(The Center Square) – Called “crypto-friendly legislation” by the leader of the chamber, a proposal on digital assets on Wednesday afternoon passed the North Carolina House of Representatives.

Passage was 71-44 mostly along party lines.

The NC Digital Assets Investments Act, known also as House Bill 92, has investment requirements, caps and management, and clear definitions and standards aimed at making sure only qualified digital assets are included. House Speaker Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, said the state would potentially join more than a dozen others with “crypto-friendly legislation.”

With him in sponsorship are Reps. Stephen Ross, R-Alamance, Mark Brody, R-Union, and Mike Schietzelt, R-Wake.

Nationally last year, the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act – known as FIT21 – passed through the U.S. House in May and in September was parked in the Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

Dan Spuller, cochairman of the North Carolina Blockchain Initiative, said the state has proven a leader on digital asset policy. That includes the Money Transmitters Act of 2016, the North Carolina Regulatory Sandbox Act of 2021, and last year’s No Centrl Bank Digital Currency Pmts to State. The latter was strongly opposed by Gov. Roy Cooper, so much so that passage votes of 109-4 in the House and 39-5 in the Senate slipped back to override votes, respectively, of 73-41 and 27-17.

(The Center Square) – Hurricane Helene recovery in North Carolina is being impacted by a federal agency with seven consecutive failed audits and the elimination of hundreds of its workers in the state.

Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined a lawsuit on behalf of the state with 23 other states and the District of Columbia against AmeriCorps, known also as the Corporation for National and Community Service. The state’s top prosecutor says eight of 19 AmeriCorps programs and 202 jobs are being lost in the state by the cuts to the federal program.

The litigation says responsibility lies with the Department of Government Efficiency established by President Donald Trump.

“These funds – which Congress already appropriated for North Carolina – are creating jobs, cleaning up storm damage, and helping families rebuild,” Jackson said. “AmeriCorps must follow the law so that people in western North Carolina can confidently move forward.”

Jackson, in a release, said 50 of the 750 volunteers terminated on April 15 were in North Carolina. Three programs with 84 people employed were impacted on Friday when AmeriCorps cut federal funds to grant programs that run through the North Carolina Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service.

Project MARS was helping in 18 western counties, providing supplies and meals to homebound and stranded families. Clothing, crisis hotlines and school supports were also aided. Project Conserve was in 25 western counties helping with debris removal, tree replanting, storm-system repairs and rain-barrel distribution. Project POWER helped large-scale food donations for more than 10,000 people in the hard-hit counties of Buncombe, Henderson and Madison.

The White House has defended its accountability actions and did so on this move. AmeriCorps has a budget of about $1 billion.

Helene killed 107 in North Carolina and caused an estimated $60 billion damage.

The storm made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Dekle Beach, Fla., on Sept. 26. It dissipated over the mountains of the state and Tennessee, dropping more than 30 inches in some places and over 24 consistently across more.

U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said last year AmeriCorps has a legacy of “incompetence and total disregard for taxpayer money.” She was chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, which requested the report showing repeated failed audits and financial management troubles.

“AmeriCorps,” Foxx said, “receives an astounding $1 billion in taxpayer funds every year but hasn’t received a clean audit for the past seven years. As instances of fraud continue, the agency has proven time and time again incapable of reforming itself and should never be given another opportunity to abuse taxpayer dollars.”

(The Center Square) – North Carolina needs a statewide policy regulating the use of student cellphones in public schools, a top state educator said Tuesday.

Two bills are pending in the Legislature. Cell Phone-Free Education, known also as House Bill 87, requires school boards to “adopt a cellphone-free education policy to eliminate or severely restrict student access to cellphones during instructional time.”

It allows exceptions if a teacher authorizes the use for educational purposes, if a cell phone is required for a students’ individualized education program or for the student’s health care.

Student Use of Wireless Communication Devices, known also as Senate Bill 55, contains similar language.

In North Carolina and nationally, there is a “wide disparity” in how school districts handle cellphone use in the classroom, Michael Maher, chief accountability of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, told The Center Square.

“There is emerging evidence on the negative impact of not only on instruction but on student long-term outcomes on mental health,” Maher said.

Social media in particular is “highly addictive,” Maher said.

“If there is a way for us to help remove that, it would absolutely help instructional practice,” said Maher, a former high school teacher. “Student performance is actually tied to student attention. Phones are attention grabbing. You have this device that is drawing their attention.”

A classroom ban would likely require teachers to collect cellphones in the morning as class begins and return them at the end of the school day, said Maher.

“There are pouches and other types of solutions to store student devices,” he said. “The teacher would just make that part of their daily routine.”

Collecting student cellphones early in the day before instruction begins might be easier for teachers than having to constantly be on the lookout for students secretly using them throughout the day in the classrooms, Maher said.

“We already ask teachers to do too much,” he said. “I don’t think it’s fair to them.”

It is important to provide adequate funding for school districts to pay for storage devices, Maher added.

The North Carolina School Board Association has not taken a position on the two pending bills, spokesman Ben Christoph told The Center Square.

Cell Phone-Free Education passed 114-3 in the House of Representatives and is in the Rules Committee of the Senate. Student Use of Wireless Communication Devices passed 41-1 in the Senate and is in the Rules Committee of the House.