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The Carolinian’s real time notes from Gov. McCrory’s State of the State Address on Wednesday

By Spencer Schneier, Staff Writer

• McCrory opened by noting the resilience of North Carolina, and the success it has seen in bouncing back from the economic crisis. He then welcomed a state trooper who had been shot in the face, but survived and will soon re-enter the force. The governor was nearly in tears.

• McCrory outlined that his five areas of focus would be jobs, education, transportation, efficiency and healthcare

• His focus with jobs was threefold: 1) He wanted to promote small-business, 2) He wanted to harvest North Carolina’s energy resources, and 3) He intends to focus on manufacturing, which is easier said than done.

• While talking about the $5 billion natural gas pipeline project for eastern North Carolina, he linked the revenue from that project to increased teacher salaries. He made the link between tapping into energy resources (both via the pipeline and via newly-authorized offshore drilling) multiple times, which should give environmental groups an interesting problem.

• On education, he focused more on secondary. His promises included increasing entry-level salary for teachers to $35,000 a year and to reduce the amount of standardized testing.

• The one higher education topic he discussed is a program to commercialize the research being done by universities. This could create a dilemma with liberal arts institutions that also conduct research, and this question is one that The Carolinian will be investigating in upcoming weeks.

• McCrory is looking to expand highways, and improve ports in N.C. He pointed out the benefits of improving the highways and stated that he wanted to connect “Asheville to Wilmington.”

• Healthcare is an area in which McCrory surprised many. Expected to announce an increase to Medicaid, he instead said that he would only accept a plan from North Carolina, and that he rejected any plan coming from Washington. Likely just conjecture, but fascinating nonetheless.

• Lastly, he introduced various measures to improve government efficiency. The focus of this area was improving the Information Technology capabilities of the state government, part of which still uses outdated computer services like FORTRAN.

• His speech lasted for one hour and twenty minutes, which was much longer than expected.