Dalton's goal is better-connected high schools

Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton has a cause.

In North Carolina, lieutenant governors have little real authority or duties, and they are left to carve their own niche in state government.

Dalton, a Democrat, is launching a commission today to help make high school more relevant.

The commission, Joining Our Businesses and Schools, seeks to link high schools with local economies. The panel will include 20 business and education leaders who will work on making high school graduates better prepared for a career.

"I'm excited about this opportunity to strengthen our high school curricula and make education more relevant for students," Dalton said.

The JOBS Commission is a grant-funded legislative commission that will tour the state and try to build on the success of the state's award-winning early college themed high schools, which give high school students a head start on a college degree, an associate's degree or a job.

Dalton wrote the 2003 law that led to the establishment of more than 70 early college high schools across North Carolina.

Troy loses Wildlife job

Joan Troy, who tangled with state wildlife commissioners when she was a state employee, recently lost her job because of budget cuts.

Troy, who worked 16 years for the state, including nine for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, said she saw her job loss coming because she had been marginalized at the office since wildlife commissioners tried to fire her two years ago.

"They wanted to bury me and make sure I had no contact with anyone," Troy said from her Raleigh home. "I was actually the only employee banned from attending commission meetings."

Gordon Myers, the commission's executive director, said there was no plan to oust Troy.

He said her job was one of 7.5 filled jobs the office had to eliminate because of a $4million budget cut. In addition, 15 vacant positions were eliminated, he said.

Division directors at the agency made the decisions, Myers said, and commissioners had no say in them.

In 2007, Troy's conflicts with wildlife commission members led to the forced resignation of her boss, former executive director Dick Hamilton.

Troy, whose job it was to propose and help implement the agency's rules, disagreed with commissioners on whether to ban boating within 100 feet of dams at nine lakes in the western part of the state.

Commissioners failed in their attempts to fire her in 2007.

Troy returned to the commission office, but she said her job description was rewritten.

'Jobs, jobs, jobs'

Insurance executive Ashley Woolard, a Republican from Beaufort County, has announced his plans to run for Congress against Democratic U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield next year.

Woolard, 34, told the Beaufort County Republican Men's Club that his campaign would have three major focal points and that they would be "jobs, jobs, jobs."

Woolard was chairman of the Beaufort County Republican Party from March 2007 until March 2009.

Watch those Democrats

U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from Banner Elk, is warning that the Democrats will try to sneak health-care reform through Congress.

It's the political equivalent of slipping a 747 through a toll booth, but Foxx told 1240 3WC, "Hometown Christian Radio," in Wilkesboro that she thinks Democrats will put health-care reform inside another piece of legislation that lawmakers would find difficult to oppose.

"They'll put a bad thing with a good thing," Foxx said, "and I've talked about this before. Sometimes you get bills that are 50 percent good and 50 percent bad. So you have to decide is it better to vote yes and say, 'I voted for the good even though the bad came along,' or do you vote no and say, 'I couldn't vote for the good because there was so much bad?'"

By staff writers Benjamin Niolet, Lynn Bonner and Mark Johnson.