NC clears elevator inspection backlog + lawmakers obtain COVID research records

Good morning and welcome to another edition of the Under the Dome newsletter. I’m Luciana Perez Uribe, a politics reporter.

Let’s take a look at elevator safety.

When you go into an elevator here in North Carolina, you’ll usually see a placard showing when that elevator was last inspected.

In some of those elevators, you may have noticed at times that inspections were not up to date.

That won’t be the case anymore. North Carolina Labor Commissioner Luke Farley announced Tuesday in a news release that the Department of Labor has fully eliminated the state’s elevator inspection backlog, with zero elevators statewide overdue for inspection for the first time in the department’s history.

The backlog once reached about 20% — meaning as many as one in every five elevators were not inspected in a given year, according to a news release from the department.

Because of that, the department said it conducted a top-to-bottom review of its operations, identified inefficiencies and improved how inspections were scheduled, tracked and completed, allowing more inspections to be done without adding new costs for taxpayers. Farley, a Republican, also credited the legislature’s passage last year of the Make Elevators Great Again Act, which allowed inspection fees charged to elevator owners to increase.

As of the end of December, 32,527 elevators across North Carolina were inspected within the past year — an increase of 5,088 inspections over the prior year, according to the department.

“When I took office nearly one in five elevators was overdue, and that was unacceptable. In less than a year, our team fixed what wasn’t working, improved internal processes, and delivered real results,” said Farley. “This accomplishment belongs to our inspectors and staff who showed what’s possible when government focuses on solving problems instead of making excuses.”

Farley has also brought back elevator inspection photos, a practice his predecessor, Josh Dobson, also a Republican, who is now head of the North Carolina Healthcare Association, had stopped.

The photos of the labor commissioner had been a signature of the office under Dobson’s predecessor, Republican Cherie Berry, who served as commissioner from 2001 to 2021 and became widely known as “the Elevator Queen.” Some observers credited Berry’s inspection photos with helping fuel her repeated reelection.

Coronavirus research records sent to lawmakers

In a ruling Wednesday, judges said UNC-Chapel Hill does not have to turn over additional records related to the work of prominent coronavirus researcher Ralph Baric to U.S. Right to Know, the advocacy group that sought the documents, my colleague Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan reports.

But UNC has turned over many documents to state lawmakers as part of a separate legislative inquiry into Baric’s research, House Speaker Destin Hall said. Vaughan reports that the inquiry is being conducted by the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations, a powerful oversight panel that is exempt from public records law, meaning lawmakers — not the public — decide what documents, if any, are released.

And two quick updates: Absentee voting begins Monday, and the legislature is holding a flurry of committee hearings. It’s getting busy.

What else we’ve been working on

• UNC gets court win, but it’s sending coronavirus research records to lawmakers
• Feds threaten to withhold NC highway funding over immigrant driver’s licenses
• NC aspires to lead ‘green energy economy,’ but EV troubles create setbacks
• NC public health officials urge vaccination as measles cases, flu deaths rise
• How involuntary commitment works and doesn’t work in North Carolina
• NC has approved new reading standards. See what students are expected to learn.
• Will insurance still cover vaccine costs in NC with CDC changes? What to know

Thanks for reading Under the Dome

That’s all for today, but we hope to see you right back here on Sunday.

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Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi

The News & Observer

Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi is a politics reporter for the News & Observer. She reports on health care, including mental health and Medicaid expansion, hurricane recovery efforts and lobbying. Luciana previously worked as a Roy W. Howard Fellow at Searchlight New Mexico, an investigative news organization.