It's Friday July 3, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering: NC budget agreement finally reached**,** Virginia braces for dangerous heat wave ahead of Fourth of July weekend, Their town burned to the ground. Should they get a pass from California’s new housing laws?, On Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, a community network steps up to increase Vietnamese language access to healthcare, How a solar energy developer lobbied for and won a reduced state permit fee amidst farmer pushback, A Heat Wave is Hitting New York. Know Your Rights Ahead of Soaring Temps, Chemours must cut Ohio River ‘forever chemical’ pollution under new settlement. But a fight over future permit limits looms.

Media outlets and others featured: Carolina Public Press, Virginia Mercury, CalMatters, North Carolina Health News, Mississippi Today, Investigate Midwest, The City Reporter, Mountain State Spotlight.

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NC budget agreement finally reached

by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press July 1, 2026

By the time the first fireworks go off this Independence Day weekend, Gov. Josh Stein will have the long-awaited budget on his desk.

Lawmakers are supposed to pass a two-year budget in odd-numbered years, but they weren’t able to come to an agreement in 2025. That means North Carolina is still running on the last budget passed in 2023, more than 1,000 days ago.

As a result, state employees and teachers have gone without raises, construction projects are in a holding pattern, various priorities remain unmet and the state hasn’t fully adjusted to the current economic climate amid inflation and recent federal funding cuts.

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For more than a year, Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, and House Speaker Destin Hall , R-Caldwell, butted heads over tax policy, teacher raises and funding for a children’s hospital.

While lawmakers passed a series of mini-budgets in 2025 to partially fund the state’s Medicaid program and address disaster recovery needs after Tropical Storm Helene and Tropical Depression Chantal, among other priorities, there was no comprehensive spending plan in sight.

This May, Berger and Hall finally came to a loose agreement on a few of the bigger issues remaining, including how quickly to reduce the personal income tax rate. There was no physical document, though, until Tuesday morning, when lawmakers dropped the 634-page budget.

Wednesday, the House and Senate voted to approve the budget with bipartisan 92-23 and 37-12 votes, respectively.

Thursday, they will make a third and final vote before sending it to Stein. Then, the governor will decide whether to sign, veto or allow the budget to take effect without his signature.

“This one’s been a long time coming, and it's been a hard-fought battle, but when we started this session, we said that we got to have the right budget, not just any budget,” Hall said on Wednesday.

Big budget stuff: Taxes, salaries and cuts

In all, the budget outlines $34.4 billion in spending over the next year — about a billion more than in the House’s and Senate’s initial proposals. That billion dollars is set aside for future use.

Hall told reporters it’s intended to go toward the state’s rainy day fund and other state reserve funds, if not used for future legislative matters.

The budget replenishes the state’s rainy day fund, used in case of natural disasters or other emergencies, to the tune of $450 million. That brings the balance up to about $4.2 billion.

Rep. Dean Arp , R-Union, said years of conservative, fiscal discipline allow lawmakers to spend money while still putting a significant portion into reserves.

“This budget funds today's challenge without mortgaging our children's future and our grandchildren's future,” he said.

Budget for taxes

As outlined in the spring, the budget restructures North Carolina’s personal income tax schedule.

Back in 2023, lawmakers made a plan to cut the income tax rate from 4.75% to 2.49% by 2030 through various “triggers,” revenue thresholds the state had to meet to cut the rate each year.

Amid inflation and federal uncertainty, Hall wanted to change the plan. The House’s original proposal would have effectively paused cuts by raising revenue thresholds high enough that the state wouldn’t reach them for a while. Berger, however, was adamant that they continue moving forward.

In the end, they found a compromise with a new schedule that would reduce the rate more slowly, based on years instead of revenue triggers. The income tax rate will drop from 3.99% to 3.49% in 2027, to 3.24% in 2030 and to 2.99% after 2032.

Beyond 2032, there’s still a possibility of lowering it all the way to 2.49%, if the state meets certain revenue thresholds.

“Our current tax rates, we felt were not in the best interest of us long term, so we renegotiated those to what we believe is a better and fairer and more equitable tax rate that reduces the tax rate, gives our citizens more of their hard-earned money back into pockets,” said Rep.Donny Lambeth , R-Forsyth.

There are also a few other tax provisions.

When data centers first located in North Carolina, lawmakers offered various tax exemptions as an incentive. They’re now rethinking that. The budget removes data centers’ sales tax exemption for electricity use, while keeping in place some other tax exemptions.

Rep.Pricey Harrison , D-Guilford, said it’s “past time” lawmakers did that. However, she wishes they also removed the sales tax exemption on data center equipment.

The budget also raises taxes on sports wagering operators’ wagering revenue from 18% to 23%, and taxes prediction market operators at 6% of sports-related trading fee revenue earned from North Carolina users.

In the bill, lawmakers allow counties to levy up to a half-percent sales tax to be exclusively used for public education, if a majority of voters agree in a referendum and the county does not already take advantage of a separate extra sales tax.

Salaries and vacant positions

One of the most important jobs of a state budget is to pay all the people who work for the government or one of its departments. That includes public school teachers, state employees and law enforcement.

Educators are getting an average 8% raise, based on years of experience. Much of the investment, however, is concentrated in the beginning years of teachers’ careers; the budget raises starting salaries to $48,000 before local supplements. It’s the largest average teacher raise since 2006, Hall said.

It is not retroactive to 2025, though.

Law enforcement officers will receive raises, too. State Bureau of Investigations and Alcohol Law Enforcement will get the most, with average 20% raises, while correctional officers will get an average 15% raise and probation and parole officers will get an average 10% raise. All local law enforcement will receive a one-time $1,750 bonus.

“Backing our law enforcement means more than saying thank you,” Rep. Brenden Jones , R-Columbus, said. “It means making sure the people who protect our communities, patrol our roads, investigate crimes and keep order in our prisons know that North Carolina stands with them.”

State employees will get an across-the-board 3% raise, plus a $1,000 or $1,750 bonus depending on their income. Meanwhile, retirees get a one-time 2.5% cost of living supplement payment.

North Carolina State Employees Association Executive Director Ardis Watkins said the raise doesn’t even keep up with inflation, much less make up for a year without a raise.

“If N.C. is being run like a business, it is a business in terrible financial shape,” Watkins said in a statement. “Cutting the workforce, shutting workers out from any raise only to follow it with peanuts. This is what a business does when it’s in trouble.”

Hall said the House would have liked to give retirees more, but they had to compromise.

“COLA just costs a lot of money, because of just the huge sum that the state’s paying out to its retirees,” he said. “I think it makes sense to do that at some point.”

Finally, the budget cuts hundreds of vacant positions in the Department of Adult Corrections, which has experienced widespread staffing shortages. The department will have to cut up to half of its vacant positions, excluding healthcare-related roles. These cuts won’t impact anyone’s employment, but they will limit the number of people the department can hire in the future.

Helene

North Carolina has caught up with the federal government on Tropical Storm Helene recovery funding, Hall told reporters.

Tropical Storm Helene hit North Carolina in September 2024, lawmakers have passed a series of recovery packages totalling over $2.1 billion. They’ve been hesitant to risk granting money that could eventually be provided by the federal government instead, but the federal government has moved slowly.

So, they tend to wait for the federal government to take action, then respond in turn. After this budget’s investment, North Carolina has caught up with the federal government on Helene recovery funding, Hall told reporters.

The state budget returns $151 million in previously appropriated but unused funds to the state Helene fund, and also appropriates $706 million in new funding for various needs.

A majority of the funding, $450 million, is required state match funding to draw down federal aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for public assistance, hazard mitigation and US Army Corps of Engineers help.

The state dedicates $30 million for continued private road and bridge repairs, while implementing policy to streamline design and engineering processes for those projects.

Local governments, and specifically volunteer fire departments, will be able to apply for grants to get part of a $65 million pot of money for infrastructure needs ineligible for FEMA relief. Madison County is singled out for local government help, and will get $27 million for infrastructure needs. The local government cashflow loan program is also replenished to the tune of $20 million.

Housing is an ongoing project in Western North Carolina. The budget dedicates $40 million to a temporary relocation assistance program for certain people to use while waiting for a long-term solution. It also grants $35 million to active disaster volunteer groups repairing and rebuilding homes.

Other Helene recovery money will go toward a dam safety grant program, landslide mapping efforts, tourism development and efforts to reduce wildfire risk.

It may not be the end of Helene funding.

Hall said after recent talks with US Rep. Tim Moore and US Sens. Ted Budd and Thom Tillis , he’s confident that North Carolina will soon receive “a large, large amount of funds down to continue on with Helene relief.”

Medicaid, SNAP and healthcare

After federal cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, the state has to fill the gap.

Earlier this year, lawmakers fully funded the Medicaid rebase, or the amount of money required to continue funding current recipients. They did so reluctantly.

In a series of legislative meetings, they expressed concern about skyrocketing costs, particularly for applied behavioral analysis therapy, a treatment for patients with autism.

They discussed ways to reduce waste, fraud and abuse within the program. Now, the budget includes money to strengthen oversight and use enhanced data analytics technology to root out waste. It also funds continued Medicaid expansion.

According to Rep. Tim Reeder , R-Pitt, the budget funds 32 positions and allocates $15 million to help take on the additional work of implementing Medicaid work requirements and eligibility redeterminations.

The budget maintains Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding after the federal government changed the amount of administrative costs states are required to pay. There’s funding to improve county SNAP operations through extra Department of Health and Human Services support positions and technology enhancements.

Additionally, the state will provide $5 million in matching funds to draw down $60 million in federal funding for SUN Bucks, a summer food assistance program for students.

In other healthcare news, the budget increases childcare subsidy rates and creates a statewide rate floor using $100 million of federal grant money.

Also, A newly established Child Welfare Escalation Team will support county Department of Social Service officers, provide more reviews of abuse and neglect reports and expand training for employees to better identify and respond to abuse and neglect.

Education

Nearly half of all budget spending is dedicated to education, including public schools, community colleges and the University of North Carolina’s various campuses and programs.

There are also quite a few policy changes.

The budget establishes a pilot program to reduce chronic absenteeism through early intervention in several counties, repeals TeachNC and changes the formula the State Board of Education uses to allocate funds for limited English proficiency students to include all English learners, not just those under a certain proficiency level.

It expands an early literacy screener, which identifies students who may need extra reading support, from just grades K-3 to grades 4 and 5 and dedicates $13.8 million for middle school literacy professional development.

“We are in this reading crisis,” said Rep.Tricia Cotham , R-Mecklenburg. “It's at every level. It starts very young, but we can't give up on our kids.”

Mathematics remains a legislative focus, with money set aside for a universal math screener at low-performing schools, training for middle school math teachers, development of a standard curriculum for K-8 students and participation in a program designed to increase the number of college-ready high schoolers using a Khan Academy artificial intelligence tutoring program.

In the budget, lawmakers say they’ve identified $35.7 million in savings from students enrolled in private schools using Opportunity Scholarship funds in the past two academic years.

Since the state does not have to pay for their public education, and per-pupil funding tends to be greater than an Opportunity Scholarship award, there may be some savings, depending on tuition and household income.

Those identified savings will be reinvested into math curriculum, literacy professional development and bonuses for school nutrition and custodial staff.

Justice and public safety

In September 2025, lawmakers passed Iryna’s Law, a wide-ranging criminal law bill in response to the fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte’s public transit system.

It included various reforms requiring more work for judicial officers. The budget adds funding for 10 new criminal attorneys to address the higher caseload, as well as for 18 assistant district attorneys.

The bill also provides $30 million for school safety grants. It funds 24 additional State Bureau of Investigation positions to address drug crimes, violations of vapor product laws and other issues.

Under the budget, the Department of Transportation and State Bureau of Investigation could use automatic license plate readers.

Children’s hospital and NC Innovation

One sticking point of budget talks was whether to continue funding a new children’s hospital in the Triangle.

Berger said legislative leaders agreed to fund the project in 2023, and needed to finish the job, while Hall wasn’t convinced the need for another Triangle hospital justified the state’s investment.

Berger won’t get as much as he wanted, but the budget does include $208.5 million to help build the behavioral health hospital. Hall said he’s still unsure whether the project is viable.

Another area of disagreement was over NC Innovation, a nonprofit that provides grants to university researchers to commercialize their work. While lawmakers originally gave NC Innovation $500 million in the 2023 budget, Hall and Berger disagreed over whether to give the program more money or claw it back.

In the end, they settled on taking back the $500 million for other purposes.

“Ultimately we didn't use the capital from that in this budget, and so it's just sort of left on the table for future legislatures to deal with,” Hall said.

Other budget loose ends

The State Board of Elections got a few wins in the final budget.

Lawmakers provided $15 million toward the total overhaul of the State Election Information Management System, (SEIMS), a longstanding priority for the agency. They gave the first $15 million toward the $60 million project in one of last year’s mini-budgets.

There’s enough agency funding to pay for about 14 new employees, too.

Visitors to coastal North Carolina may soon encounter tolls when they take ferries. The budget requires the Department of Transportation to establish tolls for all ferries. Local residents would be able to buy yearly commuter passes for $150.

The state will invest $133.9 million into the JetZero economic development project at Piedmont Triad International Airport.

The Division of Motor Vehicles will see a few changes. They’ll develop an electronic vehicle registration system to eventually eliminate the need for physical registration cards or renewal stickers. Driver license examiners’ starting salaries will increase, four new drivers’ license offices will open and 30 additional oversight positions will become available.

Throughout a lengthy debate in the House, Democrats asked whether the year-long wait was worth it.

For Rep. Terry Brown , D-Mecklenburg, the answer is a resounding no.

While lawmakers stalled, life went on for North Carolinians facing rising costs, Democrats said. Teachers, law enforcement and public employees went without raises, and will not get them retroactively.

“This budget is a year late and an investment short,” he said.

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

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Virginia braces for dangerous heat wave ahead of Fourth of July weekend

by Markus Schmidt, Virginia Mercury July 2, 2026

Gov. Abigail Spanberger on Wednesday urged Virginians to prepare for dangerous heat and humidity expected to blanket much of the commonwealth through the Fourth of July weekend, with forecasters warning heat index values could reach as high as 115 degrees in some areas.

The National Weather Service said Virginia is expected to face a prolonged heat wave from Wednesday through Sunday, with the worst conditions likely from Thursday through Saturday. Temperatures across much of the state are expected to climb into the upper 90s and low 100s, combined with heavy humidity.

“As Virginia expects record-breaking high temperatures leading up to and throughout the holiday weekend, the safety of all our neighbors is my highest priority,” Spanberger said in a statement Wednesday morning. “I am asking Virginians to do all you can to keep yourself and your loved ones safe. Stay hydrated, stay cool, and check on your neighbors.”

State officials urged residents to avoid strenuous outdoor activities during the hottest hours of the day, drink water regularly and spend time in air-conditioned spaces whenever possible.

Officials also warned residents to never leave children or pets inside vehicles, where temperatures can rise rapidly even within minutes.

Virginians seeking relief from the heat can use the Virginia Department of Health’s online cooling center locator to find nearby public facilities.

The heat wave arrives as large parts of Virginia are already dealing with worsening drought conditions and declining river levels after months of unusually dry weather.

Beginning Wednesday, Richmond and neighboring localities including Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico and Powhatan counties implemented voluntary water-conservation measures tied to falling flows along the James River basin.

Under the region’s James River Regional Flow Management Plan, voluntary conservation measures begin when average river flows fall to 1,700 cubic feet per second for 14 straight days.

Regional officials asked residents to voluntarily reduce lawn watering and other non-essential water use while utilities continue to monitor river conditions.

Odd-numbered addresses are asked to water lawns only on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, while even-numbered addresses are asked to water on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.

Richmond officials said regional water systems remain capable of meeting drinking water and emergency needs, but warned that continued dry weather west of the city has reduced river flows throughout the watershed.

Local officials emphasized that the current conservation measures remain voluntary.

The dry conditions extend well beyond Central Virginia.

Last month, Spanberger and the Virginia Drought Monitoring Task Force urged Virginians across the state to voluntarily conserve water, warning Virginia was experiencing its driest stretch since 1941. State officials said precipitation totals were running about eight inches below average across much of the commonwealth.

Other localities have also warned residents about worsening drought conditions and the possibility of future restrictions.

Officials in New Kent County recently cautioned that prolonged heat and dry weather can place additional strain on water systems and could eventually require stronger conservation measures if conditions continue deteriorating.

The combination of prolonged heat and drought has heightened concerns about public health, agriculture and wildfire risks heading into one of the busiest travel weekends of the summer.

Virginia has experienced several major droughts and heat waves over the past century.

The drought of 1930 devastated farms across Virginia during the Dust Bowl era and caused agricultural losses later estimated at nearly $1 billion in today’s dollars.

Six years later, Richmond recorded 103 degrees on June 30, 1936 — still among the hottest temperatures ever officially documented in the city.

Virginia also endured severe heat and drought during the summer of 1980, when a nationwide heat wave contributed to widespread crop damage and thousands of heat-related deaths across the country.

Another major heat wave struck Virginia in 2024, when heat index values exceeded 105 degrees in parts of Central Virginia and promoted widespread heat warnings.

Federal climate experts have warned that extreme heat events are expected to become more frequent and intense as average temperatures continue rising.

State health officials this week encouraged residents to wear lightweight clothing, use sunscreen, avoid heavy outdoor exertion during peak afternoon heat and regularly check on elderly neighbors and vulnerable family members.

Officials also urged Virginians to monitor local weather forecasts and use the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s HeatRisk tool to track heat dangers by zip code.

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Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.

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Louisiana Supreme Court frees death row prisoner, calling evidence against him ‘scientifically indefensible’

by Richard A. Webster, Verite News New Orleans June 29, 2026

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network_in partnership with Verite News._ Sign up for Dispatches_to get stories like this one as soon as they are published._

Former Louisiana death row inmate Jimmie “Chris” Duncan is officially a free man following a unanimous ruling Monday by the Louisiana Supreme Court. In the opinion, justices upheld a lower court’s decision to toss out Duncan’s 1998 conviction for killing his former girlfriend’s toddler, Haley Oliveaux, citing flawed forensics practices used to convict him.

Justice Cade R. Cole wrote on behalf of the seven-member court that new evidence presented by Duncan’s legal team left no doubt that his conviction should be overturned.

“The post-conviction evidence undermined the core factual premises on which the state depended,” Cole wrote in the official opinion.

Two other justices, including Chief Justice John Weimer, issued opinions concurring with Cole.

“I am flooded with relief,” said Chris Fabricant, a member of Duncan’s legal team and director of strategic litigation with the Innocence Project in New York, in an interview. “It would have been a moral outrage for the conviction to be reinstated.”

The court’s ruling came after a 2025 Verite News and ProPublica investigation examined the reliability of the key forensic evidence used to convict Duncan, now 57. At the time, he faced the possibility of being put to death as Gov. Jeff Landry, a staunch death penalty advocate, made moves to expedite executions after a 15-year pause.

Duncan’s conviction was based largely on now-discredited bite mark evidence presented by forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Steven Hayne. Their analysis, which was critical to Ouachita Parish prosecutors securing Duncan’s conviction, claimed to match marks on Haley’s body to Duncan’s teeth.

But experts have since deemed such evidence, fairly common at the time of Duncan’s 1998 trial, to be junk science. Meanwhile, the longtime partnership between West and Hayne has come under scrutiny from civil rights attorneys, forensic experts and the courts over concerns about the validity of their techniques.

In the 28 years since Duncan’s trial, nine other prisoners have been set free after being convicted in part on inaccurate evidence given by West and Hayne. Three of those men were on death row. Duncan was the last person awaiting an execution based on the pair’s work.

In his opinion, Cole reexamined the use of supposed bite marks, which were the only physical evidence tying Duncan to the alleged crime. Cole pointed to a video of West’s 1993 examination of Haley, which was not shown to jurors at trial. In that recording, West can be seen taking a mold of Duncan’s teeth and grinding it into and across the girl’s body, seemingly creating bite marks where none previously existed. Referencing previous testimony from a defense expert, Cole wrote that “it was ‘scientifically indefensible’ to identify those marks as having been made by Duncan, and that the angles shown in the West Video were physically impossible for a human bite.”

West has previously said he was simply using what he called a “direct comparison” technique — in which he presses a mold of a person’s teeth directly onto the location of suspected bite marks.

Weimer wrote in a concurrence that the bite mark evidence used to prosecute Duncan was similar to “trial by water” tests used by witch-hunters in the 17th century, in which suspected witches were bound with rope and lowered into a body of water. If they floated, they were considered guilty of witchcraft, while those who “passed” the test by sinking often drowned.

“We now look back at those practices as asinine and absurd, since those who fell victim to those practices often did not survive, regardless of whether they were found guilty or innocent,” Weimer wrote. “The bite mark evidence and the sexual abuse evidence used in the trial against the accused has proven to be similarly specious.”

Duncan’s prosecution “demonstrates we cannot be too careful in determining whether the death penalty should be implemented in cases such as this case because of the finality of the sentence and the impossibility of rectification,” Weimer wrote.“Such an irreversible and tragic consequence is inimical and deleterious to our system of justice if carried out based on evidence that is devoid of legitimacy.”

'This should be the end of this case'

Police arrested Duncan on Dec. 18, 1993. He was babysitting Haley that day in the home he shared with the girl’s mother in West Monroe. Duncan told law enforcement he had put the child in the bath, then went downstairs to wash dishes. When he heard a noise coming from the bathroom, he rushed upstairs to check on her and found Haley floating face down in the water. She was pronounced dead a few hours later.

Duncan was initially booked for negligent homicide, but prosecutors upped the charge to first-degree murder after Hayne and West conducted Haley’s medical exam and claimed they discovered evidence, including the purported bite marks, that she had been sexually assaulted and intentionally drowned. Following two weeks of testimony during the trial in 1998, the jury found Duncan guilty and sentenced him to death.

While Duncan awaited an execution date, his new team of postconviction attorneys uncovered evidence that pointed to his innocence, including an expert witness who said that the child’s death was not a homicide but the result of an accidental drowning. In addition, investigators working for Duncan’s legal team interviewed a jailhouse informant who recanted his earlier trial testimony that Duncan had confessed to the crime.

Duncan’s conviction was overturned in April of last year by former Ouachita Parish Judge Alvin Sharp. He was let out of prison on bail in December, but he continued to await a final decision on his case after prosecutors appealed Sharp’s ruling.

Steve Tew, district attorney for Ouachita and Morehouse parishes, has never wavered in his insistence that Duncan was guilty of murder and that he should be put to death. His office appealed Sharp’s decision to the state Supreme Court.

During oral arguments in April, Tew said that since Duncan was the only person with Haley at the time of her death, his guilt could not be debated. “We don’t need the bite mark evidence to put Mr. Duncan in the apartment alone with this child,” Tew said.

Haley’s mother, Allison Layton Statham, has publicly supported Duncan’s release from prison and the overturning of his conviction; so have family members of Haley’s father, Lloyd Donald Oliveaux, who died in 1996. They have excoriated the state’s tactics, claiming they repeatedly asked for a meeting with prosecutors to express their concerns, but never received a response.

Tew, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, said at the April hearing that should the Supreme Court refuse to reinstate Duncan’s conviction, he would retry him, though he did not say what charge he might pursue.

When asked about the prospect of Duncan being retried for murder, Fabricant, the Innocence Project attorney, said, “If there is any sense of fairness and justice left, this should be the end of this case.”

In addition to the Innocence Project, Duncan’s legal team includes the Mwalimu Center for Justice in New Orleans and the Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner law firm in Atlanta.

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

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Their town burned to the ground. Should they get a pass from California’s new housing laws?

By Ben Christopher, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Altadena may get a reprieve from two of California’s marquee housing laws after a bill to temporarily exempt the fire-torn community sailed through back-to-back Assembly hearings on Wednesday.

The two laws being put on hold — Senate Bill 9 from 2021 and Senate Bill 1123 from 2024 — legalize the construction of up to 10 small houses on plots otherwise reserved for single-family homes and make it easier to split land into smaller parcels which can be sold off individually.

Senate Bill 1090 by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, a Democrat whose district includes Altadena, would exempt the unincorporated town’s single zip code from the two laws through 2030.

That’s meant to give Eaton Fire survivors “the time they need to rebuild their community without the overpowering influence of predatory developers looking to take advantage of the devastation and suffering,” Pérez said at a press conference on Wednesday morning.

Altadena “shouldn't be a playground for people who want a return on investment,” added the town’s Assemblymember John Harabedian, a fellow Democrat. The bill is “about protecting Altadena and keeping Altadena Altadena.”

With the rebuilding effort in Altadena progressing slowly, mired by sluggish insurance payouts, pending litigation and escalating construction costs, only a few dozen permits have been filed that make use of these state laws, either by professional property developers or individual homeowners.

Some pro-housing advocates and even some Altadena residents worry that the new bill, which supporters frame as a curb on out-of-town investors, could inadvertently make it harder for some fire survivors to rebuild and remain.

The stated purpose of the legislation is “to stop greedy developers from taking advantage of Altadenans, which, of course, we all agree with,” said Caroline Paules, a town resident and founder of a small home construction company, speaking before the Assembly’s housing committee. “I believe what it actually does is prevent Altadenans from housing themselves — and also Altadenans from helping to house each other.”

Preventing speculators from profiting from the Los Angeles rebuild without also harming homeowners is a tough balance to strike. Lawmakers are also considering a bill to give the California Coastal Commission more authority over reconstruction projects pursued by anyone who purchased a property after a future disaster. That’s meant to check investor-led redevelopment. It could also make it more difficult for survivors to sell their properties should they decide or be forced by necessity not to rebuild.

SB 1090 received unanimous support from both the Assembly housing and local government committees, even if some “Yes In My Backyard”-aligned members expressed some apparent discomfort.

The debate over the legislation pits California’s longstanding efforts to turbocharge housing construction against the interests of many Altadenans who want to rebuild the community as it was. It also raises questions about who and what gets prioritized when a community is rebuilt after a natural disaster in California.

“I don’t think it’s NIMBYism and I don't think it's unreasonable for us to say, ‘We’re still in a state of emergency. Let us recover,’” said Nic Arnzen, chair of Altadena’s Town Council and a supporter of Pérez’s bill.

Arguments like these are a fixture of California housing debates. Locals often object to new, denser development, or to the policies promoting it, on the grounds that while more homes may be needed statewide, the conditions specific to a particular town or neighborhood — whether it’s heightened wildfire risk, historic significance, the physical scale or demographic make-up  — argue that it shouldn’t be built here. But Arnzen and other supporters of SB 1090 say that the temporary nature of the bill and Altadena’s extraordinarily unusual circumstances make this a legitimately special case.

The two housing laws at issue were intended to gradually add density to urban areas as existing homes are periodically sold and as rare vacant parcels are developed, he said. They were “never meant to apply to towns that were two-thirds destroyed.”

Before the fire, 95% of all the houses in parts of Altadena touched by fire were single-family homes, according to a UCLA analysis.

Forcing the state laws upon the burn area would “completely reshape the character of the neighborhood,” said Arnzen.

A lot split as a lifeline

Though Pérez’s bill is written to help Altadenans rebuild on their terms, Andrew Post worries it might prevent his parents from rebuilding at all.

Post’s parents, retired physicists Jonathan and Christine, lost their house on North Marengo Avenue. They were determined to rebuild from the start, over their son’s initial objections. But an as-yet uncertain insurance payout, the couple’s modest fixed incomes and uncertain construction costs make for a tight reconstruction budget.

Unexpected construction delays or a denied insurance claim and “they could be dead broke and have an unfinished house,” said Post. Even if construction goes as planned, the couple will have little left to live off of.

In early June the family filed paperwork with the county to see if they could split the parcel, as allowed under the law.

The typical Altadena homeowner hoping to rebuild is short $550,000 after accounting for past and expected insurance payouts, according to a survey by the nonprofit Department of Angels. Splitting up a lot and selling a chunk to a developer, as SB 9 allows, could help many homeowners close that gap, said Azeen Khanmalek, director of the pro-housing advocacy group Abundant Housing LA.

These density-boosting state laws should be seen as “potential tools and pathways to help some homeowners come back and rebuild, rather than as threats,” he said.

Post, who grew up in Altadena, said he’s sympathetic to concerns about density, historic preservation, parking and traffic — to a point.

Altadena prides itself as a historic refuge of relative affordability, diversity and tolerance in Los Angeles County. The best way to preserve that legacy is to enable more multiplexes and small starter homes, said Post.

“The character of the neighborhood is, I think, better preserved by keeping it affordable rather than by keeping the white picket fence architecture,” he said.

“I am very focused on the question of whether my parents ever live in Altadena again,” he added. “It’s hard for me to prioritize a preference for the neighborhood character over an ability to be part of that character.”

SB 9 in Altadena

Of the 5,645 parcels with damaged or destroyed homes in Altadena, 52 have active permits that invoke SB 9, according to a data dashboard commissioned by the town council. Of those, 14 are under construction and two are complete.

That relatively low number may partly reflect the typical geometry of Altadena parcels, said Devang Shah, a principal with Genesis Builders, which is building single-family homes for fire survivors.

“They’re narrow and deep,” he said, which makes it hard to pack in additional units or dice them up for sale.

Even so, the handful of submitted plans — and renderings depicting a type of multifamily dwellings largely alien to pre-fire Altadena — have provided ample fodder for some locals eager to protest denser development and the perceived threat posed by investors and developers capitalizing off the community’s tragedy.

John Chan, a Los Angeles architect who has pushed for redeveloping Altadena to be more pedestrian-oriented and who supports the use of density-boosting state laws, said a handful of poorly designed SB 9 projects — “sardine cans for rent extraction,” he said — have soured many locals on the possible upsides of density.

“It’s creating a backlash to SB 9 that I think is really going to hurt Altadena,” he said.

“Altadena not for sale”

In both Altadena and the Palisades that backlash began brewing almost as soon as the flames were extinguished.

In the summer of 2025, long before hinting at any aspirations for higher office, former reality TV star Spencer Pratt began posting on social media assailing SB 9 and “opportunistic developers” hoping to make use of the law to rebuild in the Palisades. Responding to that pressure, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued dueling executive orders to nullify the law in areas that fall within state-designated “very high” wildfire hazard severity zones inside Los Angeles county.

Newsom’s order only covered a small portion of Altadena. Even after the state expanded its fire severity maps, much of the Eaton Fire burn area did not fall into the “very high” category. The order therefore did little to quell anxieties among the residents who saw denser redevelopment not as an opportunity for struggling homeowners, but as a boon to out-of-town developers and speculators.

Pérez was hoping to address those concerns when she introduced an earlier version of SB 1090 this spring which would have banned large residential investors from making unsolicited offers to purchase parcels in the burn area. That hyperlocal focus also tapped into a growing national interest in preventing investors from purchasing single-family homes, a remarkably bipartisan cause championed by both Newsom and President Donald Trump.

The bill sailed through the California Senate on partisan lines.

In mid-June, Perez rewrote the bill to focus on the state density laws. Her office said the bill’s new focus reflects the more pressing concerns of many Altadenans.

“What I am not going to allow is for my community to be treated differently than the Palisades or than Malibu,” Pérez said on Wednesday.

Arnzen, for one, said he’s less concerned about existing homeowners selling to land speculators.

“I don't fault people for selling to the highest bidder,” he said. “If I was selling my property, would I have the wherewithal to make sure it goes into the right hands? I don’t know.”

Instead, he wants to see temporary limits on what those new buyers can do with the property once they have it.

Arnzen said he moved to Altadena two decades ago because he wanted his young kids to grow up “in a small town, not in a cookie cutter subdivision, not in a city.”

After losing their home to the fire, he and his husband are now in the process of relocating to an accessory dwelling unit on their property, which they’ll live in while they rebuild. When construction wraps up, the two plan to move into the new house and rent out the smaller one “to push back on the housing crisis in the state,” he said. “Because I think we should all do our part.”

Jeremia Kimelman contributed the data visualization to this story.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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Martin County residents keep pressing state officials for funding to reopen hospital

by Jaymie Baxley, North Carolina Health News June 29, 2026

Key takeaways:

• Martin County was already among North Carolina's most economically distressed communities before Martin General closed in 2023. The shutdown only exacerbated economic issues.
• ECU Health has proposed converting Martin General into a Rural Emergency Hospital under a federal designation. It would be the first hospital to reopen under the rubric.
• To reopen would require about $220 million in state appropriations. It's unknown what the status of the proposal is in Republican lawmakers’ negotiations.

By Jaymie Baxley

When Martin General Hospital closed its doors in 2023 after 73 years of service, residents of Martin County in eastern North Carolina were left without a local emergency department. At the time the hope was to get the facility reopened quickly with new management.

Three years later, residents still have to travel across county lines to access life-saving care.

Given those circumstances, it was no surprise that a plan proposed by ECU Health to reopen the hospital came up repeatedly when state officials visited Williamston, the county’s seat of government, last week.

Devdutta Sangvai, head of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, and Lee Lilley, a Martin County native who leads the state’s Department of Commerce, were in town as part of a “listening tour” organized by Gov. Josh Stein’s office.

The event, held in a room typically used for school board meetings at Martin Innovative Early College, offered an “opportunity to understand the impact and intersection of community and health care,” according to Sangvai.

“As I think about the challenges throughout the state, Martin County is really the exemplar of a community that really wants to solve its health care challenges,” he said. “We know there have been really acute challenges that you've had to face, in particular with the hospital, but the one thing I've seen here is a consistent and persistent interest in ensuring that there's adequate health care resources in Martin County.”

A listening session organized by Gov. Josh Stein’s office drew dozens of concerned citizens to Martin Innovative Early College in Williamston.

Nearly 50 concerned citizens from Martin and surrounding counties turned out for the hourlong session. More than a dozen attendees shared their thoughts on issues ranging from food insecurity to wastewater infrastructure, but one topic bubbled up more than any other: the fate of Martin General.

Tom Franklin, a retired cardiovascular physiologist and former health system administrator who has lived in Martin County for seven years, recalled a recent medical scare involving his wife. He told the officials that her nearest option for care was an emergency department half an hour away in Bertie County.

“We need a lot of help,” Franklin said of the situation. “It just doesn't make any sense at all that our EMS folks have to carry emergency patients to adjacent counties, and if we have to be hospitalized, we have to go to adjacent counties too.”

A path forward?

ECU Health, the state-affiliated hospital system based in nearby Greenville, has spent the past year promoting a plan to revive Martin General as North Carolina's first Rural Emergency Hospital — a federal designation launched in 2023 as a lifeline for struggling hospitals in rural communities.

Facilities that convert to Rural Emergency Hospitals are required to provide 24/7 emergency care and outpatient services, but they are prohibited from offering inpatient services and must have agreements in place with area trauma centers to accept patients once they’ve stabilized. In exchange, they receive a 5 percent boost to Medicare payments for covered outpatient services, plus monthly payments of about $285,625 from the federal government.

ECU Health has put forward a plan to reopen Martin General as a Rural Emergency Hospital.

While 50 hospitals across the country have converted, all of those facilities were still operational when they made the switch. None of the hospitals are in North Carolina, which has the second largest rural population in the country, next to Texas, and where 10 rural hospitals (and two non-rural hospitals) have closed since 2005.

Under ECU Health’s plan, Martin General would become the first shuttered hospital in the nation to reopen as a Rural Emergency Hospital.

The proposal, unveiled to the Martin County Board of Commissioners in May 2025, asks state lawmakers to appropriate $220 million toward the project. About $70 million would be used to rebuild the emergency hospital on Martin General's old campus in Williamston, with the rest funding a new inpatient bed tower at ECU Beaufort Hospital in neighboring Beaufort County.

That funding request has been tied up for months amid prolonged negotiations in Raleigh over the state budget in an environment of reduced federal receipts. The project remains in limbo.

Roy Lilley, uncle of Lee Lilley, is the treasurer for Advancing Community Health Together, a nonprofit formed in 2024 to advocate for the hospital's return. During the session, he said his organization has raised $89,000 through two fundraisers and secured a $50,000 grant from the North Carolina Community Foundation.

“We are trying to help ourselves, but we need additional assistance from the General Assembly to advance our goals,” Roy Lilley said, adding that he hopes his nephew and Sangvai will “continue to work with the General Assembly to fund the plan put forth by ECU Health.”

Roy Lilley of the nonprofit Advancing Community Health Together.

Lee Lilley said that he, Sangvai and Stein have “encouraged” lawmakers to approve the appropriation, and they’re “optimistic that there will be funding” in the budget to relaunch emergency department services in Martin County. At the same time, he acknowledged that getting the money is only the first step.

“We stand ready to work with this community on all the work that would be needed to reopen a hospital, as well as to look at the broader health care ecosystem of this area,” he said. “It's not just the emergency room that's critical. The wraparound services and the entirety of the health care ecosystem are [also] important to this community, this community's health and well-being and, from my perspective, the community's economic viability going forward.”

NC DHHS Sec. Devdutta Sangvai speaks during a listening session in Williamston on June 25, 2026.

Sangvai, who noted that he was a hospital CEO before taking the reins at NC DHHS, said his department would move quickly on construction and licensing matters if the funding comes through.

“We'll be committed to move those things as fast as possible through the department so we don't become something that's slowing things down,” he said, adding that the community has a “quality partner” in ECU Health.

“I think we have to really be thankful and not overlook the reality that, when this thing gets to go — and I'm going to continue to remain optimistic about that — you have a partner who really understands what they're doing and isn't here to find a way to make a dollar off of Martin County.”

The cost of closure

By most measures, there aren't that many dollars to be made in Martin County.

The county, which has a population of fewer than 22,000, is categorized by the N.C. Department of Commerce as one of the most economically distressed counties in the state. About 20 percent of its residents live in poverty and about 38 percent receive care through Medicaid.

Martin General's closure only compounded those challenges.

Opened in 1950, Martin General thrived for decades as Martin County's only hospital. After outgrowing its original two-story building in downtown Williamston, the facility moved in 1973 to a 22-acre campus on nearby South McCaskey Road.

As Martin County's population declined beginning in the 1990s, the hospital's revenues fell with it. Former operator Quorum Health attempted to cut costs by discontinuing maternity services in 2019 and shuttering the intensive care unit in 2021.

Those changes weren’t enough to keep Martin General afloat. Quorum closed the 43-bed hospital’s doors in August 2023, citing “financial challenges related to declining population and utilization trends.”

A banner that has been posted at the entrance of Martin General since August 2023.

During a conference organized by the NC Rural Center in April, Martin County Manager Dexter Batts said the closure “had a huge impact from an economic development standpoint.” He estimated that the loss of hospital-related labor income alone cost the county $12 million, with total economic activity losses reaching $33.1 million.

That’s in line with findings from the UNC Chapel Hill Sheps Center for Health Services Research showing that when rural hospitals close the local labor force decreases, along with the local population.

Meanwhile, Martin County's annual contribution to emergency medical services swelled from $550,000 to $1.4 million as ambulances were forced to make longer runs to neighboring counties — a significant burden for a community with a budget of less than $46 million.

“Our budget is so limited that we can barely scrape by in a normal year,” Batts said.

Gov. Stein did not attend last week’s public listening session, but he did participate in a roundtable discussion with local leaders before the event. He later told reporters that the state is “working and having conversations with other important players to revive the hospital.”

Sangvai closed out the session with a pledge to residents.

“We're going to do everything we can to help you find a way to get the hospital up and running again,” he said.

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

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On Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, a community network steps up to increase Vietnamese language access to healthcare

by Anna Hu, Mississippi Today June 26, 2026

BILOXI — As a young teen in 1960s Saigon, Vietnam, Coi Nguyen learned English by listening to tape recorders and comparing her speech to the cassette's. When her friends teased that there was no one to practice with, she responded, “I talk to the machine.”

Now, Nguyen lives on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, where she volunteers for the local Vietnamese community as a translator and interpreter at doctor’s appointments and legal hearings. Sometimes, Nguyen said, people will give her a tip or take her out to a meal. But for her, the work is not for the money. It’s because of her connection with a community she’s lived in for the past two decades.

“Everybody knows me as a friend, a family,” she said.

The Coast is home to half the state's 9,000 Vietnamese individuals, who represent one of the largest Asian diasporas in Mississippi. Despite the size of the community, local healthcare workers say there are only a handful of Vietnamese-speaking medical providers in the area, creating challenges for those with limited English proficiency. The persistent language barrier has pushed a network of Vietnamese speakers and volunteers to take matters into their own hands, carving out time to help neighbors navigate the healthcare system.

Nguyen, who is semi-retired, describes herself as an easy-going person with the time to help anyone, especially if they’re a good cook. Working in her apartment kitchen under the guiding eye of a lucky cat figurine, she makes calls and scans documents for her neighbors. She records every appointment in her handmade “little book,” which is filled with names, times and addresses scrawled in both English and Vietnamese.

Her roster includes those who would otherwise have put off care and some who most potential volunteers didn’t have the patience for. She remembers one woman in particular whose personality neighbors found hard to handle, and who later needed psychiatric care.

“I feel like, if I don't drive her, who will? And if I don’t help her, who help?” she said. “It takes me a little more time, but that's okay.”

A need for better language access

In the 1970s, large numbers of Vietnamese refugees started arriving in New Orleans, fleeing the fall of Saigon and the conclusion of the Vietnam War. They then gravitated toward Biloxi for work in the seafood industry.

By the 2000s, roughly 5,000 Vietnamese people lived in Mississippi, one of the largest such communities in the Deep South, according to data from the U.S. Census.

Among those who settled in Biloxi were the parents of Emma To, who co-created the Gulf Coast Vietnamese Narratives museum exhibition to honor Vietnamese contributions to coastal history.

Emma To sits on her mother’s lap in their Bayou Auguste Housing Projects home, formerly known as Homes for African Americans. After To’s mother started working for the casino industry, they no longer qualified for public housing and moved into a rental home.

To’s family lived in public housing surrounded by Vietnamese neighbors. Like many Vietnamese children in the area, she was the bridge between her family and their English-speaking surroundings.

“When I was growing up, I was the interpreter,” she said. “I interpreted for my parents. If they had surgery or whatever, I skipped school and went to surgery with them.”

It was never a comfortable experience, she said, because relaying medical jargon was difficult as a child. Neither To nor her parents knew specialized medical terms in Vietnamese.

The barriers in language access to healthcare that To experienced growing up remain present on the Coast today.

The Singing River Health System, a major regional provider, saw over 700 Vietnamese patients in the past year, of whom over 60% likely needed interpretation or translation services, a hospital spokesperson said.

Hospitals that receive federal funding are required by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to offer “meaningful access” to language assistance, although there is no government enforcement of the policy. Many have third-party services, such as LanguageLine Solutions, to connect healthcare providers with virtual interpreters.

However, many Vietnamese-speaking patients prefer to have an in-person interpreter, according to Cynthia Le, a bilingual nurse practitioner at the Singing River Health Medical Clinic in downtown Biloxi. She said she is one of the handful of Vietnamese-speaking healthcare professionals who grew up on the Coast and stayed to serve her community. She uses her Vietnamese daily, and patients are often referred to her because she is fluent in their native tongue.

“I still have a good bit of Vietnamese patients that don't have the family support or can't speak the English language at all,” she said. “It's just easier for them to speak directly (to me) than go through another person to translate.”

The Singing River Medical Clinic in downtown Biloxi has a Vietnamese speaking nurse practitioner and a Vietnamese speaking doctor. June 19, 2026.

In her two decades of practice, Le found that speaking to patients in Vietnamese allows them to have more agency in their own care because they understand why their medications are important and are more likely to accept preventive care, such as cancer screenings.

“I have a lot of patients that don't want to go do their colonoscopy because they don't have anybody (who speaks Vietnamese) to take them,” she said.

A network of volunteers and grassroots organizations step up to fill gaps

Many children, young and adult, accompany their parents to medical appointments as interpreters, multiple healthcare providers said. But as younger generations start their careers and have their own families, some, including Le, have seen the number of family interpreters on the Coast drop.

To meet the need for in-person interpretation, volunteers and community health workers step in.

Dat Thanh Phung, Nguyen’s grand-nephew, immigrated to Mississippi from Vietnam seven years ago and followed her into the insurance broker business. In between studying for his accounting degree and taking care of his young family, he volunteers to help his insurance clients with their doctor's visits.

“They let me know before, one week, and I will fit my schedule to them,” Phung said.

Phung is still practicing English himself, so he’ll often call clients to go over their symptoms in advance, making sure he knows how to say those symptoms in English.

“I just want to make sure that I understand 100% about the sickness and what medication they need,” he said.

For Phung, the motivation to help others stems from his own experiences stumbling through language barriers, like when he took 14 visits to the DMV to fill out permit paperwork.

He’s heard his clients talk about not wanting to go to the emergency room because they wouldn’t be able to speak to the workers. Instead, he said, they “absorb the pain.” When he helps interpret, Phung said that he can assuage some of that worry and that clients often invite him to a meal as thanks.

Nguyen spends much of her free time helping people who can’t go to the doctor on their own. She said one woman only trusts her to accompany her to physical therapy appointments, and another always asks if she can sleep over at “Ms. Coi's house.”

Over the years, she’s gotten to know the personalities of her repeat clients, whom she also sees at church, in the restaurants and local supermarkets.

“I get to the point that I know people inside out,” she said.

Organizations seek to broaden access

Outside of volunteer efforts, one of the only organizations supporting Vietnamese language access to healthcare in the Gulf Coast area is Boat People SOS. The nonprofit helps community members set up appointments, sends interpreters to doctor’s appointments and connects people with Medicare-covered transportation.

The Biloxi office of the national nonprofit organization Boat People SOS, which helps Vietnamese clients with interpretation and translation across medical, legal, immigration and daily life areas. June 19, 2026.

Nguyen worked part-time at Boat People SOS shortly after she moved to Mississippi from Canada, and got connected to other local efforts to improve healthcare access. One instance is when she was tapped by the Mississippi Department of Health in 2021 for their COVID-19 Vietnamese Task Force to lead vaccination outreach for the community.

Like many of the people she helps, Nguyen lives alone in Biloxi. Her daughter, Annie, is in nursing school and works in a hospital 90 minutes away.

Three years ago, Nguyen lost her son Peter, who was living in Canada at the time. His passing is another reason she finds fulfillment in her volunteer work.

“If I am alone and then have nothing to do, I will miss him and I cry all day, you know? But talking to people and helping them fills up my time,” she said.

Coi Nguyen holds a photo of herself and her daughter, Annie, who is in her last year of nursing school. The decision to become a nurse was influenced by her mother and her family’s dedication to helping others, Annie said. June 19, 2026.

There are limits to Nguyen’s efforts. While she has heard of others in the community who will offer rides or help with interpretation, most don’t have the dedicated time that she does or the longstanding knowledge of each person’s history. She said she worries about the people she will one day leave behind, especially those that she drives to appointments because they physically cannot drive or don’t own a vehicle.

Nguyen added that the number of Vietnamese-speaking providers and volunteers remains limited. She said she wishes for more organized financial support from the city or state to help patients access healthcare through organizations such as Boat People SOS. The low-income Vietnamese community and those who don’t speak English at all are most vulnerable, she said.

“I'm 65 years old, I cannot stay here forever,” she said. “But if I'm gone, who help them, you know?”

This story was produced as part of the AAJA VOICES fellowship program, a student journalism project of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA).

This story was produced with support from the Sarah Yelena Haselhorst Fund for Health Journalism.

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

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How a solar energy developer lobbied for and won a reduced state permit fee amidst farmer pushback

by Juan Vassallo, Investigate Midwest, Investigate Midwest February 24, 2026

NextEra Energy’s 2,000-acre solar farm under construction in northwest Oklahoma is set to become one of the state’s largest renewable energy developments. Under Oklahoma law, its construction permit carried a $2.5 million fee.

But Christopher Banks, project manager for the Skeleton Creek Energy Center, believed the company deserved a major discount.

“Although we still have questions about the necessity of a building permit for solar arrays, we are agreeable to pay a fee in this case for the sake of expediency,” Banks wrote to the Oklahoma state fire marshal, who manages the fee, in a May 22, 2025, email, obtained by Investigate Midwest through an open records request. “Skeleton Creek hereby proposes a fee of $15,000.00.”

After back-and-forth negotiations, the state attorney general’s office got involved.

In an email to NextEra’s attorneys, Alex Pedraza, an assistant attorney general, argued that other states calculate permitting fees based on either a project’s valuation or its kilowatt capacity — approaches that would have resulted in higher fees for NextEra if applied in Oklahoma.

Pedraza recommended that NextEra accept the Fire Marshal’s revised proposal of half a million dollars.

“I believe you’ll find that both these methodologies as applied to your client’s solar farm projects would result in permitting fees totaling far greater values than OSFM’s self-implemented permitting fee cap,” wrote Pedraza in an Oct. 22, 2025, email.

The talks ended in November, when NextEra agreed to pay the reduced fee of $500,000.

As electricity demand surges, driven in large part by energy-hungry artificial intelligence infrastructure, rural Oklahoma has become a battleground over land use and power. The state’s wide-open spaces and low costs have attracted a wave of renewable-energy projects and data centers, and some lawmakers, including the governor, have actively courted energy companies to tap into those opportunities.

Construction was underway in 2025 of a NextEra solar farm in Garfield County, Oklahoma. photo by Ben Felder, Investigate Midwest

But many farmers and ranchers believe these renewable energy developments are disrupting their rural communities.

Opponents often cite concerns about falling property values, environmental and fire risks, loss of farmland and a lack of transparency. Underlying those fears is a deeper frustration — that powerful out-of-state and foreign companies are rapidly reshaping rural landscapes with little benefit for the people who live there.

Signs opposing a new solar farm in Garfield County, Oklahoma on March 2, 2025. photo by Ben Felder, Investigate Midwest

Despite the pushback, NextEra Energy, a Florida-based company that is the world’s largest producer of wind and solar power, has continued its aggressive lobbying efforts, seeking to reduce its payments in state fees and suing local governments that attempt to block its projects, while also spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on campaign donations.

“It’s laughable that NextEra would request a reduction from $2.5m (as calculated by state statute) to $15k,” State Rep. Jim Shaw, a Chandler Republican who has been outspoken against the renewable energy sector, wrote in a statement to Investigate Midwest. “This speaks volumes to the disingenuous nature of ‘green energy’ companies who are looking to avoid and divest as much responsibility and obligation as possible.”

How state discretion shaped a $2.5 million permit fee

This story is the result of records requests, careful document review, and months of follow-up reporting.

A $5/month membership helps sustain this work.

Keith Bryant, the Oklahoma state fire marshal — whose office is the only state agency that regulates renewable energy projects in Oklahoma — ultimately used discretion granted under the administrative rule to reduce NextEra’s fee to $500,000. (The rule allows fees to be “waived or reduced when, in the opinion of the State Fire Marshal, the reduction of fees is in the best interest of both parties.”)

Keith Bryant

Bryant said the standard square-footage formula produces unusually high fees for large solar projects because of their footprint, even though that footprint does not necessarily reflect the project’s overall scope. The $0.20-per-square-foot rate, he noted, applies to all new construction projects, not just renewable energy facilities.

“If I was to apply the 20 cents a square foot to these facilities that are into the thousands of acres, the permit fee would be exorbitant,” Bryant told Investigate Midwest.

The Skeleton Creek project is the third solar facility in Oklahoma to have its permit fee capped at $500,000.

The other two are TwelveMile III in Johnston County, in the southern part of the state, and Huckleberry Solar in Mayes County, outside Tulsa. Both projects are developed by Texas-based Leeward Renewable Energy. The Huckleberry project has a power purchase agreement with Google to support the company’s AI data centers.

The fire marshal could soon decide on similar fees, with NextEra Energy alone planning four additional solar farms and other developers lining up projects as well.

As more renewable energy projects come to Oklahoma, lawmakers have increasingly filed bills that could further regulate the industry.

Rep. Mike Dobrinski, a Republican whose district includes NextEra’s Skeleton Creek project site, introduced two bills last session — both still alive at the Capitol and expected to be considered again this session — that would directly affect projects like Skeleton Creek. One would establish setback requirements for solar and energy-storage facilities. The other would give the Oklahoma Corporation Commission regulatory authority over renewable-energy projects and require the agency to issue permits.

Rep. Mike Dobrinski

“The intent of that bill was never to be restrictive or punitive with cost or anything like that,” said Dobrinski of the latter bill, HB 2155. “Just to get a mechanism in place for our renewables that is similar to what oil and gas producers and developers have been doing for decades.”

Some Garfield County residents opposing the Skeleton Creek project say they contacted Dobrinski, but felt he was strongly supportive of renewable-energy development and dismissive of their concerns.

“It’s pretty clear to us who butters his bread,” said Lora Dierksen, an area resident who, along with 29 others, has sued to block the project.

Between 2020 and 2024, Dobrinski received $10,000 in campaign contributions from NextEra, according to public records. The company has also made contributions to Reps. Chad Caldwell and John Pfeiffer — two Republicans whose districts include parts of Garfield County — and it has donated $10,000 to Gov. Kevin Stitt. NextEra has also given $15,000 to Turnaround Team PAC, a political action committee with ties to Stitt.

In total, NextEra Energy has contributed more than $865,000 to Oklahoma political campaigns between 2015 and 2025, and its former lobbyist, Zachary Swartz, now serves as the USDA’s rural development director for the state.

The company employs about 16,000 people, reported roughly $24.7 billion in revenue and about $5.5 billion in net profit in 2025. It owns Florida Power & Light, the nation’s largest electric utility. In Oklahoma, it currently operates 18 wind farms and four energy storage facilities.

NextEra did not reply to several requests for comment.

Renewable energy pushback grows in rural Oklahoma

In their lawsuit, area residents argue NextEra’s Skeleton Creek project is partly on land zoned for agricultural use, not industrial development.

“I live in the country for a reason — to get away from industrial-looking things, for peace and quiet,” Dierksen said. “This brings nothing to Waoukomis, Oklahoma.”

After a Garfield County judge issued a summary judgment in favor of NextEra, the residents appealed, and the case is now before the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

According to NextEra, the Skeleton Creek project is expected to employ eight to 10 permanent workers and generate about $65 million in tax revenue for Garfield County over 30 years. The project has a power purchase agreement with the Western Farmers Electric Cooperative (WFEC), a generation and transmission cooperative that provides electric power to parts of Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas and Kansas

Critics say projects like Skeleton Creek are being built to feed the surge in artificial intelligence and data centers, not to meet local needs, since Oklahoma already generates nearly three times more power than it consumes.

Like many solar and wind farms, data centers have faced strong pushback from local residents in Oklahoma and across the country.

A wind farm in northwest Oklahoma. photo by Zach Lucero, for Investigate Midwest

Data centers consume vast amounts of water — often comparable to an entire small or mid-sized town — and have driven up electricity costs in other parts of the country. They typically generate little long-term employment once construction is complete and often do not pay traditional property taxes, instead negotiating payments in lieu of taxes, known as PILOT agreements.

The pace at which these projects have appeared in rural Oklahoma in recent years has been striking, contributing to a growing sense of displacement and a loss of local control among residents.

According to Cleanview, a company that tracks large-scale data-center and renewable-energy developments, five data centers are currently operating in Oklahoma, though the number rises into the dozens when smaller facilities are included. An analysis by The Frontier found that at least 18 more data-center projects are in the pipeline.

Renewable-energy development has expanded even more rapidly. Oklahoma currently has 69 utility-scale wind farms, 15 utility-scale solar farms, and four utility-scale battery-storage facilities in operation. Another 44 wind projects, 78 solar projects, and 108 battery-storage facilities have either secured grid-interconnection agreements or are awaiting approval, according to interconnection.fyi, a website that tracks grid interconnection data.

A wind farm in Kingfisher County, Oklahoma. photo by Ben Felder, Investigate Midwest

As these projects have multiplied, disputes over where they can be built — and who gets to decide — have increasingly come to the fore. Zoning laws have been at the center of many of these clashes.

Last year, in the northeastern Oklahoma town of Oologah, the town board voted against rezoning land that would have allowed a Texas company to build an energy-storage facility. In another case, NextEra sued the Wagoner County Board of County Commissioners after the county denied a permit for a proposed 4,650-acre solar farm near Porter.

Unlike wind farms, solar and battery-storage projects in Oklahoma are not subject to statewide setback requirements. As a result, zoning rules have become one of the few tools available to local governments and residents seeking to influence where these projects are built.

For neighbors of the Skeleton Creek project, the consequences of large-scale development are already tangible.

The Hofferbers, ranchers who live next to the site, say that in addition to constant noise and disruption for over a year, they have seen wildlife move onto their land and attack their cattle after NextEra cleared nearby crop fields and wooded areas.

Lea Smith, who lives with her husband on a 480-acre cattle and grain farm about a mile from the project, worries about changes to drainage. She said NextEra removed terraces that had been built to control water flow across the land.

“If the drainage isn’t right, it washes out our crops,” Smith said. “Last year, more water came across and damaged our crops.”

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

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A Heat Wave is Hitting New York. Know Your Rights Ahead of Soaring Temps.

New Yorkers have some legal rights when it comes to severe heat. Ahead of the Fourth of July heat wave, here’s how to protect yourself.

By Rachel Holliday Smith, The City Reporter

Jul 1 5:00am EDT

Summer in the city is for Coney Island, Central Park and coco-mango-cherry carts. But when the heat becomes dangerous — as it will this holiday weekend — the focus switches to cooling centers, Con Ed and air conditioning.

Beginning Wednesday through at least Saturday, a heat wave is hitting New York City, and hard. Feels-like temperatures could soar as high as 109 degrees on Friday. Mayor Zohran Mamdani activated a Heat Emergency Plan on Monday, broadening New Yorkers’ access to cool-down centers, and reminding local agencies of existing rights regarding the heat.

The heat is no joke; last year, 21 New Yorkers died from heat, the highest tally in a decade. Nineteen of those deaths happened as a result of just a four-day heat wave in June.

When it comes to staying cool — whether in your home or at your workplace — you have some rights in the city. Here’s what to know about those, how to protect yourself, and what you can do if those rules aren’t being honored:

Getting away from heat: Cooling centers (for your pet, too)

Because of Mamdani’s Heat Emergency Plan, a number of services will be available to any New Yorker who needs them, free of charge. The Department for the Aging will operate 280 cooling centers during the week, and 210 during the weekend, the commissioner said on Tuesday.

Cooling centers can be found in libraries, community centers, senior centers and NYCHA facilities, and you can find one near you here. Cool It! NYC also has a map of spray showers and drinking fountains available here.

Subway fans blow hot air at Union Square Station. Tuesday, September 23, 2025.

In addition, 15 mobile Cooling Outreach On-Location stations, or COOL vans, from NYC Health & Hospitals will distribute water, electrolytes and sunscreen, as well as providing wellness checks, medical care, and transportation to cooling centers or health care facilities. Vans will have a registered nurse or nurse practitioner on board, meals and snacks, and will be dispatched for at-home wellness checks for seniors.

The Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene will also operate pop-up cooling stations, complete with water, misting fans and cooling towels. Outdoor workers including street vendors, delivery drivers and laborers are encouraged to use these services. The department will also use Health Action Centers and Overdose Prevention Centers as cooling centers.

Anyone is welcome to go to cooling centers, and so are service animals. Some cooling centers allow pets — call each location to find out whether yours does, too — but all Petco locations in New York City serve as cooling centers for you and your pets.

If you’re looking to cool off closer to home, and you’re 18 or older, head to your local firehouse for a spray cap to turn your fire hydrant into a sprinkler. Spray caps conserve water in case of an emergency, but still allow you to make your own Rio Manhattan.

Right to cooling? Not quite on the books

There is no right to cooling in New York City — yet.

In December, City Council passed a bill creating a “cooling season” — similar to the winter’s heating season — between June 15 and Sept. 15. Starting in 2030, landlords must provide tenants with air conditioning capable of maintaining 78 degrees or less in bedrooms, upon request.

So for now, if your apartment is too hot, definitely head to a cooling center.

And it’s crucial to check in on your neighbors to make sure they’re OK. See our guide for specific questions to ask.

Con Edison

Con Ed, the utility behemoth behind your air conditioner (and lights, and possibly your stove) is committed to keeping the power running, it says. Con Ed’s policy — as governed by the state Department of Public Service — is to not disconnect your power the day of, or day before, the heat index is projected to reach 90 degrees or higher at Central Park. And if the heat index exceeds 90, the company will suspend disconnections for the next two days.

If you are wrongfully or mistakenly disconnected despite that rule, contact Con Ed right away.

People endure an early heatwave in Lower Manhattan, April 14, 2026.

Still, during heat waves, power grids can be overrun to the point of blackouts, with air conditioners eating up lots of energy. And it wouldn’t be the first time: around the same time last year, more than 10,000 homes were left without power due to a heat wave, primarily in Brooklyn and Queens. If you experience an outage, report it to Con Ed here.

If you get an alert from Con Ed asking you to limit energy use, it’s important to do so. Energy-intensive electric use can strain the aging electric grid, which puts you and your neighbors at risk of power outages.

Pause on evictions

The Department of Investigation paused evictions on July 1 and 2. Evictions must take place on business days, which exclude weekends and holidays, so no one should be evicted during the span of this heat wave.

“No city marshal should show up at anyone’s house to evict them,” said Carolyn Norton, interim chief of litigation and advocacy at Legal Services NYC. “That would be a direct violation of their city directive.”

In the event a marshal attempts an eviction, the tenant should contact 311 to make a complaint with the city, and reach out to a legal services organization, Norton said.

There’s no official policy that pauses evictions in the case of extreme heat or other dangerous weather. It’s up to the DOI and the courts to make the call.

The city previously suspended evictions on May 19 and 20, when temperatures soared past 95. But when it was 100 degrees outside on June 12, 55 households got evicted, according to data from the New York City Marshals. Evictions were not suspended that day.

On the job: Worker rights

Through the city’s protected time off law, most employees are entitled to up to 40 or 56 hours of paid protected time off, for reasons including heat-related illness.

The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection will remind local workplaces of your rights, too: tens of thousands of businesses will be informed of extreme heat guidance and urged to comply with labor laws, the city said.

On June 22, Mamdani signed into effect an executive order establishing guidance to prevent heat-related illness in the workplace. For construction workers, the Department of Buildings must review construction safety requirements to ensure they protect against heat-related illness, and for municipal workers, mayoral agencies must develop heat-illness plans for indoor and outdoor workers.

Per Department of Labor and federal OSHA laws, employers have a legal responsibility to protect employees from heat-related illness. According to guidance from the labor department, employers should provide each outdoor employee with 32 ounces of cool drinking water per hour at no cost. Employees should be given sufficient time to drink water throughout the work day, and water needs to be available at all times. Federally, all workers — not just outdoor workers — must be provided with potable water throughout the work day.

Employers should also provide shade and paid rest as needed when the heat index exceeds 80 degrees, 15 minutes every two hours when the heat index exceeds 90, and 15 minutes an hour when it exceeds 100. If the heat index exceeds 110, employers should consider rescheduling work, and if that’s not possible, 15 minutes of work with 45 minutes of rest every hour is encouraged.

For more information on outdoor workers’ protections, read the Department of Labor’s full guidance here.

Is there something we missed that should have been included in this article? Have a question? Get in touch with our newsroom at ask@thecityreporter.nyc.

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Chemours must cut Ohio River ‘forever chemical’ pollution under new settlement. But a fight over future permit limits looms.

by Ken Ward Jr., Mountain State Spotlight June 26, 2026

The Chemours Company plant in Wood County must comply with pollution limits for “forever chemicals” and spend millions of dollars for additional upgrades to reduce toxic discharges, under a settlement with the Trump administration.

Chemours will also pay a $22.5 million fine. The settlement will be subject to a public comment period, which has not yet been scheduled. It also needs approval from U.S. District Judge Thomas E. Johnston.

But potential battles remain over a renewed water discharge permit for the plant and the Trump Environmental Protection Agency’s moves to rewrite, and likely weaken, legal limits for these chemicals.

The company has been violating permitted water pollution limits for years, and the government settlement was prodded along by the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, which filed its own lawsuit and won a federal court order that Chemours halt excessive discharges.

Jennie Smith, executive director of the Rivers Coalition, said her organization is “very happy” with the government’s settlement with Chemours.

“This settlement secures the infrastructure upgrades needed to safeguard our water resources for now and future generations,” Smith said.

The Washington Works facility outside Parkersburg, formerly owned by chemical giant DuPont, has been at the center of a decades-long controversy over emissions of a class of chemicals called PFAS. These chemicals, resistant to heat, water, oil and grease, have been used in making a wide variety of everyday products, from nonstick pans to waterproof clothing to fast food wrappers.

But exposure has been linked to serious health conditions, including cancer, liver and kidney damage, developmental problems and immune system disorders. And for years, DuPont knew about potential health issues, but did not tell the public.

Federal officials said the new settlement, which also covers operations in New Jersey and North Carolina, totals $450 million. Much of that is $280 million to supply clean drinking water to residents near the West Virginia and New Jersey plants. It also includes $90 million over 15 years to reduce PFAS emissions and an estimated $60 million to reduce water and air emissions specifically at the West Virginia plant.

“This landmark settlement shows the administration’s commitment to protecting the public from harmful water pollution,” said Adam Gustafson, principal deputy assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division.

Chemours reached the settlement with the DOJ, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

In a statement, Chemours said the company “continues to focus on responsibly resolving outstanding environmental and regulatory matters with terms that improve site operating certainty and include payment and remediation commitments that are structured over time.”

Chemours also noted that the company had settled, for less than $1 million, litigation brought by the West Virginia Rivers Coalition that prompted U.S. Judge Joseph R. Goodwin’s order that excessive pollution at the plant be stopped. Earlier this month, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had overturned Goodwin’s ruling. And a federal government deal with Chemours would have created significant legal hurdles for the environmental group’s litigation.

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During that case, Chemours had warned that a court order could force the Wood County plant to slow production and potentially cost the area much-needed jobs.

But Chemours managed to comply with Goodwin’s order, and stopped violations at two of its discharge points, said Jim Hecker, senior environmental attorney at Public Justice, which helped represent the Rivers Coalition.

Hecker said the government settlement “builds on that progress and demonstrates the power of citizens coming together to demand accountability through our legal system.”

An EPA press release quoted Gov. Patrick Morrisey saying the settlement, “is an encouraging first step, but it addresses only one piece of a much larger issue.”

“We remain actively engaged in discussions to reach a comprehensive resolution for the Washington Works facility that protects our citizens and ensures West Virginia’s communities have confidence that these issues are being addressed for the long term.”

One key matter unresolved is the exact language for pollution limits in a renewal of the plant’s WVDEP-issued water pollution discharge permit.

The industry-friendly Trump administration has also indicated plans to change drinking water standards and industrial plant discharge limits for forever chemicals.

The Rivers Coalition said it is closely monitoring these issues. In a statement, the group said, “Citizen enforcement can play an important role in protecting water quality and public health when regulatory processes move too slowly. Environmental compliance and economic stability are not mutually exclusive.”

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

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