Recycling batteries is as simple as stopping in for a latte
It's Friday June 5, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering: From Coffee to Current: For one Charlotte café, recycling batteries is as simple as stopping in for a latte, Living in legal limbo. Woman living in Canada for years asks NC to rethink criminal charges, Young survivors of gun violence find therapy helps. But will California do more?, As Omni project advances, hospitality workers express doubts, As Seas Rise, Louisiana Faces a Choice: Plan for Movement or Let Crisis Decide, Illinois Session slog ends in $56B budget, new taxes on social media companies, crypto, fantasy sports, Massachusetts’s slow adoption of EV chargers through federal program is ‘mystifying’ to transit advocates, In Marshall, North Carolina, a Group of Ballad Singers Reflects on how Hurricane Helene Affected Their Tradition.
Media outlets and others featured: Queens University News Service, Carolina Public Press, CalMatters, Verite News, Inside Climate News, Capitol News Illinois, CommonWealth Beacon, The Daily Yonder.
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From Coffee to Current: For one Charlotte café, recycling batteries is as simple as stopping in for a latte
Allison Chipps (Queens University News Service) Published: June 1, 2026
At Not Just Coffee, the usual rhythm of espresso drinks, laptop work sessions and café conversation plays out as expected. But near the counter, tucked into an unassuming corner, sits something slightly out of place: a battery drop box.
It is not part of the typical coffee shop experience, yet it represents a growing effort to make sustainability more accessible in everyday spaces.
Not Just Coffee, a family-founded business established in 2011, has expanded into multiple locations across Charlotte, along with a sister brand that includes its roastery, Night Swim Coffee. But beyond its role in the city’s coffee scene, the business has taken on a quieter environmental initiative.
In an email interview, the woman behind these drop boxes, Miracle Yoder, said the idea came from her youngest son, Adrian.
“Years ago, he wanted to start a project that was beneficial to the environment and involved the community.” Yoder said her son has always been passionate about the environment.
What began as a personal project, the battery drop box idea grew into something customers could participate in, with placements located at Not Just Coffee’s Jay Street location and another at Atherton Mill in South End.
While batteries are small, their environmental impact can be significant. Many household batteries contain materials like lithium, lead and cadmium. When thrown in the trash, they can end up in landfills where they can leak chemicals into soil and groundwater.
There are also safety concerns.
Lithium-ion batteries, commonly used in electronics, can spark fires if damaged or improperly disposed of in waste systems.
Despite these risks, battery recycling is often overlooked. Unlike paper or plastic, many people are unsure where or how to properly dispose of used batteries.
That is where small-scale efforts like the one at Not Just Coffee come in – offering a convenient, visible option for customers who might not otherwise recycle them.
According to Yoder, the battery drop box did not immediately gain traction and took some time to catch on, but once it did both locations have become popular for recycling patrons. “Both fill up very quickly these days,” she said.
The Jay Street location, in particular, tends to fill faster. Yoder attributes that, in part, to the coworking space located in the same building, which brings in a steady flow of people throughout the day.
At the Atherton Mill location, the process is slower, but still consistent. Overall, Yoder said it is difficult to tell whether customers come specifically to recycle batteries or simply use the drop box while already visiting the café. She thinks it is a combination of both.
The boxes themselves require minimal upkeep, typically needing to be emptied every two to three months.
For customers interested in participating, the process is simple. Small household batteries – such as AA, AAA, and many rechargeable batteries – can be placed directly into designated drop boxes like the one at Not Just Coffee.
Experts recommend storing batteries safely before recycling, including taping the ends of certain types like lithium batteries to prevent sparks. Damaged batteries should be handled carefully and kept separate.
Most importantly, batteries should not be thrown loosely into the trash, where they can pose both environmental and safety risks.
Larger batteries require a different approach. Items like car batteries, laptop batteries and e-bike batteries should not be placed in small drop boxes and instead need to be taken to specialized recycling locations.
In Charlotte, several options are available:
AutoZone and Advance Auto Parts accept car batteries and may offer store credit in exchange
Mecklenburg County Solid Waste provides full-service recycling centers for a wider range of materials.
Checking ahead for specific guidelines is recommended, as accepted battery types can vary by location.
Yoder acknowledged that the impact of the battery drop box may seem limited on its own.
“I’m sure it’s a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things,” she said. “But every little bit helps when it comes down to the planet.”
Still, she believes the initiative is worthwhile, especially when viewed as part of a broader collective effort.
“If everyone picks one thing to try to make a small difference – together we can make a big difference,” she said.
Back at Not Just Coffee, the battery drop box continues to fill up. It may not change the world overnight, but it offers a simple, practical way for Charlotte residents to take part in sustainability – right alongside their daily coffee routine.
Queens University News Service_stories are prepared by students in the James L. Knight School of Communication with supervision and editing from faculty and staff. The James L. Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte provides the news service in support of local community news._
Living in legal limbo. Woman living in Canada for years asks NC to rethink criminal charges.
by Mackenzie Thomas, Carolina Public Press June 2, 2026
A former North Carolina resident is asking the state to reconsider criminal charges against her that have been hanging over her head for the past decade. Joanne McDowell , previously a resident of Hendersonville for roughly five years, reached out to the North Carolina Department of Justice on May 11 by email to submit an official request for review of criminal prosecutions against her from more than 10 years ago.
Court records show that charges for obstruction of justice and child abduction were issued against McDowell after she took her young son with her and moved to Canada, despite having a shared custody agreement with her son’s father, Dr. Steven Buchman of Georgia.
McDowell said she believed her child was suffering abuse by his father. But the state’s courts ultimately found there was a lack of evidence that proved any wrongdoing on Buchman’s part and ordered continued visitation with his father. McDowell took her child and fled to Canada, where she’s also a citizen. The charges against her followed over the next few years.
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Carolina Public Press reached out to Buchman for comment, but he did not respond prior to publication. He did speak to CPP in 2017 for an earlier article about the situation, at which time he denied the allegations of abuse.
While North Carolina’s court system views McDowell as a fugitive, the Canadian courts see her in a different light. After she arrived in Canada in December 2012, according to Canada Border Services Agency travel records, the Canadian courts found that McDowell was simply trying to protect her child by leaving the United States, according to Canadian court documents.
Now, more than 10 years later, there continues to be an international stand-off between the North Carolina and Canadian courts. Canada sees her as a mother concerned for her child’s safety, but North Carolina sees her as a fugitive, even though authorities aren’t actively pursuing her, she said in her letter.
Meanwhile, McDowell is left trying to navigate the state of limbo the differing court opinions have left her in. While she told CPP recently that she has no desire to return to the US permanently, the prosecutions hanging over her head have made her life difficult. In her letter, she also questioned the purpose these charges serve now if she’s not being actively pursued.
By requesting a review of the case by North Carolina authorities, she hopes the charges could be dismissed once and for all.
The original case
As previously reported by CPP, McDowell and Buchman were in a six-month relationship in 2009 after meeting online. McDowell is originally from Canada but was teaching at an elementary school in Flat Rock at the time, while Buchman was teaching and practicing medicine at Emory University in Atlanta, where he still works today.
Their son was born in April 2010 and they came to an initial custody agreement the following March since they weren’t married, McDowell said in her recent letter to the NCDOJ. The custody arrangement allowed Buchman unsupervised overnight visits with his son, CPP previously reported, but these were suspended in September 2011 due to a protection order that was issued when “evidence” was presented alleging “sedation, abuse, and child-safety concerns” during the child’s visits with his father, McDowell said in her letter.
The protection order was dissolved in November 2011, at which point the child’s doctor, Dr. Charlotte Riddle , reported concerns to social services. During an investigation by the Buncombe County Department of Social Services, a USB drive with audio and video materials that McDowell had given to the agency as “evidence” was reportedly lost and the investigator on the case, Brandon Townsend , left the agency, McDowell said in her letter.
At this point, after speaking with others at social services, McDowell said she was informed that the case had been closed. She was not informed whether Townsend had been the one to close it or whether the agency simply closed along part of his outstanding caseload when he left the agency. She did not know whether the agency found her claims to be unsubstantiated. Nor did she know the whereabouts of the USB drive she had turned in. McDowell said her last contact with DSS was in September 2012, about a month before her custody hearing began, CPP reported in 2017.
When CPP questioned Buncombe DSS officials about the handling of the case in 2017, they declined to answer, citing confidentiality laws governing communications about child protective services cases.
After the case was heard in court over multiple days in October and November 2012, a judge ruled that there was “insufficient evidence” at the time to determine who sedated the child and granted joint legal custody of him to his parents, McDowell said in her letter.
Despite the ruling, McDowell said she was still concerned for her child after a custody exchange in December when he seemed to be experiencing “acute distress,” she said in her letter to the Department of Justice. She left for Canada with him soon after, arriving on Dec. 17, 2012, according to CBSA travel records and Canadian court documents.
Following her departure, Buchman sought an ex-parte order from the North Carolina court, which granted him sole custody of their son and found McDowell to be in criminal contempt, according to Canadian court documents. McDowell’s first charge of obstruction of justice was filed against her in February 2013, according to court records.
In June 2015, the Canadian courts issued an initial endorsement of motions to protect McDowell after she said she received notice in 2014 that Buchman may pursue a Hague motion, which would essentially force Canadian authorities to uphold the decision of the North Carolina courts. Justice Carolyn Horkins in Toronto took issue with what happened in North Carolina and considered the complaints “a serious and urgent matter involving a 5-year-old,” CPP previously reported.
In this endorsement, Canada superseded the ex-parte order from North Carolina and issued a restraining order against Buchman, preventing him from having any contact with McDowell and their son, according to Canadian court documents.
Buchman was given the opportunity to respond to the claims against him by July 20, 2015, or else McDowell could move forward with an “uncontested trial.” Buchman ultimately failed to respond by the deadline, failed to pursue a Hague motion and never made any other effort to enforce the ex-parte order he sought in January 2013, even though he knew where McDowell lived, according to Canadian court documents.
In December 2015, the Canadian courts made the restraining order against Buchman permanent and granted McDowell sole custody of the child, according to Canadian court documents.
Requests for review
McDowell’s most recent request for review, which she submitted to Criminal Bureau Chief Boz Zellinger at the North Carolina Department of Justice by email on May 11, is based primarily on a “chronology discrepancy” between North Carolina and Canadian records, as well as “previously unreviewed” video materials, according to her letter.
CBSA travel records and Canadian court documents show McDowell having entered Canada on Dec. 17, 2012, while the related North Carolina charges for obstruction of justice and child abduction show offense dates in January 2013. The “previously unreviewed” video materials were from her son’s therapy session in 2019, but McDowell didn’t identify them until this year, she said in her letter.
While living in Canada, McDowell has repeatedly made requests to North Carolina authorities to review her case, but so far most of them haven’t been fruitful.
Her first effort was reaching out to the authorities in Henderson County in April 2016. She said she never heard back from them, but learned the following month that the Henderson County DA was adding a felony child abduction charge against her, in addition to the existing felony obstruction of justice charge, McDowell said.
NC DHHS was willing to communicate with McDowell after CPP made certain inquiries to the agency, and they told her they would review the case, CPP reported. That review was conducted in February 2017 and sent to her by Section Chief Kevin Kelley later that month, and it stated, “the reviewers agree with the case decision of Services Not Recommended.”
But McDowell took issue with the one-page review because it didn’t mention any interviews being conducted, and McDowell said she, her family, her son’s medical providers and the court-appointed psychiatrist were never contacted as part of the review. There also wasn’t an explanation for why the case was never officially closed with a letter, she said.
Unsatisfied with the review done by social services, McDowell attempted a factual review of her case based on the “chronology discrepancy” regarding her arrival in Canada and the offense dates for her charges in North Carolina. However, McDowell’s motion was denied by the judge due to “procedural barriers,” and it was argued that she wouldn’t be able to prove that she left the United States in December 2012, she said in her letter to NCDOJ.
In 2021, McDowell said in her letter that the case was transferred to the North Carolina Department of Justice following the removal of District Attorney Greg Newman from office. A group of families collectively filed a motion to have him removed due to “an alleged pattern of willful misconduct,” and were ultimately successful in April 2021.
NCDOJ has allegedly been aware of the “certified chronology-discrepancy evidence” since at least 2022, McDowell claimed in her letter.
Throughout all of this, McDowell said in her letter that no efforts have been made by North Carolina authorities to extradite her from Canada.
Then, in June 2025, she discovered her cases were dismissed with leave, but the arrest warrants were still active, McDowell told CPP.
Andrew Murray , district attorney for the 42nd prosecutorial district of North Carolina, said McDowell’s case is specifically under the “voluntary leave” category.
“There’s a lot of people that don’t show up that disappear, and I go back a couple years, and if they still haven’t been found, they haven’t been arrested, then it’s just sitting on the books,” Murray said. “So I just put voluntary leave, which takes them out of the active inventory, but they’re still there, they’re still in the clerk’s office, there’s still an order for arrest out. As soon as the order for arrest is served, then that case is reinstated.”
When asked why there hasn’t been more of an effort to extradite and arrest McDowell, Murray told CPP, “that’s completely above my pay grade.”
A former US attorney for Western North Carolina who was selected to replace Newman after his removal, Murray said he’s only been district attorney since 2021, so he hasn’t had much interaction with the case overall.
“This case had a lot of history, never was really on my radar,” Murray said. “(McDowell) asked me to review it, I reviewed it. She did not like the answers, so then she asked it to go to the Attorney General’s office, and I complied and asked the Attorney General’s office if they would take it and take a review, because she thought she wasn’t getting a fair shot because of whatever reason, and so the Attorney General got it, and they have the case now.”
He also doesn’t know whether any North Carolina agencies consulted the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the case, Murray said.
After roughly two weeks with no response from NCDOJ regarding her most recent request, McDowell followed up by email on May 26. She still has yet to hear back from them, she said.
McDowell living in limbo
“Due to my son’s trauma, I’ve had to be home,” McDowell said.
Her son is now in 10th grade. She’s homeschooled him since halfway through the first grade, after he tried to attend a regular school but found it difficult being there on his own. While some private schools may be an option for him, the financial hurdles make it difficult, she said.
“If I can’t work, I can’t afford to do that,” McDowell said. “The criminal prosecutions of me, first of all, the financial devastation has been enormous, simply in legal fees alone. It’s been hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees in the family law on the civil side, and then also on the criminal side, so that’s been devastating for me and for my family.”
The prosecutions against her have also made finding work difficult, she said.
“I used to be in sales and marketing,” McDowell said. “I cannot pursue any type of job like that, because it might involve travel, and I cannot travel because of my outstanding criminal charges.”
She also has to inform any potential employers about the prosecutions against her. Fortunately, because of her current legal status in Canada and the Canadian courts superseding the rulings of the North Carolina courts, her prosecutions didn’t prevent her from applying for a teaching certificate through the Ontario Certification of Teachers Board in 2023, she said.
“Essentially, in Canada, that process has been relatively smooth, because I have legal standing here in Canada,” McDowell said. “The problem is, teaching does not pay that much more here than it does in the States.”
Over the years, McDowell said they’ve received financial support from her mother and social support from Canada. Now, McDowell still homeschools her son during the day, but has been tutoring other kids in the evenings as her form of income since 2023.
At that point, when her son was 13, she said she felt safe to leave him home alone in the evenings, and the tutoring company she works for is aware of her background, she said.
Aside from the logistical challenges, McDowell said the charges hanging over her in North Carolina have been hard for her psychologically.
“I’m perfectly safe here and legal, but it’s humiliating,” McDowell said. “It’s been a huge blow to my reputation. It’s been a blow to my life professionally. It’s devastating to have to let people know this.”
Editor's note: This article has been updated due to new information that became available.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Young survivors of gun violence find therapy helps. But will California do more?
By Ana B. Ibarra, CalMatters
Jazelle Eastman, 18, a shooting survivor in Oakland on May 24, 2026. Photo by Sarahbeth Maney for CalMatters
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
When Jazelle Eastman was 16 she was shot in the face by a boy she thought was a friend. She doesn’t remember feeling much, but next thing she knew there was blood dripping from her chin.
That was two years ago. She still has a hard time trusting people. “PTSD is so real, I feel like I'm always looking over my shoulder,” she said.
During her hospital stay, a social worker connected Eastman to a mental health counselor. She was hesitant at first; therapy is not something she would have sought on her own. Now she sees the benefit: “Talking to someone made it a lot better,” she said.
That, however, is not every young survivor’s experience. Nationally, just 37% of children received mental health services within six months after a firearm injury, according to a 2023 study published in the American Academy of Pediatrics. For some young survivors, help never arrives at all.
California lawmakers want to change that. Assembly Bill 2247 would require counties and the state to provide and pay for mental health and counseling services for youth survivors of gun violence, regardless of their insurance situation.
Jazelle Eastman, 18, a shooting survivor, shows a bracelet she received at a survivors event in Oakland on May 24, 2026. Photo by Sarahbeth Maney for CalMatters
The bill would establish a pilot program in Alameda, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Solano counties, funded by state grants. Any young person touched by gun violence — whether they were shot, saw a shooting happen, or lost a family member — would qualify for free services up to age 25.
Eastman had invited a group of friends for a sleepover at her Vallejo home. She recalls being on her phone when a boy got up from the living room floor where he'd been sleeping. She doesn't know exactly why he shot her; she thinks it was on purpose, that he'd gotten upset at her for being too loud that morning. He claimed it was an accident.
"I never thought that me trying to have a little get-together with my friends would result in something so bad happening," she said.
The gap in care
In 2020 firearms surpassed motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death among children and teens nationally. Researchers estimate that for every fatality, there are at least two survivors of firearm injuries.
In California, about 2,000 youth 25 and younger died or were hospitalized from firearm injuries annually since 2016, according to the California Department of Public Health. This includes suicides. Still, California has the fifth lowest youth firearm death rate in the country.
“It's very clear that violence, and gun violence in particular, is salient in young people's lives,” said Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz, an associate professor with the Centers for Violence Prevention at UC Davis. Research shows that the trauma of firearm violence can be especially disruptive for young people who are still developing mentally and emotionally, leading to post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, sleep disruption, grief, substance use and suicidal thoughts.
Yet many survivors and their families go without timely help. Some people mistrust the health system. Others may not even know where to start. Getting connected to mental health care isn’t straightforward even for those who try. People with medical coverage have reported having to wait months to find a therapist that works for them, and those without coverage may not even try because they can’t afford counseling.
Tinisch Hollins, executive director at Californians for Safety and Justice, an advocacy organization sponsoring the bill, said this “made a lot of families kind of give up on the process.”
In California, victims of violence may be eligible for state compensation they can use to reimburse therapy costs, but navigating that system is tricky and not all victims qualify. Eastman has applied twice and has never heard back.
Hollins said the latest bill aims to remove cost and insurance barriers. It would also push counties to standardize how they connect victims to services and promote counseling more widely to victims and their families.
Hollins said the legislation is also a direct response to the disproportionate impact of gun violence on Black and Hispanic communities. In California, 78% of youth who were killed or hospitalized due to firearm injuries between 2016 and 2024 were Black or Hispanic, state data show.
A bill, but no funding
Hospitals, counties and other care providers have no consistent standard for connecting young survivors to mental health care after a shooting.
Handing a person a referral for counseling and expecting them to follow through while in survival mode is not enough, said Kravitz-Wirtz.
“Services for young people impacted by firearm violence are too often fragmented,” she said. “Young people often leave the hospital after a shooting with their physical injuries treated … but without a clear pathway into ongoing mental health.”
Some hospitals do have intervention and trauma recovery models in place, but they’re not universally or consistently available. Youth Alive!, the organization that provided Eastman free therapy, is one. Rhea Corson-Higgs, a mental health counselor there, works with youth who have experienced violent trauma in the Bay Area. In the group’s model, a social worker connects youth to a counselor before they are discharged from the hospital. That counselor goes to their home and provides trauma-informed therapy, prioritizing safety and trust. But her program always has a waitlist, she said.
Even if the legislation were to pass, one key challenge remains: There’s no money behind it. Ashley Anderson, a spokesperson for Assemblymember Sade Elhawary, a Los Angeles Democrat who authored the bill, said her office is still trying to find a funding source.
An analysis of the bill estimates it will cost $7,800 per person per year to provide grants to counties. The Assembly’s fiscal committee scaled back the scope of the bill, replacing its statewide requirement with a four-county pilot project. On Tuesday, the Assembly approved the legislation and it now heads for discussion in the Senate.
Finding help and ‘freedom’
Earlier this month Eastman traveled to Sacramento to advocate for the bill, joining dozens of survivors and families of those who were killed. After a brief march, attendees gathered at Capitol Park where around a stage they placed poster boards and banners with victims’ photos and messages: “Never forgotten” and “Forever 18.”
Today, Eastman is able to share her story publicly in large part because of therapy.
Bridgett Montoya was also there. She grew up in Pacoima, in the San Fernando Valley; a decade or more ago, gang activity there was commonplace. When she was 21 she was struck by two bullets — one in the head and one in the hip. She was in a coma for about a week and hospitalized for 28 days. A bullet remains lodged on the right back side of her head. Fragments from the hip shot impair her walking.
Two years passed before she saw a therapist. She wants others to have an easier path. “Going to therapy gave me a sense of relief and a sense of freedom,” she said.
James Michael, 20, was shot in the leg while attending an Oakland house party two years ago. At the hospital, before he could even see a doctor, he said law enforcement questioned him aggressively, as if he had something to do with the shooting. He recalls feeling really angry.
He thought twice about therapy, but decided to give it a try. That’s where he met Corson-Higgs at Youth Alive!, who he credits with helping him work through his anger. As he re-trained his left leg to walk, he also regained his confidence.
Therapy, he said, “showed me that life is still beautiful, no matter what you go through.”
Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
As Omni project advances, hospitality workers express doubts
by Jasmine Robinson, Verite News New Orleans June 3, 2026
The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans is working on securing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax incentives for its incoming headquarters hotel — a new Omni hotel worth $600 million.
Officials say the hotel is key to the long term success of tourism in New Orleans and could strengthen the hospitality community. They also hope it will improve competitiveness in the convention industry and bring larger events to the city.
Recently, Convention Center officials hit a snag in getting approval on a major tax incentive for the hotel. They are seeking state approval for a tax rebate plan worth an estimated $265 million over 45 years. Under the plan, the state would send certain sales taxes generated from the Omni to the developers, subsidizing the hotel’s operations.
But the size of the proposed public subsidy has reportedly created “angst” among state legislators with the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget. On Sunday (May 31) the committee deferred a vote on the rebate, the second such deferral since April.
Concerns from the state legislature echo criticisms coming from local hospitality workers, whose labor would support a boost in tourism. Unionized hospitality workers have been at the forefront of opposing the publicly subsidized hotel and are part of a labor coalition demanding guaranteed benefits to taxpayers.
“I think it's disrespectful and a slap in the face to not only just the hospitality workers, but as a whole to the workers here in the state or the city,” said Monicka Bolling, a banquet captain at the Convention Center.
Expected to open in 2030, the new Omni hotel would be the fifth largest hotel in New Orleans with about 1,000 rooms. A hotel of this size hasn’t been built in the city in more than 40 years.
The hotel is critical for the city’s bid to host the Super Bowl in 2031. According to Fox 8, the NFL told officials that if New Orleans wants to host the game, “it needs new hotels like the Omni.”
“This is a project born of a strategic competitive need, and not born out of just a willingness for a shiny new hotel. This is about us continuing to remain competitive against cities who have continued to build at a rate far faster than we have,” Convention Center president and CEO Jim Cook said during the center’s May 13 board of commissioners meeting.
In a statement Cook said the Omni is projected to have an annual economic impact of $213.6 million by the fourth year of operation and generate over $15.2 million in new taxes for the city and state.
But generating that kind of impact is going to cost taxpayers. A 2025 report by the Bureau of Governmental Research estimated the gross public investment in the project will be over $940 million in the span of 45 years. The hotel will net about $669 million in public subsidies after rent payments to the Convention Center, which is a state entity.
Along with the state tax rebates, the hotel is also seeking a heavy discount on local property taxes, through a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes deal, or a PILOT, that would allow Omni to skip regular property taxes in place of smaller, annual payments. The PILOT, like the sales tax rebates, would last 45 years and could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. There’s no publicly known timeline for the public review process or City Council approval of the deal.
Officials have said the public-private nature of the project will make the hotel financially feasible.
“The [45-year] term is necessary to meet the return that enables the developer to invest over $550 million in capital necessary to build this hotel without more of a direct public contribution,” Cook said.
But BGR found in its report that Omni will only need the subsidies to reach its profit target for 11 years. By the 12th year, subsidies wouldn’t be necessary.
Impact to the hospitality industry
For some hospitality workers in New Orleans, the prospect of their tax dollars subsidizing the Omni hotel project is discomforting. Rising costs of living have made things dire for workers in the tourism industry, who historically have earned low wages.
It’s common for workers in the hospitality and service industry to work multiple jobs, said Bunny White, who's been working at the Caesar's Superdome for nine years as a cashier.
Three years ago, White was 65 years old working four jobs at once to support herself. She was working one of her jobs when she had a stroke. The moment was a wakeup call for her.
“A lot of people are suffering. This economy is devastating to a lot of families.” White said.
Bolling works as a banquet captain at the Convention Center. She has two adult sons who work in hospitality, including one who also works at the Convention Center. Due to rising costs of living, low pay in the hospitality industry and inconsistent work, she said they had to move back home with her.
“If you're not working consistently …folks cannot afford to just live on their own,” Bolling said. Work in hospitality is inconsistent — marked by up and down seasons, she added.
White and Bolling, both members of the UNITE HERE Local 23 hospitality workers union, expressed concern that businesses across the industry are understaffed and workers underpaid because business hasn’t fully rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“You have hotels here that you cannot supply the workers for, that you won’t hire people for because you’re trying to keep your numbers down to benefit your pocket,” White said.
Officials are expecting the Omni to bring 1,400 new permanent jobs. But Bolling said that job creation alone isn’t enough to support a workforce that is critical to a growing tourism economy.
“People need to be adequately paid to be in these spaces and they still have not proven or said how this will be beneficial. … [You] say you're going to have X amount of jobs, but how much are you paying these people? We don’t know enough yet,” Bolling said.
While the addition of new jobs would theoretically alleviate labor shortages in the industry, it’s a factor that could exacerbate labor shortages at individual hotels.
“With a brand new shiny hotel opening up, I think the labor force will shift towards that new hotel. So you could experience a labor shortage at some older, smaller properties,” said Chantal Wu, senior director of hospitality marketing analytics with CoStar.
White and Bolling say they fear a new hotel could draw business away from existing hotels, which would leave less available work at those hotels. Or, it could also lead to workers being overworked while underpaid.
In New Orleans, hotel occupancy averaged 69% from 2015 through 2019, according to data from CoStar. Post-pandemic, occupancy averaged 60% from 2022 to 2025. That’s in line with what’s happening nationally.
According to Wu, the hotel industry has not fully recovered since the pandemic. She said it’s partially because lower income households are deprioritizing travel. Meanwhile, she says affluent travelers are spending big and rates charged at hotels are accelerating. And hotel owners are taking notice.
“Basically, hoteliers are trading volume for more pricing power.” Wu said.
In New Orleans, Convention Center officials say the addition of the hotel would impact nearby existing hotels by increasing demand for rooms and increasing rates. An analysis by HVS Consultants, which did consulting for the Convention Center’s headquarters hotel, said that the addition of a new hotel wouldn’t bear much impact on occupancy levels, but presents opportunities for rate growth and higher revenue.
Recent developments with the Omni
Convention Center officials still must obtain zoning approvals to begin construction in late 2026.
In May, the City Planning Commission approved the sale of public land to accommodate design plans for the hotel. The commission authorized the sale of one block of John Churchill Chase Street and a small portion of Mississippi Heritage Park to hotel developers.
The economic development district overseeing the hotel’s development, whose members are the Convention Center’s board of commissioners, approved in May an additional 2% in sales and hotel taxes at the site of the hotel. The Bureau of Governmental Research estimates it will generate $127 million in revenue for the Omni.
The hotel is planned at the site of The Sugar Mill in between Convention Center Boulevard and South Peters Street, next to Mississippi Heritage Park.
Later this month, the New Orleans City Council is expected to vote on proposed changes to the city zoning ordinance which would remove building height regulations for the hotel. The City Planning Commission recommended approval for the changes.
“The way the city council votes is going to also show who they really are siding with, who they really care about — whether it's the residents of the city or if it's developers,” Bolling said.
This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
As Seas Rise, Louisiana Faces a Choice: Plan for Movement or Let Crisis Decide
Coastal Louisiana may be ground zero for climate migration in the U.S., but a new study argues that planning now could turn displacement into agency.
By Avery Schuyler Nunn
May 30, 2026
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_._
The shoreline of Louisiana has never been still or fixed, though recent generations have treated it as such.
Since the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago, around when people arrived in what is now the United States, sea levels have repeatedly reshaped aspects of the Gulf Coast. But today, human-caused warming is accelerating that ancient process, pushing Louisiana’s dynamic shoreline into conflict with cities, roads, ports and levees built to contain and stabilize nature.
A new study in Nature Sustainability argues that this history is a guide to what comes next. Coastal Louisiana, the authors write, is ground zero for coastal climate adaptation: a place where rising seas and sinking land are already reshaping where people live, and where planning for movement could offer more agency than crisis-driven displacement.
“We have got to remember that when people first came to North America 20,000 years ago, there had already been a lot of climate change,” said Jesse Keenan, a co-author of the paper and professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University. “There’s been a lot of sea level rise in the region, and Indigenous populations have always moved with that shoreline.”
In geologic time, he added, “New Orleans has been there for just a blip. We’ve got to get it out of our heads that this is terra firma.”
The physical stakes are still stark. Southern Louisiana is facing a convergence of rising seas, wetland erosion, stronger storms and land subsidence, much of it worsened by decades of oil and gas canals cut through the coast. The state contains what theIPCC has identified as the world’s most exposed coastal zone, where the shoreline is projected to move more than 30 miles inland of New Orleans.
By comparing today’s warming trajectory with the last interglacial period roughly 125,000 years ago, when global temperatures were similar and seas were much higher, the new study estimates that the region could eventually face three to seven meters of sea-level rise and lose as much as three-quarters of its remaining coastal wetlands.
Keenan emphasizes that the point is not to forecast a sudden disappearance, but to widen the planning lens: if the coast is already moving, Louisiana has a chance to decide how people, infrastructure and economies move with it.
The danger is assuming everyone has the same ability to act on that choice. Social mobility, he said, depends on financial mobility— which means adaptation cannot simply tell people to move to safer ground. It has to move opportunity, too: jobs, industries, schools and affordable housing beyond the form of voluntary buyouts, a common managed-retreat tool in which governments purchase flood-prone homes and return the land to open space.
“Outmigration is often framed as tragedy or failure, but in some cases it signals agency,” said Brianna Castro, a co-author of the paper, who highlights that this is a chance to plan around choices people are already making.
Nearly all of Louisiana’s coastal zone has lost residents since 2000, and since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, about a quarter of Orleans Parish’s population has left the area, while more than half of rural Cameron Parish has relocated.
“If you build jobs and you build homes, specifically affordable homes, [on] safer ground, people will come,” said Castro, who is a professor of urban sustainability at Yale University’s School of the Environment.
The opportunity, she argues, is to make those moves possible before crisis forces them on harsher terms—with schools, housing and work in places where communities can carry culture forward rather than be scattered by disaster. New Orleans at its core, she said, is not confined to its current footprint.
“We’re not going to ‘lose’ New Orleans,” she said. “New Orleans has an incredibly rich local culture, and that will carry across the lake.” What must change, she argued, is the assumption that a moving coast can be met with immovable systems. That idea resonates beyond Louisiana. Vivek Shandas, a professor of earth, environment and society at Portland State University who was not involved in the study, said the paper widens the frame from emergency response to long-term adaptation.
“We’ve been resettling for hundreds of thousands of years as a species,” Shandas said. “I think we’ve gotten really complacent with thinking that once we’ve set up a place and invested in it that it has to be like that forever. But the Earth is a very dynamic and incredibly fluid system.”
For that reason, he said, Louisiana is a “bellwether” for the rest of the country—a place where planners, policymakers and communities can study what adaptation strategies work before the same pressures intensify elsewhere.
“It’s super important for people to recognize that what we’re ultimately calling for in this paper is a public, private, and civic engagement with adaptation policy, planning and practice,” said Keenan.
The study points to immediate action projects, including reviving the canceled Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion—a $3-billion coastal restoration project designed to reconnect the Mississippi River with the Barataria Basin, the rapidly disappearing wetland area on the west bank of the river south of New Orleans—and advancing the Breton diversion on the other side of the Mississippi River.
Unlike dredging, which moves sediment once and deposits it in place, river diversions are designed to restore a more continuous flow of sediment into wetlands, mimicking the processes that built the delta over thousands of years. Dredged material can create land, Keenan said, but it does not sustain the same root systems and ecological processes as a living riverine system.
“We’ve got a big challenge here, but this isn’t about the challenge. This is about the opportunity,” he said. “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. There is so much economic opportunity to engage with people and to build things. Data centers won’t give people more jobs, but adapting to climate change just might.”
Session slog ends in $56B budget, new taxes on social media companies, crypto, fantasy sports
by Ben Szalinski, Capitol News Illinois June 1, 2026
Article Summary
- Democrats largely joined together to support the Fiscal Year 2027 budget as Republicans warned the plan will harm the state’s financial picture.
- The budget totals about $56.9 billion and is just slightly less than what Gov. JB Pritzker proposed in February, though it incorporates key taxes and revenue changes he proposed.
- The spending plan is the largest in state history and includes funding for local governments along with full funding of the state’s K-12 Evidence-Based Funding formula.
- New taxes would be implemented on social media companies based on the number of users in the state, along with prediction markets, fantasy sports and digital assets.
- Republicans bashed the plan’s hasty passage while Democrats defended the new taxes and spending, citing the Trump administration’s cuts.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
SPRINGFIELD — Illinois lawmakers approved the state budget early Monday morning after slogging through the night, enacting new taxes on businesses and authorizing less spending than what Gov. JB Pritzker proposed in February.
“It’s allowed us to be prepared for the great reality we face today,” Senate Democrats budget leader Elgie Sims, of Chicago, said during debate. “The reality of federal cuts. The reality of chaos coming from Washington ... We are not placing blame. We are prepared. We are not acting on fear. We are acting responsibly.”
The budget totals $55.9 billion, supported by a similar amount of revenue. The spending plan included an $830 million supplemental current-year spending plan, meaning the upcoming fiscal year 2027 budget is essentially flat.
To get it across the finish line, Democrats — especially progressives — had to temper their expectations. Many had called for new progressive revenue measures throughout the session, including taxes on big corporations and billionaires and for Illinois to untie itself from parts of the federal tax code.
Instead, the measure freezes corporate net operating loss and enacts taxes on social media companies, digital assets, fantasy sports, tobacco and sports betting on prediction market websites.
Democrats also sought to include at least a few measures that address affordability. It freezes the 1.3-cent gas tax increase that’s slated for July 1, pushing it to January. It also creates a sales tax holiday on school supplies from Aug. 7-16.
Republicans, meanwhile, said the relief didn’t go nearly far enough.
“We're not going to raise the gas tax in July, we're just going to wait a couple more months, so we can raise it at the end of the year after election time,” Rep. Joe Sosnowski, R-Rockford, said, adding sarcastically that there was a “lot of courage coming out of that side of the aisle and the governor.”
Path to passage
Its passage comes after an spring session thrust further into unpredictability by the war in Iran and federal policy changes. Budget analysts for the General Assembly and governor’s office tempered revenue expectations just weeks ago, citing growing pessimism over the economy.
The 3,700-page spending plan and associated implementation bill were introduced late Saturday evening and about 200 additional pages were added around 2 a.m. on Monday. But other components of the budget, including the capital and revenue bills, were not filed until mid-afternoon on Saturday.
“Thirteen million people expect us to do our jobs in the openness of daylight within the months and weeks leading up to a May 31 deadline each year, not in the final few hours of darkness,” Sen. Chris Balkema, R-Channahon, said as the Senate took up the spending bill around 2:30 a.m. “It's highly embarrassing to the 13 million people.”
No Republicans voted for the plan, though some House lawmakers said they were at least more involved in budget negotiations than in recent years.
“It’s been very recent communication, but it’s certainly better than no communication at all, which has been, of course, the status quo for many years,” Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, told reporters.
The spending measure, House Bill 111, passed the Senate 37-21 after 3 a.m. Monday morning. The House followed around 4:15 a.m. with a 76-39vote, followed by the budget implementation bill, House Bill 2949. The revenue and tax changes, Senate Bill 3019, passed the House around 11:15 p.m. on a 73-41 vote, followed by the Senate around 12:30 a.m. with only Democratic votes as well.
Tax increases and revenue maneuvers
The budget also calls for transferring $150 million in sales tax revenue from gas to the General Revenue Fund once public transportation is fully funded, opening that revenue up to be spent on any purpose.
"If you’re a driver who is irritated by the high price of gas that you’re paying, you should be extra irritated when you where the funds are going,” Spain said.
Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, aired similar concerns earlier on Sunday during committee.
“We ought to be suspending the sales tax on motor fuel right now – not diverting it to the General Revenue Fund, and not diverting it, oddly to the exact same dollar amount that we got for illegal immigrants and welcoming centers,” he said.
That state plans to spend $143 million on a healthcare program for undocumented immigrant seniors and another $4 million on welcoming centers that provide services to immigrants arriving in Illinois.
Lawmakers incorporated a pair of the tax changes that Pritzker had proposed in February. One would lower the cap on corporate net operating loss deductions for business. Another would impose a tax on social media companies based on the number of users the platform has in Illinois. Combined, those would generate $500 million in new revenue.
Social media companies would be taxed on a progressive scale starting with platforms with 100,000 to 499,999 users paying 10 cents per month for each user all the way up to platforms with at least 1 million users paying a $165,000 fee plus 50 cents for each user each month. A similar tax in Chicago is already tied up in court.
New taxes on digital asset sales and fantasy sports are expected to generate $65 million. The state would create a licensing structure for fantasy sports operators and impose a 15% tax on each business — something Rep. Curtis Tarver, D-Chicago, said the industry themselves requested.
Consumers purchasing tires will also see a 50-cent increase in a tax on those purchases, which primarily funds a waste disposal fund.
Sports bets on prediction markets and remote tobacco retailers would also be taxed under the plan.
“This state is addicted to spending money it doesn't have,” Rep. Blaine Wilhour, R-Beecher City. “It’s addicted to creating programs that it can't afford. It's addicted to making promises it can't keep, and it's addicted to coming back to the taxpayers constantly, constantly to clean up the mess.”
The revenue package also creates a Targeted Advertising Services Tax, which is more commonly known as a digital ad tax. However, lawmakers expect the tax will also face legal challenges and are not planning to gather revenue from it in FY27. Tarver said the goal was to create a framework to implement the tax later if it’s held up in court. Keith Staats, president of the Illinois Taxpayers Federation, told a House committee the tax likely violates federal internet freedom laws.
The budget package does not eliminate tax incentives for data centers, despite Pritzker calling for it in his budget.
Other spending in the budget appears to rely on numerous fund sweeps that redirect money from one program to another or to the state’s General Revenue Fund. One of those sweeps includes transferring $70 million from the BRIDGE program — created last year to allow Pritzker to allocate funding to programs that fall short in funding because of federal cuts — to the Fund for Illinois’ Future for infrastructure projects and other grants. Money in that fund is typically earmarked for specific projects in Democratic legislative districts.
However, the spending bill stipulates that $70 million from the BRIDGE Fund should go to a new program to fill gaps in food assistance programs, which led to some confusion among lawmakers debating the bill in the House.
Spending
Rep. Robyn Gabel, D-Evanston, said the budget includes about $65 million in reductions for government operations, a relatively small cut in the budget. She said no government staff would be laid off.
“Most important in this moment, this budget is not balanced on the backs of working families,” Gabel said. “That means no taxes on working people, and no severe cuts to critical services they depend on.”
The budget would establish a program to help people who have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits as the federal government institutes new restrictions on eligibility. Under the new Families Receiving Emergency Support for Hunger, or FRESH Program, people who have lost or seen their SNAP benefits reduced would be eligible for a one-time $400 payment. The program is scheduled to last just one year and is estimated to cost about $70 million.
Following Wilhour’s address, Rep. Diane Blair-Sherlock, D-Villa Park, pointed a finger at the federal government.
“I will not be lectured about excessive state spending at a time when I am watching billion- dollar ballrooms being built, private jets being flown around by staff to go to their girlfriend's concerts, while SNAP benefits are cut, while Medicaid is cut, while Medicare is cut, while people are desperately trying to get health care,” she said. “We as a state are trying to fill in gaps created by the federal government.”
Funding for local governments will increase. Lawmakers allowed the percentage of the income tax that they receive to stay flat at 6.47%. Because of natural income tax growth, their total dollar amount received will grow — Pritzker had proposed reducing the percentage.
Mayors vigorously lobbied lawmakers this spring not to cut the percentage and Sims told reporters on Sunday morning that senators agreed.
Illinois lawmakers are also in line for a roughly 3% pay raise, which will bring their base salaries to $101,450. State law indexes their pay each year to the rate of inflation.
The bill also fully funds pensions and the state’s Evidence-Based Funding model for K-12 education, including a property tax relief component. However, districts receiving those grants will need to forgo property tax increases for three years, rather than two as current law requires.
Higher education will only receive a 1% increase next year — the second year in a row new funding was below the rate of inflation.
Direct service providers will receive a 60-cent wage increase, half of what is recommended. The budget also does not include any increase in the “rainy day” fund.
Capitol News Illinois_is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation._
This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Massachusetts’s slow adoption of EV chargers through federal program is ‘mystifying’ to transit advocates
by Jordan Wolman, CommonWealth Beacon June 3, 2026
FOR ALL THE concern about lost federal funding courtesy of the Republican trifecta in Washington, Massachusetts still has not deployed a single electric vehicle charger through a Biden-era program that President Trump has left intact.
The Bay State is sitting on the roughly $64 million it was awarded through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, a $5 billion federal initiative authorized through the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law meant to strategically dot the nation’s major highways with charging infrastructure that would make it easier for EV drivers to reliably travel greater distances.
Two years ago, Massachusetts selected three vendors to identify locations for NEVI charging stations and then build and maintain them. Only contracts with two of those companies, however — Applegreen and Global Partners — are signed, the state’s Department of Transportation confirmed to CommonWealth Beacon , leaving open questions about the viability of the third vendor, Weston & Sampson.
Now, nearly four years after receiving federal approvals, no EV chargers on Massachusetts’s major roadways through NEVI are up and running, MassDOT also confirmed.
It’s not clear what exactly is causing the holdup. CommonWealth Beacon filed a public records request to view the contracts with the two companies to ascertain whether there are deadlines associated with charger installations, but MassDOT did not provide those contracts in time for publication.
“The slowness of adoption here is mystifying,” said Jim Aloisi, a former state transportation secretary who now lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and serves on the board of the advocacy group TransitMatters. “If your approach to transportation sector decarbonization is largely about the transition to EVs, then you should be spending a fair amount of effort accelerating the process of getting people to adopt EVs, and one way to do that is obviously to roll out the NEVI initiative. That's the disconnect.”
MassDOT didn’t respond to questions about why the pace of NEVI work has been so slow. The department’s “conservative” projections in 2022 found that NEVI funding would be sufficient for building 92 charging ports.
Some officials serving on the state’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Coordinating Council, which was established in 2022 to help create an equitable and reliable charging network, also appear to be in the dark. Eric Bourassa, who is a member of the group and serves as the director of transportation for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, said that he’s “not privy to the details of what’s holding it up,” but that “everyone would agree that the pace of NEVI deployment in Massachusetts has been disappointing.”
So far, the two signed NEVI vendors have spent close to $4 million, according to Marshall Hook, a MassDOT spokesperson, all of which are for “development-focused” activities like engineering, permitting, and procurement.
There have been signs of progress. Applegreen has placed an order for EV charging equipment for locations in Greenfield and Newburyport and are targeting late July to begin construction, Hook said. Global Partners, meanwhile, has been approved to place orders on equipment and is finalizing plans to install chargers in Lancaster, Wrentham, and Raynham.
James Cater, senior director for sustainability strategy and innovation at Global Partners, said in a statement that the company is “happy” to be working on Massachusetts’s NEVI program and is beginning the procurement process for contractors for their initial charging sites “soon.”
Applegreen and Weston & Sampson did not respond to requests for comment.
Yet the slow adoption rate through NEVI continues to bewilder transit advocates given the state’s relatively small size and political embrace of EVs. Neighboring states like Rhode Island, New York, and Vermont boast a significant stock of NEVI chargers, in addition to more sprawling red states like Utah and Ohio.
“We should be capitalizing on every opportunity that we have available to us,” said Anna Vanderspek, electric vehicle program director at the Green Energy Consumers Alliance. “MassDOT should explain why it's taken so long and what timetable we can expect now.”
The uptake on NEVI has been slow nationwide: Just 19 states have at least one operating EV charger funded through the program, according to the National Association of State Energy Officials. Adie Tomer, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro who specializes in infrastructure policy, said that poor capacity more broadly across states has stifled their ability to quickly implement the program as they wrangle procurement processes, permitting, and electrical grid transmission complications.
"There were plenty of ingredients here to have paralysis by analysis,” Tomer said. “Government officials are naturally going to be risk averse, especially with newer programs, and officials needed to learn on the fly. NEVI hits all those sweet spots, so it’s not terribly surprising that deployments are coming along slower than initially hoped."
The data around Massachusetts’s EV push offers a mixed bag. On one hand, the state’s slow crawl on NEVI is contrasted by its relative success deploying EV chargers in general. State data show the Commonwealth ranking fourth in the country for charging ports per capita after a sharp increase in installments over the past few years.
Yet, Massachusetts still has about 2,000 charging ports less than what it estimates it needs, according to the most recent state climate report card.
The state also remains significantly behind its targets for registered electric cars and trucks as it races to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half compared to 1990 levels by 2030. There are just 735 medium-and-heavy-duty EVs on the road, a sliver of the 3,200 called for by the end of 2025.
On light-duty EVs and plug-in hybrids, Massachusetts has about 166,000 such cars, short of the 200,000 needed by last year. Last year, the Healey administration also delayed an EV sales requirement.
Part of convincing consumers to purchase generally more expensive electric cars involves easing “range anxiety,” the worry of EV drivers about whether they’ll make it to their destination or the next charging station — one of the core functions of the NEVI program.
Notably, Massachusetts has also placed its NEVI bet on two companies that have been at intense odds with each other in the past year.
Applegreen and Global Partners — the two vendors with signed contracts with the state for NEVI work — have been at the center of a bitter dispute over the state’s efforts to redevelop 18 highway service plazas. MassDOT awarded Applegreen that major contract last year, but the company backed out after losing bidder Global Partners sued the state and fought to block the deal over allegations that the process was unfair.
MassDOT is now preparing to rebid the whole project, and the state inspector general ridiculed the agency for having “too many flaws” in its process that has attracted the ire of Beacon Hill.
The bad blood between Applegreen and Global Partners may not spill over into how fast the companies can deploy chargers on the state’s major highways since they will be responsible for separate individual sites, minimizing the necessity for direct collaboration.
But the situation speaks to the challenges of complicated procurements and the fragility of the private market to perform this sort of work, when a small pool of companies competes for similar supplies and subcontractors and could be vulnerable to price spikes.
“The word ‘irony’ is a good one,” Aloisi said. “It may be that there's just not a lot of good competition in this area. What does that landscape look like, and who wants to play in that sandbox? And it may be that the unfortunate answer is not too many players, so you're stuck with the same.”
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
In Marshall, North Carolina, a Group of Ballad Singers Reflects on how Hurricane Helene Affected Their Tradition
by Sarah Alexander Melotte, The Daily Yonder May 28, 2026
During a rainy summer afternoon at Zadie’s Market, a restaurant housed in what used to be the jail in Marshall, North Carolina, a group of 11 people sat on the patio in front of a dinner crowd, taking turns singing ballads.
Ballads are songs that tell stories, typically sung without musical accompaniment. The earliest songs were rarely written down, so they varied between singers or families. Many of these ballads were brought to Appalachia by settlers from the British Isles. They often recount tales of heroes, betrayal, doomed romance, and even murder. Some can even be a bit raunchy, as ballad singer Donna Ray Norton explained to the crowd.
“Bawdy ballads are like the dirty ballads,” said Norton, standing at the mic. Norton is an eighth generation ballad singer from Sodom Laurel, North Carolina, a small community in Madison County. “Are there any kids here right now? I know that there was one that just left.”
After making sure the coast was clear, Norton launched into a bawdy ballad called “The Darby’s Ram.” The song cheekily tells the story of an absurdly __ large ram, with lyrics like:
This Ram had such a long tool, it drug upon the ground
It dug a ditch six feet wide, from London to Darby's town
The audience responded to the lyrics with laughter, joining Norton on the lines that repeated after every verse. The song goes on, line after line, describing the sheer enormity of the ram:
The legs on this ram were spread so far apart
Every soul in Darby dreaded to hear him fart
Traditionally, ballads were sung in private, among family. Over time, singers began performing them in public. At the ballad swap, singers took turns stepping up to the mic, from oldest to youngest. Their voices made a haunting, plaintive sound, cutting through the noises of the lively audience.
Norton co-founded the Marshall ballad swap in 2023 with her aunt, renowned ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams. Adams has earned national recognition for her musical tradition, including a 2013 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. “I’ve always idolized her, and she just sounds like home to me,” Norton said.
Eighth-generation ballad singer Donna Ray Norton MC’d the ballad swap at Zadie’s Market. (Photo by Sarah Melotte / Daily Yonder)
Since 2023, the ballad swap has become an important opportunity for these singers to share their tradition with others. But when Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina in 2024, bringing what some described as a “1,000-year flood,” the future of the event became uncertain. The Old Marshall Jail, the home of Zadie’s Market, was full of mud and water. Norton was concerned about how the building’s destruction might hurt the ballad swap.
“The ballad swap’s sort of like my baby, you know?” Norton said. “What if we don’t have the same momentum that we had going before?”
We know all too well how natural disasters physically impact communities by destroying property, devastating the landscape, and claiming lives. But what might be less obvious is how a community’s cultural practices are affected. Experts say climate change likely made Hurricane Helene more dangerous, reflecting a broader pattern in which warmer global temperatures are fueling more intense storms and extreme flooding.
In the aftermath of Helene, amidst all the uncertainty, Norton found comfort in singing ballads.
“I really leaned into the ballads during that time as a way to connect with myself and my people,” Norton said.
But not every ballad was a comfort. Many of these traditional songs touch on themes of land and loss. Darci DeWulf is a ballad singer who lives in Marshall. She said that right after the flood, emotions were still too raw to tackle songs with those themes.
“We did avoid for a long time any songs about rivers or waters rising,” DeWulf said. “I mean, it was like, you think, ‘Oh, I'll sing this.’ And you get to about the second verse, and it's like, ‘The river's gonna flood.’ No, I can't, you know, too soon. Too soon. I can't do this.”
The patio of Zadie’s Market sits right on the banks of the French Broad River, which flooded Marshall during Hurricane Helene in September of 2024. (Photo by Sarah Melotte / The Daily Yonder)
But with time came the desire to return to some of those ballads.
Helene wasn’t the first historic storm that afflicted western North Carolina. In 1916, another flood swept through the Blue Ridge Mountains, changing the course of rivers and killing around 80 people. A ballad was written about this storm, called “The Flood of 1916.”
A few months after Helene, ballad singer Sarah Elizabeth Burkey of Jackson County, North Carolina, decided to learn this song, but she had a hard time with it at first.
“My brain resisted absorbing it and memorizing that song, because the story is such a hard one,” Burkey said. Eventually, she did learn the song:
In the month of July, in the year sixteen
The most terrible storm you ever did see
Made its way from the ocean wide
And struck with force
On the mountainside
The ballad singers leaned into their tradition in other ways, too. While the Old Marshall Jail was being restored, the group took their show on the road. For them, it was a chance to be together doing something they loved, while also raising awareness about the storm’s impact on their home. Norton said the group performed sold-out shows in places like Charleston, South Carolina; Asheville, North Carolina; and Floyd, Virginia.
“Just all these different things have blown my mind. It's just been crazy,” Norton said.
Attendance boomed when the ballad swap returned to Marshall after its time on the road. Locals showed up in droves to support ballad night, along with tourists and people who came to see how the town had fared since the storm. But in a region where scientists say climate change is making extreme floods more likely, Helene may not be a once-in-a-generation event. For the ballad singers, the effort to sustain their tradition is now unfolding against a future where floods like Helene could happen again.
“I think it was just sort of an eye opener for a lot of people,” Norton said. “Just about how special things are and how fragile everything is.”
For these singers, the storm has deepened their commitment to sustaining ballad singing for future generations.
“It’s not just about the songs,” Norton said. “It’s about the stories and how they were passed down, or why. I hope that people are just still curious about them and want to keep learning them and continue to pass them down, and that younger generations continue to be interested in them somehow.”
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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