Small businesses may get to skip smoking ban

Small-business owners who want to allow smoking on their premises may get a pass from legislation that would ban smoking in public buildings and most work places.

House Majority Leader Hugh Holliman, a Lexington Democrat and the bill's chief sponsor, said he is roughly 10 votes short of getting the legislation through the House. As a result, he's suggesting an exemption for small businesses to defuse a popular complaint among his colleagues.

"It's a health issue, and I certainly have a concern about people who work in small businesses as well as larger ones," he said. "But I'm also realistic that you can't get anything done without 61 votes, so we may well have to take what we can get."

Holliman is a lung cancer survivor who lost a sister to the disease. The U.S. Surgeon General calls secondhand smoke a major health hazard.

But Holliman has come up against lawmakers and others who say the bill infringes on the property rights of business owners. He also has to grapple with enacting tough anti-smoking legislation in a state with strong ties to the tobacco industry.

The bill was scheduled to be voted on last week, but Holliman asked for a delay so he could round up more votes.

Holliman said Monday that he would likely run the bill back through a committee so the exemption could be added.

Should I drink or vote?

Only two of five adults in North Carolina vote in typical state elections, a government watchdog group said Monday in a report.

Democracy North Carolina, a nonprofit based in Carrboro, said nearly 1 million adults in North Carolina are not registered to vote. Almost 400,000 of them are between the ages of 18-25.

The report found that younger adults are half as likely to vote as their grandparents. The report said young adults are "more likely to engage in binge drinking than participate in elections."

North Carolina's average turnout in presidential elections from 1984-2004 was 48 percent. That ranked North Carolina 43rd nationally.

The report found "one positive achievement" for North Carolina -- so-called early voting sites have become so popular that a record 55 percent of voting-age adults voted in the 2004 presidential election, the highest turnout rate in a century.

Clinton plans Charlotte trip

Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York is scheduled to make a foray into John Edwards country next month.

Clinton plans a fundraiser in Charlotte on May 20, according to Richard Sullivan, a Clinton campaign fundraiser.

Clinton had initially thought about going to Charlotte this past weekend. But Clinton aides decided it would not be a good idea to compete with the Final Four in college basketball country.

Jones rips prescription plan

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones got prominent air time on the CBS program "60 Minutes" over the weekend when he criticized the pharmaceutical industry's influence in the passage of the Medicare prescription drug plan.

Jones, a Farmville Republican, called it "the ugliest night" he had seen in politics when the drug program passed the House in 2003.

Jones, one of the few Republicans to oppose the plan, said the bill was written by the pharmaceutical industry and was too expensive. He was critical of the House leadership for keeping the vote open for several hours while they twisted arms to find the votes needed to pass the measure.

Colleges look for leader

A search presidential committee of the State Board of Community Colleges kicked off the process Monday of finding a successor to system President Martin Lancaster, who will retire May 1, 2008.

At its first meeting, the panel decided to use a search consultant to identify candidates.

The next year will bring great change to the country's third-largest community college system, with two top leaders stepping down. Fred Williams, the executive vice president and chief operating officer for the system, will retire Sept. 1.

The board plans to select a Williams replacement who will be "president-elect," serving as the second-in-command until Lancaster's retirement in 2008 and then becoming president. The new president will then find a new chief operating officer to present to the board for approval.