It's Friday, December 5, 2025 and in this morning's issue we're covering: Big Stone Gap focuses on its undefeated team, not its fugitive coach, Calvin Duncan wins Orleans clerk of court race, AG’s suit against Meta hits the SJC, Pesticide drift is catching schools off guard. Lawmakers want to require notice before spraying, Starbucks Agrees to Pay Workers $38 Million to Settle Scheduling Law Probe, NC pitches $1 billion plan to overhaul rural health system, Clock ticking on NC’s $1.2 billion in unspent federal COVID funds, auditor warns, Federal Medicaid cuts could limit access to services for people with disabilities, Three years after disappearance, Jay Lee’s family sees justice and reflects on the casualties of secrets, County Planning Commission in Virginia Delays Vote Again on Proposed Gas Plant That Aims to Link to PJM Grid.

Media outlets and others featured: Cardinal News, Verite News, CommonWealth Beacon, Investigate Midwest, THE CITY, North Carolina Health News, Carolina Public Press, The Current, Mississippi Today, Inside Climate News.

Big Stone Gap focuses on its undefeated team, not its fugitive coach

News media from as far away as Great Britain descended on the Wise County town, but local fans just wanted to talk about the team.

by Jeff Lester – December 1, 2025

Big Stone Gap focuses on its undefeated team, not its fugitive coach

News media from as far away as Great Britain descended on the Wise County town, but local fans just wanted to talk about the team.

Cardinal NewsJeff Lester

Only a few minutes remain in the fourth quarter as the undefeated Union High School Bears hang onto a seven-point lead over the Ridgeview High School Wolfpack in Saturday’s Class 2 regional football playoff.

Ridgeview has the ball, its quick-footed runners grinding out three yards here, four yards there, colliding again and again with the big wall that is the Union defense.

Can Union hold those runners off just a few more times?

The players from the Wise County towns of Big Stone Gap and Appalachia and nearby communities have earned 13 victories up to this moment — most of them led by head coach Travis Turner.

But Turner isn’t here to see them now, nor was he here one week earlier when they defeated Graham High School to advance in the playoffs.

Turner vanished from his Appalachia home Nov. 20, just as the Wise County school system confirmed that an unnamed staff member had been placed on administrative leave. Now Turner, the subject of a Virginia State Police search, has been charged with 10 crimes involving child pornography.

At noon, two hours before Saturday’s game begins, Union fans are already filling the home team stands at Phil Robbins Field in Big Stone Gap’s Bullitt Park. The park is named for an 1800s local coal baron, while the stadium and football field are named in memory of a state championship football coach at Union’s predecessor, Powell Valley High School. 

The school is called Union because it consolidated Powell Valley with nearby arch-rival Appalachia High School — where Turner was a star player coached by another state championship leader, the late Tom Turner, his father.

The air is filled with chatter about today’s game, Union’s flawless season, the gorgeous blue sky weather with a slight chilly breeze — anything but the mystery of Travis Turner’s disappearance.

Seeing a reporter coming their way, notebook in hand, fans make it clear: They don’t want to discuss Turner. Today is about the kids.

By now, national and international media have become fixated on Turner’s vanishing and his alleged crimes. The New York Times has reported the initial story, and the rumor is that the Times has one or more reporters back in town today, sniffing for clues and seeking comments.

The Times described Big Stone Gap as “a mountain town with a barbershop, a few restaurants and some shuttered shops.” 

The people who live there know that the town is more than that. Big Stone Gap is home to the official state outdoor drama of Virginia, “Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” along with four museums, 10 public parks, a greenbelt walking trail and other trails. It hosts the annual Blue Highway music fest, the popular Home Craft Days annual music and craft festival, and boasts an increasingly busy downtown with several restaurant-bar combinations that offer live music several nights a week. 

Big Stone Gap also produced best-selling novelist Adriana Trigiani, who directed the film of her namesake novel right here in town, boosting its tourism traffic.

A reporter for the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail is attending her first American football game today. No one will give her a comment about Turner, she says.

Parents, young kids and older fans pack into the stadium while men in Union ball caps and jeans gather along the fence surrounding the field, prognosticating about their team’s odds in the contest to come.

At 1 p.m., both Union fans and Ridgeview fans erupt in shouts and applause as a bus pulls into Bullitt Park carrying Eastside High School’s Spartans team, which lost its playoff contest with Rye Cove High School the day before. Like Union, Eastside is in Wise County. Horns blow, cowbells clang and everyone jumps to their feet as the Spartans arrive to the thundering guitars of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” over the intercom.

Union’s video crew is on the field, waving hands, exhorting the crowd to cheer. The horns and hooters wail.

The warm, rich aroma of hot dog chili and cheese-covered nachos fills the air. On the track, Union cheerleaders wave huge signs: LET’S GET LOUD. MAKE SOME NOISE!

Union students, in their dedicated stadium section, rise to taunt Ridgeview fans with a shout: “We can’t hear you! We can’t hear you!” It’s matched with hollers from Wolfpack devotees in the stands across the field. 

The Union kids launch a raucous, booming call-and-response chant that gathers up more voices across the stadium:

“Everywhere we go, everywhere we go,
People wanna know, people wanna know,
Who we are, who we are,
So we tell ’em, so we tell ’em,
We are the Bears, we are the Bears,
The mighty, mighty Bears!”

* * *

Travis Turner, 46, left his house Nov. 20. The big man, standing 6 feet, 3 inches and weighing about 260 pounds, was wearing a gray sweatshirt, sweatpants and glasses. He was last seen walking off into the dense mountainside woods nearby.

That same day, state police headed to the home, aiming to speak with Turner about an investigation. But before they arrived, they learned he was not there.

Ridgeview wins the toss to start Saturday’s game and kicks to Union.

The Bears grind their way, yard after yard, to the 40-yard line, then to midfield.

Then, Union running back and linebacker Keith Chandler breaks through with a blazing 20-yard run deep into Ridgeview territory. Union fans rise, screaming. Confetti explodes into the air, bursts of red, pink, yellow and blue paper covering spectators and the stands, followed by clouds of tiny soap bubbles. 

But the Bears ultimately punt and stop the Wolfpack on their own 39-yard line. Ridgeview grinds out another series of short runs, but the wall of Bears keeps pushing back hard.

On the Union sidelines, acting coach and defensive coordinator Jason Edwards is on the move. The wiry coach, sporting a long beard below fierce eyes, is pacing, pacing and shouting instructions.

Ridgeview quarterback Braxton Deal launches a pass, but Union’s Chandler zooms in, snatching the ball and racing to Ridgeview’s 20-yard-line. Union fans jump up, screaming. The horns squeal. The cowbells clang.

A couple of grinding carries later, Chandler breaks out and dashes as far as the 1-yard line — then Chandler score the day’s first touchdown. 

* * *

After Turner failed to return home on the night of Nov. 20, his wife Leslie was told she must wait 24 hours before filing a missing person report.

Meanwhile, the county school system confirmed that a staff member had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

In the second quarter, Ridgeview’s fast carriers continue trying to elude Union’s big defenders, digging and pushing their way to the Bears’ 35-yard line.

Then a Wolfpack receiver slips through for a breakout run to Union’s 2-yard line. Ridgeview at last carries the ball into the end zone, then kicks for the extra point. The score stands at 14-7. The smaller crowd of Wolfpack fans bellows out a great roar.

Ridgeview’s kick to the Bears lands in the Bears’ end zone, so Union’s next drive starts on its 20-yard-line. 

The Bears struggle to gain a few yards, play after play. Union fans again taunt the Ridgeview side, chanting, “We can’t hear you!”

Union punts, and Ridgeview resumes its push against the wall of Bears. The Wolfpack can’t get down the field. Union fans are screaming, louder than ever. The cowbells clang.

Ridgeview’s Deel launches another pass. The receiver is slammed to the ground hard. 

Ridgeview goes to the air again, but Union defensive back Brandon Bunch intercepts the ball, running to Ridgeview’s 42-yard line. The Bears push to the 20, then call a time out as the cheerleaders shout a rally cry: “Go Bears! Go Bears!”

By the quarter’s end, Ridgeview has regained the ball. The field is cleared as the Union band moves in for a halftime show of songs from the musical “Grease.”

* * *

On Nov. 25, state police confirm that Travis Turner has been charged with five counts of possessing child pornography and five counts of using a computer to solicit a minor, with more charges pending. He is deemed a fugitive.

Ridgeview is back to grinding away in the third quarter, poking for holes in the Union defense and finding too few to penetrate for more than a few yards. The Wolfpack punts, and now the Bears are prowling again, yard by yard, deep in their own territory.

A fake handoff to Chandler pays off as Bostic dashes 84 yards to a touchdown. With the extra point, the score becomes 21-7. Bear fans go wild, screaming, shouting, blasting the horns, clanging the cowbells.

Taking possession, Ridgeview goes back to slamming against the wall, gaining a few yards, a few more. But the Union defenders swarm them like an army of orange and black hornets.

Union is big, tough, while Ridgeview is quick. At last, the Wolfpack breaks free again with a long run to a touchdown, then the extra point. The score is 21-14. 

Time is running short. Fans of the undefeated Bears are growing anxious, while the team that suffered its only regular season defeat to them is only a touchdown and a kick away from evening the score. 

On Nov. 28, Turner family attorney Adrian Collins released a statement explaining the timeline of events, beginning with Turner’s disappearance eight days earlier. In it, Collins confirmed that Turner was last seen leaving his home with a firearm in his possession, headed for a walk in the woods.

By that time, schools Superintendent Mike Goforth had confirmed that charges have been filed “against a staff member who has been on administrative leave. The individual remains on leave and is not permitted on school property or to have contact with students.”

Early in the fourth quarter, Bears quarterback Kam Bostic fires off a pass that drives the team to Ridgeview’s 33-yard line.

A Bears receiver then takes a handoff and pushes to the 20, dragging Wolfpack defenders along. The kid just will not go down.

But then, Bostic fumbles the snap and Ridgeview grabs the ball. Once again, the Wolfpack is poking away, searching for cracks in the Union wall. 

A Ridgeview player breaks through for a run to the 40-yard line. Then quarterback Deel takes to the air again, but the pass misses its target. A great OOOOOOOHHHH rumbles forth from the Union fan seats. 

The teams dig and dig deeper, trading possession, until Ridgeview calls a time out with one minute and 32 seconds left on the clock. Union fans are on their feet, staring at the warriors on the field, shouting encouragement, as the intercom blasts “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie.

The grind resumes and the Wolfpack drives to Union’s 20-yard line and calls another time out, with seconds left on the clock. 

The crowd goes wild with shouts and screams as Ridgeview drives to Union’s 10-yard line. The Wolfpack only needs seven points to gain overtime play.

Ridgeview’s Deel launches the ball again, but Union defensive end Matty Polier smacks it down and the pass is incomplete. 

Union regains possession, only a few steps beyond their end zone. The wall has held. Bears fans erupt with a roar and shouts of “Let’s go, boys!”

One play is left. The seconds tick off. The snap, then Union downs the ball. It’s over. The Bears are victorious. The screams are deafening — elation, relief. Another step in the climb toward a championship. Another chance to play.

Fans mob the field to greet the victorious players. Within the crowd is Big Stone Gap Town Manager Steve Lawson, who has spent the last week deflecting questions about the mystery hanging over this moment. “Today is about the kids,” he says. 

Union now moves on to host Virginia’s only other undefeated team, Glenvar High School, in the Region 2A semifinal game Dec. 6 at Bullitt Park.

Travis Turner mentored this team through the regular season and to the playoffs before he vanished.

Still, no one knows where he is. But the Bears know exactly where they are — one game away from a shot at a state title match.

And two towns — beset by quiet gossip, quizzed by national and international reporters, splashed across hundreds of headlines — have one more moment to briefly set aside the unknown and focus on their beating heart. 

The kids.

Calvin Duncan wins Orleans clerk of court race

by Robert Stewart, Verite News New Orleans
November 16, 2025

Calvin Duncan will be the next clerk of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court after defeating incumbent Clerk Darren Lombard in the Saturday (Nov. 15) runoff election. 

Duncan, a political newcomer and former prisoner who was wrongfully incarcerated for nearly 30 years, won by a wide margin, besting Lombard, a veteran of the city’s courts, 68% to 32%. 

The two candidates were neck and neck during the October primary, where Duncan came in just 672 votes ahead of Lombard but falling short of the majority of the city’s vote, prompting Saturday’s runoff race. 

In a race that drew national attention, Duncan branded himself as the most qualified to create transparency and improve public access to the courts. He touted his own experience in prison, where he worked as a “jailhouse lawyer,” helping fellow prisoners pursuing appeals or post-conviction relief to obtain their own case records. Duncan, who was convicted of a 1981 murder, served 28 years before his 2011 release after he agreed to plead to a lesser charge. Then, in 2021, a New Orleans judge vacated his conviction and sentence. Duncan went on to earn his law degree. He works as the director of the The Light of Justice Program at Loyola University, which assists incarcerated people with their legal cases. 

Duncan ran as someone who struggled under the legacy system, saying he struggled for years to retrieve his own case records in his bid to prove his innocence. He attempted to tie Lombard’s record as an establishment candidate to long-term systemic problems with the court, such as the cumbersome process of retrieving records, which are still largely maintained on paper.  

Lombard’s pitch was one of established competence. He’d worked in the clerks’ offices in the city for nearly 20 years, first working in the Orleans Parish Criminal District Clerk’s office under Arthur Morrell, and then later running the clerk’s office in the Second City Court in Algiers. Most recently he’s forwarded the process of modernizing the case management system in his current position, overseen the elections in the parish and participated in expungement clinics to help qualified people expunge their record. Lombard described the office as a “well-oiled machine,” one that a newcomer, like Duncan, would not be as equipped to run as he would be. 

The job is a role that includes being the custodian of the court records, which means managing evidence, preparing dockets and processing and filing records related to the cases that come through the court, and assisting judges with paperwork. The clerk is also the chief elections officer in the parish, which entails qualifying candidates and making sure elections run smoothly and according to state law.  

The clerk is elected for a four-year term with the next term beginning in May 2026. 

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

AG’s suit against Meta hits the SJC 

by Jennifer Smith, CommonWealth Beacon
December 4, 2025

TWO YEARS AGO, Attorney General Andrea Campbell took Meta – Mark Zuckerberg’s monolith that owns Facebook and Instagram – to court over claims that its platform designs and features exploit children and keep them hooked on addictive content. On Friday, the Supreme Judicial Court will be the first state high court in the nation to consider whether those platform designs are shielded by a law protecting publishers from being sued over the content of their websites.

The case, scheduled for oral argument Friday morning, puts Massachusetts at the center of a debate over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The court will consider whether the 1996 federal law that protects internet companies from lawsuits over user-generated content extends to claims about platform design.

Campbell filed the lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court in October 2023, joining a bipartisan coalition of 42 attorneys general who sued Meta in an array of federal and state courts. The Massachusetts complaint alleges that Meta violated state consumer protection law and created a public nuisance by deliberately designing Instagram with features like infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and "like" buttons to addict young users, then falsely represented the platform's safety to the public. The company has also been reckless with age verification, the AG argues, and allowed children under 13 years old to access its content. 

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Peter Krupp denied Meta's motion to dismiss the case in October 2024, writing, Meta’s statements about its safety “are belied by its internal data showing that Instagram addicts and harms children. Meta had repeatedly deprioritized youth well-being to increase revenue.” 

The case is before the high court because Meta wants to challenge Krupp’s ruling that it was not entitled to immunity – a procedural move that bumped the case up to the SJC even though the lower court has not decided its merits. 
 
The state's complaint relies heavily on Meta's own internal research, which allegedly showed the company understood Instagram's features were harming teenagers but concealed this knowledge to maximize profits. According to Campbell’s lawsuit, Meta secretly utilizes design features that "deliberately exploit and capitalize off young users' unique vulnerabilities" and overcome their ability to self-regulate time on the platform. 
 
The complaint alleges that young Massachusetts users are induced into using Instagram for multiple hours a day, often instead of homework or sleep, in an addictive manner they cannot self-regulate. 
 
Research cited in the lawsuit shows that for adolescents, mental health steeply declines after one hour of daily social media use. As hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts teenagers actively use Instagram, the lawsuit alleges the website’s practices have burdened Massachusetts school systems and added to health care expenditures.   

“This addiction, according to Meta’s own data, has caused widespread mental and physical harm to children,” the AG’s office wrote. “The Commonwealth has been left to grapple with the extent of that harm.” 
 
Meta argues that Section 230 bars the entire case. The law states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Courts have broadly interpreted this to protect websites from lawsuits over content posted by users. 
 
In its filings, Meta argues that its products are fundamentally based on third-party content.  For that reason, the company says, its platform features and design cannot, on their own, be held responsible for any problematic behavior related to use of the platforms.   

Simply put, it wrote, “if there were no videos to play, there would be no ‘autoplay.’ Nor does the Complaint allege how users would be addicted to Instagram if there was no content on the service. Regardless of Meta’s publishing choices, if Instagram had no content, and instead displayed a blank screen upon loading, no one would use it, nor could possibly claim that they were addicted to the service.” 

Meta's argument extends beyond user content. The company contends that Section 230 also protects its editorial choices about how to organize and present that content, including through design features like notifications, infinite scroll, and autoplay. Meta further argues the First Amendment bars claims targeting its content moderation policies and algorithms. 
 
Judge Krupp rejected these arguments. The issue at hand included false statements that Meta made about their safety, he said, which would not be the type of content protected by Section 230. The design and moderation choices are also fair game, Krupp said, because the state "is principally seeking to hold Meta liable for its own business conduct," not content posted by third parties. 
 
"The Commonwealth alleges that Instagram's features in and of themselves, regardless of their associated content, cause its young users to become addicted to the platform," Krupp wrote. 
 
Meta appealed to the SJC, challenging the denial of its Section 230 defense.  

"The evidence will demonstrate our commitment to supporting young people," a Meta spokesperson wrote after the ruling. The company recently announced new "Teen Accounts" on Instagram, a protected experience that automatically limits who can contact teens and the content they see. 
 
Justices on Friday will consider two questions, the first of which is whether the high court should be considering the appeal at all. A legal doctrine allows parties to appeal if they are denied immunity they think they are entitled to by law, so the question that the SJC will consider for the first time is whether Section 230 creates an immunity from suit and therefore whether Meta can appeal the lower court’s denial to bring the question before the SJC. 

But the philosophical meat of the suit is whether Meta is actually immune from the consumer protection and public nuisance lawsuits because of Section 230.  
 
The case has attracted significant attention from free speech advocates. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and TechFreedom both filed amicus briefs urging the court to reverse Krupp's ruling and affirm Meta’s immunity from lawsuits over the design of its platforms.  

Campbell’s argument is part of a long history of panic over unfettered speech, argued FIRE in its brief. People can make choices about how they want to consume their entertainment and information, they note, and young people are no more at risk of being overwhelmed by the style of social media than literary figures of old were by books. 

“The Commonwealth is concerned that the speech is too powerful,” it wrote. “They think minors are like Don Quixote, transfixed by stories and ideas. This problem, however—if it’s a problem—is not for the Commonwealth to fix. Under the First Amendment, the strong effects of speech are an inherent part of speech—not a ground for regulation.”  

Law professors Jane Bambauer and Eugene Volokh argued in an amicus brief that social media platforms create expressive products and their features “stem from constitutionally protected decisions about where, when, and how speech is communicated.”

Campbell’s office argues that Meta's attempt to distinguish between content moderation and design features creates a false distinction. The state contends that, just as Meta may curate posts through content moderation policies, it may approve of and encourage speech through design features that are separate from the third-party content itself. 

Campbell argues that "by designing and using addictive design features on Instagram to exploit children's psychological vulnerabilities,” Meta falsely represented that its features were not addictive and in fact prioritized youth health and safety. 
 
The Massachusetts case is one of several challenging Section 230's reach.  

In October 2024, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, overseeing multidistrict litigation in California involving more than 30 states, rejected Meta's motion to dismiss similar claims. However, no state supreme court has yet ruled on whether Section 230 shields social media companies from lawsuits targeting platform design. 
 
Massachusetts is part of a bipartisan effort led by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. Thirty-three states joined the federal lawsuit, while nine states, including Massachusetts, filed in their own state courts. 

In an amicus brief filed in the Massachusetts case, the coalition of attorneys general wrote that Meta’s attempts to ask higher courts to wade in on the immunity question “and expand the scope of Section 230 have the potential to sow confusion among the courts.” They noted that Meta has universally lost, in part or in full, in its motions to dismiss based on the publishers’ immunity. 
 
As Campbell put it in announcing the lawsuit in October 2023, “based on its own internal research, Meta knew of the significant harm these practices caused to teenage users and chose to hide its knowledge and mislead the public to make a profit." 
 
The SJC's ruling could determine whether that alleged knowledge and those choices are subject to state consumer protection laws, or whether Section 230 places them beyond the reach of state enforcement. 

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

Pesticide drift is catching schools off guard. Lawmakers want to require notice before spraying.

by Jennifer Bamberg, Investigate Midwest
December 3, 2025

When the wind shifts and Abbie Frank smells chemicals in the air, she begins her two-minute drill: grab the children and their backpacks and head to the schoolhouse as quickly as possible.

Frank, the founder and executive director of Bluestem Hall Nature School in Urbana, Illinois, said pesticides are sprayed several times a year on the six farms surrounding her school. Often, the agrichemicals drift through the air, forcing her students inside and disrupting lessons, which can be particularly stressful for younger children.

“There's been times where we're caught in a cloud of chemicals overwhelming us, and we're literally grabbing backpacks and running with the children,” Frank said, adding that there is no requirement that pesticide applicators give her school advance warning.

“We're outside all the time. It's not the rain, it's not the snow that drives us in. It's the chemicals.”

The private school sits on 120 acres of prairie in central Illinois and was designed to connect its students to nature. But while identifying plants and insects has always been a core part of the curriculum, students are now being taught to identify the smell of chemicals and the machines that spray pesticides on the farms surrounding the school.  

The Bluestem Hall Nature School isn't unique. Across Illinois, 740 elementary schools are within a quarter mile of a crop field and 40 are within 20 feet, according to an analysis from the Environmental Working Group, a research and environmental advocacy nonprofit. 

Pesticide applicators are not required to notify schools before spraying, but some state lawmakers want to change that. 

House Bill 1596 would require certified pesticide applicators to provide written notice, 24 to 72 hours before spraying, to private and public schools, daycares, and public parks and playgrounds within a half mile of the application site. The notification requirement would apply only to large-scale operations over five acres that use boom sprayers, tractor-mounted sprayers and airplanes to apply weed killers — not residential applications.

Violators would face a $250 fine, which increases to $500 for a second violation and $1,000 for additional infractions. 

Bill sponsor Rep. Laura Faver Dias, a Grayslake Democrat, said the bill could change during the next legislative session, which begins in January.

“There are children whose respiratory systems are vulnerable and impacted by this. [The goal is] to make sure that schools and parks have the knowledge that they need to plan and to be prepared,” Faver Dias said. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children stay inside when spraying happens because exposure to pesticides has been associated with an increased risk of childhood leukemia, neurocognitive conditions and higher infant mortality rates. 

Faver Dias is a former high school history teacher and the mother of a child with asthma. She said her main concern is young people in rural Illinois at heightened risk of developing asthma and other lung problems from chronic exposure to pesticides. 

Pesticides are used to protect crops from disease, insects and other pests. In Illinois, which grows more soybeans than any other state, 96% of the crop is genetically engineered to be sprayed with agrichemicals. 

Produced by companies like Corteva, BASF, Syngenta and Bayer, pesticides are sprayed on toxin-resistant crops across Illinois, making exposure a statewide issue. But the risk to children is especially high in Champaign County, an agricultural hub home to more than 208,000 people. 

Sixty-one percent of schools in Champaign County are within half a mile of a crop field.

Pesticide use on soybeans has more than doubled since the year 2000, and has increased 30% on corn, Illinois’ dominant crop. Advocates for stronger regulations worry that the increase in pesticide use is leading to more drift and potentially putting more children’s health at risk.

“This is chemical trespass,” said Kim Erndt-Pitcher, director of ecological health at Prairie Rivers Network. “This is your chemicals trespassing into public and private spaces where people and children play, and that is not okay. These exposures can be prevented."

But agricultural and chemical groups believe the proposed notification requirement would burden applicators who must respond quickly to changing weather conditions.

“My main concern for the way that bill was drafted is a 72-hour notice to the person that's going to apply on that field close to the school,” said Rep. Jason Bunting, a Wateska Republican who is also a farmer and the former director of the Illinois Corn Grower Association. “That's going to potentially tie our hands on our opportunity to do it.”

Seventeen inspectors for 38,000 applicators

In 2015, Illinois soybean growers applied about 139,000 pounds of dicamba, an herbicide first introduced in 1967. However, when Monsanto (now Bayer) released a new dicamba-resistant soybean the following year, herbicide use increased by roughly 11 times to 1.6 million pounds.

Following that increase, misuse complaints tripled within the year. State regulators quickly became overwhelmed. 

In 2020,  complaints declined, which some credit to new regulations around dicamba spraying.

But advocates argue the drop reflects a lack of enforcement resources and political will, not fewer violations.

“There’s really no incentive for applicators to follow the rules if you're relying on the Illinois Department of Agriculture for enforcement,” said Brian Leber, a farmer in Grundy County. Leber has filed complaints on four separate occasions with the Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDOA), including once after he was personally sprayed. 

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After a 2022 incident that destroyed ten acres of organic vegetables and multiple fruit and nut trees — his entire commercial crop — Leber filed a misuse complaint. Despite the photographic evidence and receipts of damages he provided, the applicator received only a warning letter from the IDOA.

Leber turned to civil court and secured an undisclosed financial settlement for the drift damage to his crops. He said the cases are “relatively straightforward.”  

“Even if getting (IDOA) enforcement is difficult, the law is on your side,” Leber said. “There are laws in place that can be leveraged, that can hold these applicators accountable.”

The Illinois Department of Agriculture oversees the state’s 38,000 certified pesticide applicators and operators with just 17 inspectors.  Those inspectors also administer certification exams, splitting their time between testing new applicators, recertifications and conducting field investigations.

In response to questions about understaffing, the Department of Agriculture provided a written statement to Investigate Midwest saying that “effective staffing and resource use are essential for state agencies, including evaluation of long-term need, changing of job duties, and rearranging geographical positions to better distribute workload.” 

In 2020, state lawmakers and the IDOA instituted an emergency rule restricting dicamba applications on soybeans when temperatures reach 85 degrees or higher and set a June 20 cutoff date. Farmers responded by switching to another volatile herbicide: 2,4-D, one of the ingredients used in Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War.

Faced with restrictions on dicamba, the use of 2,4-D on soybeans in Champaign County increased by approximately 350%, despite the acres planted in beans remaining nearly unchanged. 

At a 2022 meeting of the Interagency Committee on Pesticides, when misuse complaints totaled 380, the official meeting minutes remarked on the overworked agency: “Our staffing was set up to handle 100-115 misuse cases per season in total. The stress on our resources is real.” The department also noted a backlog in hearings going back three years. 

The resource shortage goes beyond personnel. At a 2023 meeting, the meeting minutes said that "tissue sampling is very expensive and IDOA does not have the staffing or funding to obtain tissue sampling.” 

A YMCA camp evacuation shows how quickly drift reaches kids 

On Aug. 7, 2023, counselors at a YMCA summer camp in Sterling quickly ushered 57 children inside after encountering the drift of a fungicide being sprayed on a nearby soybean farm. Fearing that some of the children had inhaled pesticides, the counselors called poison control.

When the fire department and EMS arrived, the children, aged 3 to 7, were lined against a wall and assessed one by one. The fire chief held parents at the front of the building “for a monitored and controlled release.” 

One child said her eyes hurt and another developed a rash. However, none of the children or adults reported being directly sprayed, and no one complained of symptoms in the days that followed.

But “smell can be deemed exposure,” Sterling Fire Chief Mike Dettman told the Department of Agriculture investigator, according to the misuse complaint investigation obtained by Investigate Midwest.

The Illinois Department of Agriculture issued a $500 fine to Ted Koster, the pesticide applicator who also manages the adjacent 33-acre soybean farm.

Trivapro “causes substantial but temporary eye injury,” according to Syngenta, the manufacturer. 

Koster did not respond to phone and text messages from Investigate Midwest seeking comment. But he told a Department of Agriculture inspector he didn't see the kids when he started spraying and “by the time he saw all the kids he felt it was too late, so he continued spraying to the end of the field,” according to investigation documents. He was spraying Trivapro fungicide, manufactured by Syngenta. Koster did not need a license to spray the chemical because it’s considered a “General Use Pesticide.”

The department's investigation concluded that Koster applied the pesticide in a manner inconsistent with and in violation of the label directions. “Fewer than 3 humans were exposed to the pesticide,” according to the report. Koster’s $500 fine was the maximum amount for that transgression.

Staff at the Sterling YMCA declined to talk to Investigate Midwest. 

If HB 1596 is approved during the 2026 legislative session, it would require applicators to notify childcare centers, like the Sterling YMCA, in advance of spraying.

Parks support notice as research shows drift traveling miles

Investigate Midwest reached out to seven public school districts in Champaign County to ask about their positions on HB 1596 and their protocols for pesticide exposure. All declined to comment or did not respond to multiple requests.

However, local park officials have publicly supported the bill. 

“If we were given notice, it would give us a chance to put out temporary signage near playgrounds,” executive director of the Urbana Park District Rachel Lenz told Investigate Midwest. “Or if there was a youth program within that radius, move it indoors or to a different park.” 

For the past eight years, the nonprofit Prairie Rivers Network has studied trees across Illinois, specifically testing those with curled and wilted leaves, a sign of repeated pesticide exposure. The group has found damage in state forests and urban parks miles away from the nearest corn or soybean field.  If pesticides can coat trees in parks, the Urbana Park District is concerned that it can also reach playground equipment.

Nearly all pesticide manufacturers include labels warning their products should not be used in winds exceeding 10 miles per hour. Disobeying that direction is in violation of federal law. But pesticides can drift even in windless conditions, a process Prairie Rivers Network argues is a matter of chemistry, not applicator error.

Days after application, especially after warm, sunny weather, pesticides can vaporize into the air and travel miles, landing on and injuring or killing old-growth trees or vegetable gardens. The chemicals can also migrate into surface water, potentially affecting drinking water sources.

Despite these risks, agrichemicals remain central to modern farming.

Pesticides have significantly increased crop yields over the past half-century, and proponents argue they have enabled farmers to produce more crops on less land, thereby contributing to resource conservation. It’s also led to higher profits for agribusinesses and agrichemical companies. 

However, weed resistance has driven farmers to use more weed killers and increasingly volatile herbicides like dicamba and 2,4-D.

Environmental groups call it the “chemical treadmill,” and it can force farmers to use chemicals whether they want to or not. 

Robert Hirschfield, water policy director at Prairie Rivers Network, and the parent of two students at Bluestem Hall Nature School, described how this plays out in practice: “If I’m a farmer, and I know my neighbor is planting dicamba-resistant soybeans, and I know that farmer is going to spray and I know that it’s going to drift onto my property, I might not want to plant those dicamba-resistant soybeans, but I might feel compelled to, otherwise I’m going to take a loss.”

The harm from pesticide drift can also be found indoors.

Elisa Jazan, an environmental health researcher at Tufts University, investigated the rise in 2,4-D in Champaign County and found that children may be at significant risk of exposure through ingesting dust, which acts as a “chemical sink.” 

When chemical residues are indoors, they’re not exposed to air, sunlight and microbes that break them down. Infants and toddlers face the highest risk due to their hand-to-mouth behaviors, which increase the likelihood of ingesting contaminated dust, according to Jazan’s 2025 report. Because schools are regularly cleaned, however, dust might be less of a concern than playing outside, she said.

“If you’re playing football or soccer for three hours on a field that’s right next to a cornfield, how much dust are you kicking up” from previous spraying? Jazan asked. 

However, Rep. Bradley Fritz, a Dixon Republican, worries HB 1596 could conflict with existing Environmental Protection Agency deadlines. Applicators cannot spray dicamba after June 12, and with a 72-hour notification requirement, that window narrows even further.

“I think all of us who have been involved in the agricultural space take this incredibly seriously,” said Fritz, who is also a corn and soybean farmer. “I think there’s a lot of things to think through here, because this has unbelievable consequences for our industry.”

Have you experienced pesticide drift?

Have you or your property been affected by pesticide misuse? Have you filed a complaint with the IDOA or pursued civil litigation and want to tell us about it? Send us a secure message via Signal or Whatsapp at 1-(773) 318-3406 or fill out this brief form if you’d like to tell your story.

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

Starbucks Agrees to Pay Workers $38 Million to Settle Scheduling Law Probe

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders joined striking employees in Brooklyn after the coffee chain agreed to the city's largest-ever worker protection settlement.

Dec 1 1:29pm EST

Starbucks agreed to pay $38 million to settle an investigation by the city’s labor and consumer agency that found the coffee giant committed systemic violations of local scheduling laws at its New York City locations between 2021 and 2024, Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday.

A three-year probe by the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection determined that Starbucks arbitrarily cut workers’ schedules and systematically denied employees the opportunity to pick up additional shifts, keeping them involuntarily part-time. Most Starbucks workers in New York never received a regular schedule, in violation of the city’s Fair Workweek Law, which requires fast food employers to assign schedules with 14 days’ notice.

The terms of the settlement reveal the breadth of the coffee giant’s violations of the law: Starbucks agreed to pay $35.5 million to approximately 15,000 people who were employed at one of more than 300 New York City locations from July 4, 2021 until July 7, 2024. The company also agreed to pay civil penalties totaling $3.4 million and to comply with the law going forward.

In all, the company violated the law more than half a million times since 2021, logging violations at all but one of its New York City locations, the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Chelsea, according to DCWP official Elizabeth Wagoner.

Officials said it is the largest worker protection settlement in New York City history. 

Seattle-based Starbucks “systematically” violated the law because they “thought they could get away with it,” DCWP commissioner Vilda Vera Mayuga told THE CITY.

“To workers: understand that the government is on your side. DCWP is going to be looking into matters and getting the restitution that you deserve, and we’re going to be enforcing the law — it doesn’t matter how big a company is, if it’s a multi-billion-dollar company,” Mayuga said. “We are committed to holding these companies accountable.”

The company shared a blog post on Monday addressing the settlement, where it describes the city’s fast food scheduling laws as “complex,” adding that employees’ requests for different shifts “makes compliance challenging.” Nonetheless, the statement read, “we take these requirements seriously.”

“To move forward, Starbucks and DCWP have agreed on a settlement. These violations are not about withholding wages or failing to pay partners, but as part of the agreement, some current and former partners will receive payouts,” the company wrote in the unsigned blog post.

Starbucks’ failure to comply with the law illegally denied workers’ rights to stable and predictable schedules, as well as the opportunity to pick up additional shifts and earn more money. The company routinely unlawfully reduced workers’ schedules such that many did not know how much money they would make week to week, officials said. The routine violations made it difficult for workers to plan commitments for child care, education, and second jobs. 

“This historic settlement marks a major victory for thousands of Starbucks baristas across New York City,” said Workers United-SEIU international president Lynne Fox, whose union represents some of the workers in the settlement. “For too long, Starbucks has acted with impunity: manipulating schedules, disrespecting workers, and ignoring legal protections put into place by New Yorkers to protect working people from unfair business practices.”

DCWP began its probe after it received dozens of worker complaints beginning in 2022 from several Starbucks locations. The agency expanded its investigation to all Starbucks outposts citywide after uncovering evidence of systematic violations beyond the initial locations, based on worker reports and payroll data from the company, Mayuga told THE CITY.

The settlement comes as Starbucks workers across 85 cities nationwide including New York are in an ongoing strike, now in its third week, to protest the company’s alleged refusal to finalize a collective bargaining agreement with Starbucks Workers United. Wage and scheduling issues are among the sticking points for the union in New York and nationally.

In September, Starbucks announced plans to close hundreds of stores across North America, including 59 unionized locations, as part of a larger restructuring plan.

On Monday afternoon Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani appeared at a Park Slope Starbucks Workers United picket line with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), briefly walking the line with striking workers. 

“Solidarity, as much as we speak of it, we have to remember is not an abstract concept,” Mamdani said, discussing the sacrifices made by striking Starbucks workers. 

“It is measured in picket lines stood on in the rain and in the sleet,” said Mamdani. “It is measured in rent payments workers do not know if they will be able to meet, child care bills they do not know whether they’ll be able to afford.”

Sanders thanked the Starbucks workers around the country for their courage.

“We are going to prevail,” he said. 

Kaari Harsila, 21, has worked for Starbucks for four years and most recently at a location in Clinton Hill. She said the inconsistent scheduling is one of many issues at her Starbucks, which also includes short-staffed stores. 

“We don’t have enough people quite frequently,” she said. “If one person calls out, best of luck to you. It’s just you and one other person then, you have to do the very best you can.”

She said she was happy about the settlement but that it doesn’t address major problems.

“I sure hope it gives Starbucks an awakening, that they recognize this is a real issue,” she said. “However that only covers to 2024, that doesn’t cover anybody that’s had these issues that are still persisting. For me, that doesn’t really help me much now.”

Current and former Starbucks employees who are covered under the terms of the settlement will automatically receive their restitution in the mail beginning this winter, Wagoner told THE CITY. Most employees who worked for Starbucks in an hourly position in New York City will receive $50 for each week worked between July 2021 and July 2024, a sum potentially totaling thousands of dollars. 

Workers who experienced a violation of the Fair Workweek law after July 7, 2024 may also be eligible for compensation after filing a complaint with the DCWP.

NC pitches $1 billion plan to overhaul rural health system

by Jaymie Baxley, North Carolina Health News
December 1, 2025

By Jaymie Baxley 

North Carolina is seeking $1 billion from the federal government for a wide-ranging plan that could reshape rural health care across the state.

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services hopes to secure the funding through the Rural Health Transformation Program, an initiative created under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump in July. The program allows states to compete for a share of a $50 billion pool aimed at improving health outcomes in rural communities.

Devdutta Sangvai, secretary of NC DHHS, submitted the state’s 61-page proposal to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Nov. 3, ahead of a Nov. 6 deadline. Developed with input from more than 400 stakeholders, the state’s plan lays out a broad framework for overhauling rural health delivery through six regional hubs that would coordinate services across North Carolina’s 85 rural counties.

It also calls for major investments in the state’s rural health workforce and introduces payment models designed to stabilize financially distressed hospitals and clinics. Other elements focus on nonmedical factors like food access and transportation — priorities that were central to the state’s promising but now defunct Healthy Opportunities Pilot.

“Our plan reflects North Carolina’s commitment to ensuring that every North Carolinian, no matter where they live, has access to high-quality health care,” Gov. Josh Stein said in a statement. “North Carolina is on the cutting edge of technology and innovation, and our application for the Rural Health Transformation Program shows that we’re ready to continue our leadership in rural health care.”

If CMS approves the application, the state could begin receiving funds as early as this month. The $1 billion would be distributed in annual payments of $200 million over five years.

Debra Farrington, the department’s deputy secretary of health, said she is optimistic about the outcome.

“I think North Carolina, being where we are with having the second-largest rural population in the country and way more facilities than some other states, and also having the infrastructure and innovation in place, we feel like we're deserving of a higher percentage of the dollars compared to some other states,” she said.

New model for coordinating care

The plan’s centerpiece is the creation of six so-called ROOTS hubs. Short for Regional Organizing and Operational Transformation Support, these locally governed networks would be intended to coordinate the major components of the state’s rural health strategy.

Each hub would unite hospitals, primary care practices, behavioral health providers, EMS agencies, local health departments and other partners under a shared regional structure. The goal is to replace the fragmented patchwork of services that rural residents often navigate with a system better able to respond to local needs.

Under the proposal, the hubs would oversee care coordination, data sharing, prevention programs, crisis response and workforce recruitment. They would also help communities secure grant funding, deploy mobile services and build stronger referral pathways between medical providers and social supports like transportation, housing and food assistance.

State officials say the hubs would give rural regions the infrastructure needed to tackle long-standing challenges like provider shortages and high percentages of uninsured residents — and ensure that improvements made with federal dollars endure after the program’s five-year funding window closes.

“We’re hoping that the funding will complement existing funding sources, which is important because this is a time-limited program for only five years,” Farrington said. “We wanted to be careful not to set up something that was not sustainable. These dollars can complement and pay for initiative activities that are not currently covered in existing programs but allow us to expand the capacity of those programs, and that’s certainly our intent.”

The six hub regions will be selected through a competitive process open to partnerships that have demonstrated experience in getting many service providers to collaborate. DHHS will weigh regional health needs, existing service gaps and applicants’ ability to maintain the work after federal funding ends. The agency expects to finalize the hub regions after conducting readiness assessments in early 2026.

Farrington said some of the hubs could begin operating as early as January.

“One of the reasons that that’s possible is because we want to leverage existing entities that already are in place to be able to start the ROOTS hubs,” she said. “That would allow us to start fast while we implement a procurement process that is more competitive and would allow us to include more representatives from the community. But we have existing entities that could start right away, and we want to begin there as a way to show early wins and get some early successes.”

Building on a promising program

Once established, the hubs would anchor another core element of the plan: the distribution of food and other supports that address nonmedical health needs.

Each hub would work with local food banks, farmers and community groups to provide boxes of groceries and fresh produce to patients with conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. Farrington said the goal is to reduce hospitalizations and improve chronic disease outcomes in rural communities where healthy food can be difficult to access.

“Nutrition and access to healthy foods are drivers of certain health conditions and health outcomes,” she said. “You can make some improvements after conditions have been diagnosed and people are getting treatment or in the hospital, but we feel like we have an opportunity to have better outcomes and long-term sustainable improvements by addressing some of the root causes of poor health. 

“Food is a critical component.”

The approach echoes the Healthy Opportunities Pilot, a first-in-the-nation program launched in 2022 that used Medicaid dollars to provide food deliveries, transportation to appointments and other nonmedical services to rural residents facing significant barriers to health. 

An independent evaluation found the program lowered participants’ health care costs by up to $1,020 a year after just the initial 18-month period. But lawmakers declined to continue funding Healthy Opportunities, which forced the program to shutter in July.

With the Rural Health Transformation Program, Farrington said the state hopes to continue that work without needing authorization or funding from the legislature.

“We were very intentional at wanting to have food-as-medicine type programs that were core to what we had designed with the Opportunities program,” she said.

Other highlights from the plan include initiatives that would:

• Expand rural behavioral health services through new crisis centers, additional mobile units for treating opioid use disorder and school-based mental health programs.
• Improve access to maternal health services with expanded prenatal and postpartum care, enhanced obstetric training in rural hospitals, and tools like postpartum warning-sign bracelets and AI-assisted ultrasound technology.
• Increase the size and stability of the rural health workforce by developing new training pipelines and offering incentives to retain providers in rural areas.
• Support financially vulnerable hospitals and clinics through technical assistance and value-based payment models intended to reduce preventable hospitalizations and stabilize rural facilities.
• Strengthen digital and data infrastructure by increasing broadband support for providers and expanding their telehealth capabilities.

“I think we did a fabulous job in developing this proposal,” said Farrington, adding that the plan incorporated a “tremendous amount of feedback” from rural providers and other stakeholders over only four months. 

“I have high confidence that it will be approved,” she said.

Her comments were echoed by Sangvai, the NC DHHS secretary, who praised the plan in a news release announcing its submission to CMS. 

“Rural health care providers are the backbone of their communities, working tirelessly to ensure people have access to care when and where they need it,” he said. “North Carolina is a leader in prioritizing rural health and remains committed to investing in rural health care and the rural health workforce. The North Carolina Rural Health Transformation Plan is one part of our efforts to support the more than 3 million people in North Carolina who live in a rural community.”   

‘It takes a village’

Patrick Woodie, president and CEO of the NC Rural Center, said the proposal reflects the scale of rural North Carolina’s health challenges and the state’s growing ability to coordinate across agencies, providers and community organizations. He believes the state’s collaborative approach strengthens its chances of winning federal approval.

“I feel really good about North Carolina’s ability to compete for these dollars,” he said. “The needs are great, but we have a deep understanding of them and we have an ability to pull together the network and the partnerships that really are essential to what has been envisioned by this rural transformation grant program.”

Woodie gave credit to NC DHHS for involving providers, community organizations and other rural stakeholders in the application process. 

“They recognize it takes a village, so to speak, to meet the needs of rural citizens and rural families where they live,” he said. “I think they really tapped into that in the proposal that was submitted.”

At the same time, he acknowledged that implementing such a sweeping plan will be a “daunting task” for the state. The biggest question, Woodie said, is whether North Carolina can maintain momentum once the five-year federal funding window closes.

“I really implore our state legislators and our federal delegation to be mindful of that uncertainty and of the fact that, five years from now, there will still be rural health priorities that need to be worked on and focused on,” he said. “We don’t need to recreate the wheel every time we have a new administration in town.”

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

Clock ticking on NC’s $1.2 billion in unspent federal COVID funds, auditor warns

by Lucas Thomae, Carolina Public Press
December 1, 2025

State Auditor Dave Boliek has a New Year’s resolution for state agencies: spend the remaining $1.2 billion in federal COVID funds before they expire at the end of 2026.

In spring 2021, amid the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress passed a massive stimulus package that sent $5.4 billion to North Carolina’s state government. That money sits in an account called the State Fiscal Recovery Fund and has been allocated to individual agencies by the state legislature.

The Office of the State Auditor released a report on Nov. 17 showing that by the end of the 2024 fiscal year, less than half of those COVID funds had been dispersed.

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Most of the remaining money was tied to agencies tasked with large-scale water, sewer and broadband infrastructure projects. The Department of Environmental Quality, for example, had yet to draw down $1.7 billion (89%) of the $1.9 billion allocated to it within the audit’s timeframe.

“State agencies were allocated billions of dollars for COVID, but a lot of that money sat parked,” Boliek said in announcing the report.

“With funds not expended by the end of 2026 going to the U.S. Treasury, state agencies should be proactive in making sure taxpayers realize a return on the investment of these funds.”

The audit was not factually incorrect, but it likely overstated how much ARPA funding was actually sitting unused, Carolina Public Press has found.

The NC Pandemic Recovery Office, housed within the Department of Commerce, maintains a dashboard tracking State Fiscal Recovery Fund spending. It shows that North Carolina’s ARPA spending accelerated in 2025 and that 78% of the fund has now been dispersed — far higher than the audit’s 46% figure, which only covered spending through June 30, 2024.

State auditor spokesperson Randy Brechbiel told CPP the report ended at that date because it reflected the scope set under the previous auditor’s administration.

“The purpose of this audit was not to determine why certain funds have yet to be disbursed,” the report’s introduction stated, “but to determine whether the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management accounted for, allocated and disbursed amounts appropriated to the State Fiscal Recovery Fund in accordance with State Fiscal Recovery Fund legislation. To that end, all matters were done in accordance with law.”

Still, the audit and Boliek’s comments raised doubts about whether the state could complete its ARPA projects by the end of next year — and risk forfeiting millions of federal dollars in those COVID funds.

Agencies holding large amounts of unspent ARPA money don’t seem alarmed, however. They told CPP they expect to use their full allocations by the December 2026 deadline, with few exceptions.

One reason spending appears behind schedule is that ARPA money is typically reimbursed after expenses occur, meaning agencies draw the COVID funds only once they have already spent money on approved projects.

“Many of the remaining activities are infrastructure-related, including broadband and water and sewer projects, which have higher costs later in the projects than in the early stages,” a spokesperson for the NC Pandemic Recovery Office said.

“Because of these two factors, disbursements are higher in the final years of those projects than in the early stages.”

That’s why agencies like the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Information Technology hold the bulk of remaining ARPA funds. They are responsible for seeing major construction and technology projects through from contracting to completion.

DIT spokesperson Cristalle Dickerson said most of the department’s remaining $565 million has already been contracted but not yet expended.

The department plans to funnel the rest into three new grant programs by the end of next year: the Broadband Recovery Program to repair broadband infrastructure destroyed by Tropical Storm Helene, a utility-pole replacement program and a new broadband line-extension program.

The Department of Environmental Quality, meanwhile, still has $359 million in unexpended funds, although most of it has been obligated to local governments for water and sewer projects. Those grants primarily serve towns and counties with distressed water systems. DEQ awarded the last of its ARPA-funded grants in spring 2024, and reimbursement is expected through next year.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ lead and asbestos remediation program is also one of the state’s major ongoing ARPA projects. The agency received $150 million to inspect and remove asbestos and lead-based paint in public schools and child care facilities, of which $55 million has been spent so far, according to the dashboard.

DHHS has already contracted with RTI International to conduct testing at schools and child care centers which is expected to cost more than $100 million by the end of the project term, program director Jennifer Hoponick Redmon told CPP.

“The objective of the work is to identify and eliminate exposure to lead and asbestos hazards in child-occupied facilities across North Carolina from Spring 2023 through 2026,” she said.

To date, the program has completed water sampling at 1,784 schools, 3,342 child care centers and 1,080 family child care homes, and remediated hazards at nearly 2,000 taps. It has also identified lead-based paint hazards at 224 child care facilities and 68 public schools, and asbestos hazards at 78 child care facilities and 10 public schools.

The remaining money for the program is set aside in a reimbursement fund to help those facilities pay for needed remediation.

For now, agencies insist the remaining COVID funds will move on schedule. State auditors will know soon enough whether the state can turn its obligated dollars into completed projects before time runs out.

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

Federal Medicaid cuts could limit access to services for people with disabilities

by Domonique King, The Current
November 27, 2025

In the 17 years since giving birth to son Eli, Michelle Heyman has become a master at the complex bureaucratic hurdles of Medicaid, the federal health insurance available to low-income children, the elderly and disabled in Georgia.

The federal funding pays for expensive and intensive daily care that the Heymans need to keep Eli living at home with his family. Despite the scrupulous attention she pays to compile the documents necessary to keep these benefits, Heyman discovered in February that Eli had been cut off from those programs without warning, sending the family into chaos.

"You have to send in like a thousand pages of documentation in order to renew. And you have to fax it all. You have to fax every page,” Michelle Heyman said. “I gotta make calls, I gotta fill out records requests for every single person that he sees: therapists, doctors, school stuff, on a very tight timeline.”

Spending cuts passed last summer by Congressional Republicans, including the steepest cuts in Medicaid in a generation, have the Heymans worried that more disruption is coming their way. More than 200,000 Georgians with disabilities rely on Medicaid for health care and services, and many of these families, as well as medical providers and health care advocates are uncertain about what the spending changes will mean. 

Georgia’s Republican congressional caucus says families like the Heymans have nothing to worry about, as the new spending law doesn’t affect Medicaid funding for disabled children. 

However, D’Arcy Robb, executive director of the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, sees a more pessimistic future. She says it's possible that waiver programs like the one Eli and other disabled Medicaid recipients rely on to stay out of assisted living facilities could be cut as state agencies struggle to pay for other services directly cut in the federal budget. 

Federal and state governments are required to pay for care for disabled Medicaid recipients in nursing homes. But nursing homes are not obligated to have all the services available via waiver programs like the one Eli relies on for his quality of life. 

Eli’s mother, who managed to renew benefits for her after last spring’s snafu, says the ongoing uncertainty about whether this funding will continue from the state is terrible to live with.

“Generally when we’ve had travails in the past, we have been able to figure out how to work around them and move on,” said Heyman, a former health communication specialist. “Uncertainty is awful to live with on a day-to-day basis.”

The state’s Medicaid agency, the Department of Community Health, did not reply to requests for comment. 

Family takes on challenges

When Michelle gave birth to her younger son, she remembers her terror as nurses urgently pulled her newborn son out of her arms and took him into the neonatal intensive care unit. 

Although no one had flagged potential problems during her pregnancy, she and her husband were told that Eli had had a rare chromosomal deletion.

As he’s grown older, the Katie Beckett waiver, which is offered in 43 states, helps cover the costs of Eli’s medication, and the frequent hospital visits necessary due to breathing issues. It also covers physical therapy, occupational therapy, and aquatic therapy, all of which help Eli improve his daily functioning and independent physical movement.

These benefits, which amount to approximately $200,000 per year for Eli, allows him to live at home, instead of an institution. 

“One of the things that we've been working on at therapy is brushing teeth, taking things off over his head, using utensils to put things in his mouth,” Michelle said. “He loves Cheeto Puffs, and if you happen to have any, he will reach out and try to take it and put it in his mouth. He couldn't do that before. That's a therapy thing.”

Currently, disabled Georgians have a variety of health care options. Home and community based services ensure that individuals with disabilities can avoid having to live in long-term care facilities by bringing services to them at home and in the community. These community-based care plans typically include assistance with daily functioning, but may also cover funding for vehicle modifications, job coaching services, and support for activities like garden clubs and swim teams.  

But these are the high-cost services that, in the past, state governments have pulled back on when other Medicaid funding cuts have occurred, said Robb. That’s what happened in 2020, when Georgia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, which administers the kind of community care services that Eli relies on, suffered budget and staff cutbacks. 

Waivers weren’t cut, but the number of people waiting to access the promised services ballooned into the thousands, said Robb. In the future, funding cuts would likely mean less services, as well as less access to services, she said.

If the state cuts back funding for these services, his mother said, then Eli could end up in a hospital away from his loving family. 

“If we didn’t take him to therapy and to all these different activities that have events and all, then his world would be very small,” she said.

Providers feel the pinch

One local health care provider who already feels Medicaid’s funding strains is Shauna Joye, owner of Joye Psychology & Wellness in Savannah, provides assessments and therapies for children with intellectual development disorders, ADHD, autism and learning disabilities. 

Her facility is one of the only independent clinics within a two-hour drive that accepts Medicaid for psychological assessments for children. 

She says increased red tape that could be required to stay enrolled in federal safety net benefits like Medicaid could cause mental health clinics to drop Medicaid patients altogether.

Joye is also worried a drastic cut in Medicaid will create higher co-pays with primary care providers, which may discourage families living paycheck to paycheck from going to the doctor. That means it’s less likely that providers will be able to refer children for treatment for ADHD, autism, and other developmental disabilities. 

“That's where we get a lot of our referrals, preventative care or the pediatricians and well-check,” she said. “They're gonna be the ones that are referring them for evaluation, so they're kind of our first line of defense when it comes to screening. So I do worry that even if there's not too much of a change with mental health, what about if there's a change with primary care and the downstream effects of that? I guess I’m just kind of waiting for the shoe to drop and find out what’s gonna happen as far as the coverage for our clients.”

Another one of her fears is that states may attempt to cut Medicaid costs by placing caps on coverage for treatments like Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy, which some children with autism receive multiple times a week. States like Nebraska and New York have already proposed cuts that could limit access to ABA therapy in anticipation of federal funding cuts.

Early intervention for autism through treatments like ABA therapy can change the trajectory of some children’s developmental outcomes, Joye said. Without consistent treatment, some can regress into more severe levels of autism and require more costly support at school and in the health care system. 

“If we’re talking about impact on society and saving money for the government, then you think they would invest a little bit more on the front end so that they don’t have to support these individuals on the back end, because early intervention is so helpful with that,” she said.

Equipment access tightens

Another area where federal Medicaid funding could affect Georgians with disabilities is access to medical equipment. Currently, companies often decline to deal with people with Medicaid or Medicare coverage, even though tens of thousands of individuals with disabilities have this insurance, because of low reimbursement levels, said Chris Brand, executive director of Friends of Disabled Adults and Children (FODAC).

“Half the state of Georgia can’t really access a lot of basic [durable medical equipment] because vendors are not willing to do the work for the rate the government has set,” he said. 

Brand’s nonprofit, which is based in Tucker, Georgia, and now has a distribution center in Savannah, refurbishes medical equipment and donates it for little to no cost and offers vehicle lift modifications and loans for assistive technology. 

He says that individuals and families in need of affordable equipment have long waits to be approved for subsidies for wheelchairs or mobility equipment, or to replace broken equipment. 

“It’s terribly stressful for the individual trying to get everything done in their day. Some folks live, work, and play in their chairs and they’re by themselves and they’re their only caretaker. That is very detrimental to their health, to not be able to get groceries or go out and take care of things they need to take care of,” he said. “And it's an extreme hardship to have a chair go down that needs repair, has parts missing, or they need a new one, whatever it is. 

Family becomes outspoken

At the Heyman’s home, the family tries to keep their anxiety over Eli’s future from spilling into their everyday lives. 

The cost of Eli’s therapy services and care bills has prompted them to be more outspoken about decisions by the Trump administration, and Republican lawmakers regarding federal subsidies for Medicaid. 

Michelle said it’s been difficult to debate members of her own family who support the president and don’t see the knock-on effects that the federal budget cuts could have on Eli. 

Kevin, Eli’s father and a special education reading specialist at Isle of Hope Elementary, said he and many parents of his students are ready to sacrifice almost everything for their children. But the cost of disabled services means that few if any could afford care without Medicaid-funded programs. 

Kevin said he hopes more people can understand that caring for people like his son is beyond a political issue.

“There’s no question children like Eli across the spectrum do not add economically to a country. But I don’t think economics is all that. I absolutely think Eli adds to everyone’s world. And that has a true benefit, it does. And a basic belief I have is that the greatness of a country is only calculated by how it treats its weakness.”

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

Three years after disappearance, Jay Lee’s family sees justice and reflects on the casualties of secrets

by Molly Minta, Mississippi Today
December 3, 2025

OXFORD — In the hours after a judge sentenced Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr. to 40 years in prison for the murder of Jimmie “Jay” Lee, many of Lee’s friends and family contemplated the parallels between the two men. 

Both came from religious families. Lee’s father was a pastor and Herrington’s grandfather the founder of a church in Grenada. 

Both were hard workers. Lee was known for organizing supply drives, and Herrington operated his own moving company. He would later use the company’s box truck to transport Lee’s body to a rural dumping ground near his parents' home. 

Both were young Black men who had just graduated from the University of Mississippi. Some of Lee’s final Instagram posts before he went missing on July 8, 2022, were of photos taken at his graduation; same for Herrington weeks before his arrest.

But there was a crucial difference between the two men, said Braylyn Johnson, a friend of Lee’s who also knew Herrington from college: Before the murder, Lee lived authentically and proudly as a gay man and Herrington did not.

“Jay Lee and Tim were identical in their education, their achievements, their family, their church life,” she said. “They were a lot alike. … Jay Lee trusted Tim. He saw something in Tim. I’m not sure what it was, but he trusted him.” 

Herrington first went to trial for Lee’s murder in 2024, before detectives had located Lee’s remains. During that first trial, the state’s theory of the case was that Herrington killed Lee to preserve the secret of their sexual relationship. Lee had gone to Herrington’s apartment the night before he went missing, and they’d had a fight, prosecutors alleged. 

Only one living person knows exactly what happened in the apartment that night – Herrington. He pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree murder and tampering with evidence.

Aafram Sellers, a Jackson-area defense attorney who became counsel for Herrington after the first trial, said he had spoken with Herrington about taking responsibility and grieving the life that he, at 25 years old, might’ve otherwise had. 

Gwen Agho, a Hinds County prosecutor brought onto the case by Lafayette County District Attorney Ben Creekmore, also wanted people to know that Lee lived his life openly and Herrington did not. 

“What’s done in the darkness will always come to light,” she said. “All of this happened to cover something up and everyone found out anyway.” 

Indeed, Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen said one of the Carroll County deputies who found Lee’s remains earlier this year told him that it was as if the sun shined down on a gold nameplate necklace bearing Lee’s name – the first sign they had finally found him years after he went missing. 

“They were just digging and looking and a piece led to a piece led to a piece,” he said. “They didn’t stop.”

At a press conference after the sentencing, McCutchen said his force spared no resources and didn’t stop looking for Lee until officers found him. 

“This case highlights everything special about policing, and each one of you should feel like a hero today,” he said. 

Lee’s mother Stephanie Lee cried as she thanked the Oxford Police Department and the prosecutors for their work securing justice in the case and finding her son. She said McCutchen told her this was not an ordinary case for him. 

“OPD has been faithful from day one,” she said. 

A queer, young Black man, Lee falls into a demographic of people whom, when they become victims of violence, police have long been scrutinized for disregarding. 

But McCutchen said his force treated the case as if Lee was their own missing child. He choked up while recalling the moment when, one month into the search for Lee, a detective’s wife asked if he would take a break to get dinner. 

“The detective responded, ‘If that was our kid missing, would you want that detective to take a break and be with his family, or spend every moment trying to find our child?’” McCutchen said. “To which that wife responded, ‘Don’t you come home until you find him.’” 

McCutchen said the police fought for Lee’s phone records, they scoured for security camera footage across Lafayette and Grenada counties, and they worked with state and federal law enforcement to scope out Herrington’s cellphone – then searched every possible place they believed he might have dug a grave. 

“This was not just another homicide,” he said. “This case became our life.” 

But all the technology in the world did not find Lee. During Herrington’s first trial, the absence of a body proved a hiccup in the case, and was partly to blame for the hung jury, a TV news outlet reported.

Instead, detectives found Lee’s remains by chance in rural Carroll County, after a property owner whose land is used as a dumping ground reported he’d found a skull wrapped in duct tape and a blanket. 

“You cannot in a hundred years convince me otherwise that God did not have a hand in Carroll County when that property owner called the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department and said, ‘I think I have human remains,’” Creekmore said. 

For as much effort as McCutchen says his force expended, the Oxford police faced community pressure, too: From a small but mighty group of Lee’s friends who used social media to organize a movement in Oxford called Justice for Jay Lee. 

Its members have come and gone from the transient college town, but two of Lee’s close friends powering the group saw the case to its end – Johnson and Jose Reyes, who performed drag alongside Lee as a fellow member of Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community. 

“We’ve watched people transition these past three years, we’ve watched queer couples meet each other in Justice for Jay Lee and get married and graduate,” Johnson said. 

Johnson and Reyes kept the town’s and the media’s attention on their friend through colorful Instagram posts displaying a count of the days Lee had been missing. Their advocacy for Lee pushed the police to acknowledge the fear his disappearance had incited in Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community. 

Reyes summed up their role in the case in two words: "Accountability and awareness.” 

The two view Justice for Jay Lee’s role now as carrying on Lee’s legacy. Before his death, Lee was preparing to begin a graduate degree in social work. His friends have been trying to establish a scholarship at the University of Mississippi in Lee’s honor, because Johnson said that higher education was important to him. 

“Jay Lee was raised with love,” she said. “He didn’t go through the world thinking that people were going to do him wrong. Jay Lee went through the world very optimistic and with a loving outlook and part of me thinks he tried to share that with Tim.”

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

County Planning Commission in Virginia Delays Vote Again on Proposed Gas Plant That Aims to Link to PJM Grid

Fluvanna County planners will vote in January to assess whether a proposal by Tenaska fits its comprehensive plan.

By Charles Paullin

November 26, 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.

FORK UNION, Va.–The Fluvanna County Planning Commission again has delayed a vote on a proposed natural gas plant in Virginia that would bolster the PJM Interconnection regional grid.

The planning commission will review on Jan. 13 a proposal by power producer Tenaska to build a 1.5 gigawatt gas plant. The rescheduling appears to be linked to separate reviews of permit and zoning changes, requested by Tenaska, that, too, are set for January. 

Planning commission members did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A company spokesperson said Tenaska asked for the delay in part because some commission members indicated they wanted more review time. The five commissioners will decide whether the Tenaska natural gas plant is “in substantial accord” with the county’s comprehensive plan and if it should advance.

The Tenaska plant would feed into PJM, a pivotal electrical grid in the United States that provides power in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia and has been struggling to meet demands from big technology and financial services companies that are building or planning data centers linked to artificial intelligence.

Among the planning commission’s considerations: whether the location of the Tenaska plant fits with the county’s goals on renewable energy generation, preservation of rural landscapes and economic development. 

The commission’s vote will be an advisory to the County Board of Supervisors, which has final approval.

This month, the county’s planning staff submitted a positive report about the Tenaska proposal, aimed to be completed in 2031, and its compatibility with the comprehensive plan.Tenaska, a  privately held company based in Nebraska, is seeking to add what it calls the “Expedition Generating Station” next to an already existing one gigawatt gas plant. 

The planning staff found that Tenaska’s plans, wholly reliant on fossil fuel, do not advance the county’s aim to expand renewable energy use. But Tenaska provides other notable benefits, the staff concluded. The company plans to conserve acres of land near where the plant will be located, and the plant itself accounts for a small percentage of the land that Tenaska owns, the report found. 

Tenaska’s current operations provide for 4 percent of the county’s tax base, and Expedition will add to that, the report found. The company estimates its new station will contribute $8.3 million in annual tax revenue for the next 30 years.

Tenaska has operated the existing plant, located in close proximity to a pipeline operated by The Williams Companies, since 2004. 

Its Expedition proposal comes as PJM Interconnection, which operates the wholesale electricity market and manages the transmission grid for much of the east coast, is attempting to spur supplies across the region and notably in the state of Virginia, which is experiencing swift data center growth.

The Tenaska proposal has drawn mixed reactions from the local community. At a planning commission meeting in October that lasted for seven hours, family members of Tenaska employees described the existing plant as safe and reliable. “Tenaska is Corporate America done right,” said Amber Kidd, whose husband works at the plant. 

Other residents raised concerns about the new construction—citing worries about noise and truck traffic—and questioned the strain on water sources and possible pollution from the expansion. 

“When we’re talking to strangers, people at grocery stores or other places, we’ve not had anyone go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a really good idea’” said Sharon Harris, a founding member of Fluvanna Horizons Alliance, a local group opposing the plant. “It’s just really hard for us to understand how this is possibly going to be anything that’s healthy and safe.”

The county is expecting a Tenaska-paid traffic study to be completed by Jan. 6, a week before  the commission will review the plans at the Jan. 13 meeting, County Attorney Dan Whitten said in an interview.  

“Fluvanna County and [Virginia Department of Transportation]  will ensure safe configuration of access roads and entrances for anticipated construction traffic,” Tenaska spokesperson Timberly Ross said in an email to Inside Climate News. Parking areas and the storage of construction material will be reviewed by the county, Ross said. 

She noted that “air emissions and wastewater discharge” are regulated through state and federal laws. Tenaska has offered to provide, at the request of the planning commission, an environmental consultant to produce an independent third-party environmental report, which will also be reviewed Jan. 13. The work will be overseen by the county but funded by Tenaska, she said.

Tenaska provided the planning commission with a 15-page memorandum on Nov. 14 that outlined federal and state regulations and safeguards, including air quality reviews, that the company said would “protect the residents of Fluvanna County and the region.” The company also provided a three-page assessment dated August 28 from the engineering consultant WSP USA that provided some brief reviews of the site setting, cultural resources, wetlands and habitat  surveys. 

Tenaska’s proposal is part of a fast-track effort by PJM, which has been criticized for slow processing of requests to connect to the grid. Clean energy advocates said PJM’s effort to speed up its reviews now favors fossil fuels suppliers rather than renewable sources. 

PJM spokesperson Daniel Lockwood countered that delayed renewable projects “are being stymied by issues beyond PJM’s control, like federal, state and local permitting, supply chain backlogs and financing challenges.” 

The comprehensive plan is important to some residents who have been vigilant about attending planning commission meetings. During a meeting this month, and after a presentation on commission duties, resident Tracey Smith told commissioners that they had a duty to pay attention to what residents wanted. 

The community took the comprehensive plan process “seriously because we’re told it matters,” Smith said during the meeting. She questioned whether the commissioners were focused or genuine in their considerations of residents’ concerns. She wondered if they were serious about following the protections set out in the county’s comprehensive plan.

“To hear tonight that it is basically optional and something that can just be brushed aside or thrown out, whenever it’s inconvenient for you, it feels like a slap in the face to every resident who has continued to participate in that process,” Smith said before the commission voted to delay its review of the Tenaska plant. 

“If the path is already predetermined, then I think you should just be upfront about that instead of asking for our input.”