 percent earned ROE,” said Kent Chandler, former chairman of the Kentucky Public Service Commission, now a senior fellow in energy and environmental policy for the R Street Institute. “I mean, that’s like double what I know some utilities are actually earning.”

Meanwhile, Alabama Power and its parent, Southern Co., have boasted about their record profits. “Every quarter for 78 consecutive years, Southern Company has paid a dividend to its shareholders that is equal to or greater than the previous quarter,” the company said in a July press release.

In a statement, representatives for Alabama Power said the company’s rates were fair and its reliability was among the best in the nation. The company pointed to high per capita electricity usage in the state, the seventh-highest in the country, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and the third-highest residential usage. The company said that its residential rate, not the total bill, is a more appropriate way to evaluate the company’s affordability. 

“On those price-based measures—paired with our industry-leading reliability—Alabama Power’s residential service is fairly priced under PSC oversight,” the company said.

Alabama Power’s average residential rate last year was 16.77 cents per kilowatt-hour, higher than the national average of 16.48 cents and 35th highest out of 100 utilities examined by Inside Climate News. 

But the national average includes places like Hawaii, Connecticut and Southern California, which are all among the top 10 states for median household income. Shipping fuel oil to Hawaii and wildfire prevention in California are also huge costs that don’t apply in Alabama. Alabama Power notes that the company faces its own “high-cost reliability risks” due to tornadoes, thunderstorms and hurricanes in the state.

Alabama Power’s combination of above-average rates with top-five usage yielded the highest total residential bills in the nation last year. Other states with similar or greater usage feature lower rates. One reason Alabama’s usage is so high: nearly 70 percent of Alabamians use electric heat, as opposed to natural gas, thanks in part to incentives offered by Alabama Power. 

Louisiana, which has the highest per capita residential electricity use in the nation, has electric rates that averaged 11.64 cents/kWh in 2024, about 30 percent lower than Alabama Power’s rate. The average Alabama Power residential customer used 1,129 kWh of electricity per month last year, at a cost of about $189. A customer using the same amount of electricity in Louisiana would have paid $58 less every month. Those figures do not include state or local taxes, so the actual bills are even higher. 

Average residential rates in the states bordering Alabama—Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida—are 15 to 25 percent lower than Alabama Power’s rates. 

Alabama Power’s rates are also well above those of other providers in the state—46 percent higher than the average rate last year charged by Huntsville Utilities, which serves almost 200,000 residential customers in north Alabama.

The R Street Institute, the think tank where Chandler now works, gave Alabama an “F” in its ranking of electricity competition—how much choice consumers have about where their power comes from. No other state received such a bad grade. 

The group only considered investor-owned utility companies in its rankings, and Alabama Power is the only such company in Alabama. 

Alabama Power also charges about 16 percent more than Mississippi Power and about 8 percent more than Georgia Power, the other two utilities owned by its parent company, Southern Co.

The difference, at least in part, is that Alabama Power’s rates are driven up by the company’s ever-increasing profits. 

The company reported a $1.4 billion profit in 2024, almost double the $712 million it earned in 2013, the year the PSC changed its formula for measuring Alabama Power’s profits. The company’s book value—its assets minus debt—more than doubled over that span, going from $5.5 billion to $13 billion.

Alabama Power said the increase in equity is driven by investments made to improve the system. “Growth in book equity primarily mirrors system investment—storm hardening, cyber and physical security, as well as transmission and distribution upgrades, along with other investments driven by reliability and compliance,” the company said. 

Almost No Public Participation

In virtually all states with regulated utilities, rate cases force the company to justify its proposed increases in a public forum, providing sworn, expert testimony and allowing outside groups to challenge the projections and assertions made by the power company. Not in Alabama.

The PSC hasn’t conducted a formal rate case related to Alabama Power since 1982, more than four decades ago.

“There are no courtroom-style hearings on Alabama Power’s long-term energy planning or how those plans impact customers’ bills,” said Christina Tidwell, a senior attorney in the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Alabama office. “These types of proceedings are routine in other states. When the public can participate, we believe they’re better informed about how this process impacts their lives.”

Chandler, the former chairman of the Kentucky Public Service Commission, said that while rate cases can be tedious, they are valuable to the public. 

“One of the benefits of having rate cases is that you get a holistic look at a utility’s revenues and a utility’s costs,” Chandler said. “In my experience in Kentucky, consumers benefit from having periodic reviews by an objective regulator.”

And since regulated utilities earn profits on all their approved spending, the more they spend, the more they earn, he said. 

“They have an incentive to over-invest,” Chandler said. “And if you never check things after the fact, then you’re just writing them a blank check.”

Alabama Power said in a statement that the lack of formal rate cases does not mean the company faces no oversight. The company said its “formula-based oversight” from the PSC includes monthly filings, annual reviews and automatic refunds or adjustments when its earnings fall outside of a specified range. 

“Different structure does not equal lack of regulation,” the company said.

Wall Street has taken notice. A 2024 report by S&P Global put Alabama in a tier of its own atop the rankings in its State Regulatory Evaluations, examining the likelihood that state regulators might decrease or limit a utility’s profits. The report found no other state where a utility’s profits were as safe as in Alabama. 

Tips?

If you have questions or tips about Alabama Power and its role in the state, you can reach out to our reporters at alabamapowerstories@gmail.com.

The last PSC commissioner to advocate for formal rate hearings for Alabama Power—Terry Dunn in 2013—was promptly voted out of office in the next election. Dunn, a self-described conservative Republican, faced a curious and largely anonymous campaign linking him to environmental groups. 

Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh, the former PSC president, described Dunn’s efforts to initiate formal reviews of Alabama Power as a “full frontal assault” by “extremist groups” and their “fancy San Francisco environmental lawyers.”

Dunn, who died last year, called the efforts “a smear campaign orchestrated against a Republican by fellow Republicans,” in a letter to the state party in 2013. 

Later that year, about 10 people staged what many believe to be a faked environmental protest on the front steps of the PSC building. The protesters, wearing blue surgical masks and other items obscuring their identities, bore signs with slogans such as “Environmentalists [heart] Dunn,” and “Save the Warrior,” likely a reference to the Black Warrior River, which runs through Tuscaloosa. Representatives of environmental groups who were there to attend a meeting said they had no idea who the people were. 

Ultimately, Dunn was defeated in the 2014 Republican primary by Chris “Chip” Beeker Jr., a cattle and catfish farm operator and former county commissioner in rural Greene County—a county whose largest employer was an Alabama Power plant. Beeker had help. Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, whose lobbying firm represented Alabama Power’s parent company, organized a fundraiser for Beeker in 2013.

Beeker stepped down from the commission partway through his term last year, citing health issues. His son, Chris Beeker III, filled his seat after being appointed by Gov. Kay Ivey.

The PSC’s new president, Cynthia Lee Almond, has said transparency will be one of her priorities. But PSC staff would not make her or other commissioners available for an interview to discuss the absence of rate hearings or the public’s limited role in PSC affairs. Instead, the PSC’s press office provided written responses to questions.

When reporters reach out to the agency seeking information, the answers come with this warning:

“All verbal and/or written responses provided by the staff of the Alabama Public Service Commission (“APSC”) are for informational purposes only and may not be the subject of quotation(s) attributed to staff in any public medium without the express permission of the APSC.”

A Profitable Change

A turning point for Alabama Power’s profits came in 2013. That’s the year Alabama state regulators changed the way they measure Alabama Power’s returns, switching from the industry standard return on equity metric to a formula they created, called weighted retail return on common equity.

The weighted return rate rewards Alabama Power for having higher ratios of equity to debt. The idea was that by incentivizing company officials to carry a greater percentage of equity as opposed to debt, they would secure higher credit ratings and be able to borrow money under better terms, decreasing overall costs. 

At the time, commissioners and the company said they expected electric rates to go down as a result. 

“I will tell you as you see adjustments over the next few years, you are going to see a decrease,” then-PSC President Cavanaugh said. 

That didn’t happen. 

Instead, the company benefited from the change far more than its customers did.

Alabama Power’s electric rates have risen 45 percent across all customer groups since the novel rate formula went into effect. That’s far more than the national average, which increased 29 percent over the same span.

Meanwhile, the company’s profit nearly doubled, despite producing less electricity today than it did in 2013. 

Since Alabama Power earns a return on all of its equity, having more power plants and infrastructure in place increases its profitability. The company also earns bonuses under the rate structure for maintaining positive credit ratings by financial agencies and for having a greater than 50 percent ratio of equity to debt. 

The PSC, in a written statement, denied that its switch to weighted common equity was driving Alabama Power’s increased profitability.

“With regard to your analysis of public documents, which reflect the financial position of Alabama Power, please be advised there is no correlation between Alabama Power’s current financial position and the implementation of the weighted retail return on average common equality mechanism in 2013,” a commission representative told Inside Climate News. 

Instead, the PSC said the increased net income was the result of Alabama Power’s “significant capital investments to modernize its systems,” which were approved by the PSC. 

“If That’s Not Regulatory Capture…”

Blanton, the political science professor at UAB, sees the absence of rate-making cases, the nation’s highest residential electric bills and Alabama Power’s record profits as unmistakable signs that Alabama’s PSC has been captured by the company it regulates. 

He points to three ways regulatory capture manifests itself in Alabama. 

“One is campaign finance, the ability of the regulated industry to financially contribute towards the campaigns of regulatory bodies,” he said. 

A 2024 analysis by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom, showed that of the states that elect the members of their utility regulator, Alabama tops the list of those receiving the most campaign finance cash from fossil fuel-linked interests. 

Fifty-five percent of political donations to Alabama public service commissioners above $250 from 2013 to 2023 came from fossil-fuel interests, the analysis concluded. 

“You don’t have to have a conspiratorial mindset to figure out that gives these donors leverage—if they’re the ones that are financing the campaigns of the people they’re supposed to be regulating,” Blanton said of such contributions.

Part of the problem, Blanton said, is that Alabama is one of 10 states that directly elects its utility commissioners. PSC commissioners say they don’t accept money directly from the utilities they regulate, but lax campaign finance laws provide ample opportunity for influencing regulators, Blanton said. 

An examination of “information flows” in the state also points toward capture, he said. There’s a general opacity and complexity around the information involved and a relative dominance of the industry as the primary source for information for the regulators, according to Blanton.

The third aspect of regulatory capture is “cultural capture,” Blanton said, a concept that alludes to the extent to which industry and regulators share similar worldviews or perspectives. 

“The key is whether or not regulators are likely to unquestioningly accept evidence and opinions put forth by the industry, and the extent to which regulators accept information from outside sources,” Blanton said. 

Looking at these three lines of evidence, Blanton said there are some clear takeaways about where Alabama finds itself—captured.

“There’s no objective reason why Alabama should be an outlier. We’re not hotter than Texas. We don’t have worse conditions than Louisiana,” he said. “There’s just nothing that makes sense. … Any reasonable person, looking through the data, looking through the evidence, will say, ‘We have a situation that’s, if that’s not regulatory capture, I don’t know what is.’”

Data Center Angst

Inside Climate News interviewed more than a dozen Alabama Power customers for this story, and each shared the concerns voiced by Mary Rosenboom, the customer who lives near the proposed hyperscale data center—rising energy costs, a lack of transparency and fear about what the future may hold.

Rosenboom and others worry that construction and operation of power-hungry data centers will drive their electricity costs even higher. 

“I know that’s what’s coming,” Rosenboom said. “And it’ll be us that foot the bill. It’s not good for the citizens. It’s good for Alabama Power’s pocketbook.” 

Alabama Power and the PSC both insist that data center costs will not be passed on to other customers. But they also declined to say whether those agreements with data centers will be made public, making it impossible to verify those claims. 

In a statement, a representative for the company said that it takes a “disciplined approach” to engaging with potential data center customers. 

“We understand that budgets are tight, and affordability is central to our mission. That is why we work hard to connect customers with offerings like Budget Billing, payment plans, efficiency tools, and assistance programs,” the company’s response said. 

Data centers will “pay the full, fair cost to serve their needs,” the company said. “We work with the Alabama Public Service Commission to approve large-load customer contracts and any needed operational investments, ensuring a thorough process that validates needs and protects customers.”

Alabama Power declined to provide a list of planned data center projects and their anticipated electricity demand.

“Long-term capacity planning is reviewed with the PSC,” the company responded. “We don’t publish speculative load projections for individual customer classes or projects. Any major resource additions follow established processes to ensure reliability and fairness for all customers.”

Regulatory interactions involving Alabama Power and the PSC are often similarly opaque. 

During depositions involving Alabama Power’s request to purchase a natural gas plant earlier this year, lawyers for environmental groups questioned company management about data centers and their anticipated loads. 

The company’s representatives were often vague in their answers, though they did admit that data centers are the “primary driver” of increased load projections. When company lawyers did provide substantive information about specific load figures, their answers were redacted in PSC transcripts. 

“I’ll say that some projects fall off of this list and some projects are added to this list and the net change is [redacted] megawatts,” Alabama Power forecasting manager Maria Burke said in a deposition. “They have a mixed answer because in the previous forecast I would say we only had [redacted] megawatts to data centers and in this forecast we have [redacted]. So the delta is [redacted].”

Alabama Power said the new gas plant was needed to meet a “system-wide winter reliability need in 2029,” rather than to serve any single customer, like a data center.

“It’s like improving the main road for everyone when traffic increases,” the company said. “The new business park adds some traffic, but it pays its share—and everyone drives on a more reliable road.”

If built to capacity, a proposed data center campus in Bessemer, just southwest of Birmingham near Rosenboom’s home in McCalla, is expected to consume as much as 1,200 megawatts of electricity, running every hour, 24 hours a day, according to estimates provided to residents. That amount of energy is about 10 times the usage of all residences in nearby Birmingham or around 90 times the usage of all residences in Bessemer. 

In one fell swoop, it could increase Alabama Power’s total demand across the state by around 10 percent. 

“My power bill’s already not affordable,” said Brenda Small, who lives in a trailer park adjacent to the site of the proposed data center. “I had one bill that was $495. No one can afford that.”

Reliant on Fossil Fuels

Alabama Power’s electricity is not only expensive, it’s dirty and comes with a heavy environmental footprint. 

The PSC has approved costly upgrades to old coal-fired power plants, allowing Alabama Power to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to delay their retirements by only a few years. The PSC greenlit massive natural gas additions in 2020, 2022 and 2025, making Alabama Power increasingly reliant on fossil fuels for decades to come and its customers vulnerable to price spikes in natural gas and supply shortages in times of heavy energy use.

Its coal-fired power plant near Birmingham, the James H. Miller Jr. Electric Generating Plant, has been the nation’s largest single source of greenhouse gases for nine years running. The company charges hefty fees to customers who install solar panels, smothering the small-scale renewable market. Alabama ranks second to last among states in energy efficiency efforts in a recent scorecard, and upgrades to its old and expensive coal plants seem destined to continue as electricity demand rises due to large data centers. 

The company has also stuck to its guns on plans to leave nearly 77 million cubic yards of toxic coal ash in unlined ponds along Alabama’s rivers, leaching contaminants into the groundwater indefinitely, even as other utilities in the South have agreed to dig out some or all of their ash ponds. 

And this environmental record, UAB’s Blanton said, has come under the watch of state regulators, who have minimized the effects of climate change and Alabama Power’s pollution. 

A New Profit Formula Review—With No Public Input

When adopting the 2013 profit formula, called Rate Stabilization and Equalization, or RSE, the commission agreed to review its performance every six years. The first review was conducted in 2019, with no changes made to the rate structure. 

In its responses to Inside Climate News, the commission said the second review has already begun—with no public input—through a series of closed-door meetings with Alabama Power and the state attorney general’s office. 

Whether outside experts or concerned members of the public will be provided an opportunity to weigh in on the review will only be decided after the commission’s staff has made its findings, the PSC statement said.

Tidwell, the Southern Environmental Law Center attorney, said public participation should be essential in utility regulation.

“Alabama Power customers who are impacted by the PSC’s decisions deserve to have a say in the process,” Tidwell said. “The Public Service Commission is tasked with ensuring that rates are just and reasonable not just for Alabama Power, but also for the public. … How can you protect customers’ best interests when there are almost no avenues for them to participate in the process?”

Correction: This article has been updated after an earlier version incorrectly described Alabama Power as having the nation’s highest electricity rates. It has the nation’s highest residential electric bills. Additional responses from Alabama Power sent after publication have also been added to the article.

Coming next: Part two of Wired for Profit, how the Alabama Public Service Commission has allowed Alabama Power to earn profits far above the national average for decades.

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