Carolina Journal Radio No. 867: Year-end special revisits intriguing 2019 topics

From Cherokee to current attack from the largest city to the smallest and from the statehouse into the schoolhouse Carolina Journal radio your weekly news magazine discussing North Carolina's most of public policy events and issues welcome to Carolina Journal radio why Michiko got in this special year-end edition Donna Martinez and I feature some of the most intriguing topics of 2019 legal battles continue for the man who won a Supreme Court case challenging forced unionization of government workers learn what he's working on now has a third-grader reached third grade because he's ready for the work or just because he's eight years old will hear from state lawmakers searching for answers to those questions. The feminist movement has had an obvious impact on women. But what about men and experts from the ethics and Public policy Center offers her views of the issue and will discuss ways North Carolina could do even more to add protections against civil asset forfeiture abuse. Those topics are just ahead. First, Donna Martin has joins us with the Carolina Journal headline next year. Legislative leaders are expected to begin a restructuring the state's public school finance system. Their challenge is huge, but necessary. According to an analysis of the current funding system from the John Locke foundation's education expert Dr. Terry stoops in his report co-authored with Aaron Garth Smith of the reason foundation. Dr. stoops lays out a plan for revamping the broken system. He joins us now. Terry welcome back to the program.

Thank you. You write in your report that the current way that we fund public schools in North Carolina is unfair, outdated, complex house, so well.

It's complex in the sense that it takes on average a finance leader around two years to understand how it works and if you think about the fact we have a system that takes of financial experts two years to learn the ins and outs that should raise some alarms about the complexity of the system but but the way that it set up in North Carolina and it's difficult really to explain. You really have to see its inaction to understand just how confusing it could be a sense of what the state does is save the provide categories of funding for teachers for schoolbooks and for various other functions of the school and they give you have formulas that establish how much each district would receive for each of these areas, there are rules that govern whether you can take money from one area given to another. There are some laws that prohibit moving money from one area to another and and so that we have this complex system where money getting from the states. The districts how is governed by all of these formulas and governed by all of these categories that are established for the for the system and and what the system's needs are mainly personnel you write a very interesting example in the report of what actually happens on the ground. Based on all those formulas that you're talking about. Tell us what happens when it comes to the classroom teacher allotment and how the determination is made of hammy teachers. A school receives sure and and this is one that's tinkered with often so so the way that this works is that the state will give a district money based on the number of students in certain grades and the ratio of students to teacher.

So for example one teacher for every 16 or 17 students. The school district would receive money for a teacher position that the money that they receive is based on the average pay for the teachers in the district.

So that's the money that they get for that position, regardless of how much it would cost to employ that teacher and once that allotment gets to the county they can do various things with it now. This raises the question, what if it turns out that you have less than one teacher per every 16 students and say second grade what happens.

Well, you're not going to get the allotment for that one teacher you have to have have it break down to having a certain number of students per teacher and that means that the remainder would not get the teacher allotment that they may need.

So our listeners can tell even high this conversation that this really is like a a web of formulas of rules and it's very very complicated and complex. You write in your report that we really should not only modernize this, but we got to make this a lot easier for people and give them much more flexibility because you say principal needs to be able to control these dollars and move dollars around and and be able to allocate dollars to what is actually happening in that local district and in the schools give us a sense of your recommendations for policymakers. As I mentioned, the top of this interview next year. They are going to start really restructuring this absolutely. Our recommendation is what's called backpack funding or student based funding in this essentially looking at what the students needs are and funding schools that way.

So here's a perfect example.

You have a student of the special-needs child in a low income community, they would receive a base dollar amount that every student in the state would receive. And then there will be additional amounts added to that base amount based on the fact that their special needs students and their low income students and you would basically build these funding system based on the demographics and the needs of the students rather than the system like it's currently structured. This is a recommendation that would do a couple things for the state. First it. I think it would give some fairness to the system that we have in place now.

It would definitely be more fair to some autonomy to those teachers and principals and superintendents that run school districts. It would be transparent suite would be very apparent how much show a school or a district gets based on the students that they have, but I think the best feature of this system is that in the future. It can be portable and so if the funding is attached is based on the student. It could also be attached to the student and when you attach the funding to the student. The next step is to give parents the power to be able to determine where that money goes and that's the system that I would hope that one day that North Carolina would go to were a long way from that we have a lot of work to do to fix the system that's been in place for decades.

The confusing complex system that only few people really truly understand the state of I feel confident that the Republicans in the Gen. assembly are going to move forward in some the initial proposals that they have had for reforming the system, are there any other states that are moving towards this student centered and student waited approach absolutely look at states like Hawaii and Texas really have great system set up for determining how that funding is allocated but the state that I like to talk about is California because as we know California does very little right. I mean California is not a city known for getting have a good policy, but they got there student funding above system right and it was easy for them to get to that point. Of course, it required an increase in funding but they were really great, student based funding system and so we have examples around the nation.

We have states that are using this right now. We can learn from their experiences with the system take the best features of what's out there and incorporate that into what's happening in North Carolina and I think that there is an appetite and bipartisan appetite to do that here in our state. I'm so glad you use the word bipartisan because just mentioning the three states that that you did here were talking about California obviously very blue state Hawaii a blue state. Texas a red state so really this does cross political lines here to do this absolutely and and it should be noted that this whole effort to look at the funding system and to consider ways to reform it was a Democratic proposal 2009, when the Democrats had control the general assembly.

They commissioned a report to look at North Carolina school funding model and to consider alternatives. They receive the report in 2010 and unfortunately that's the year when the great recession started so became difficult to implement really any kind of changes but it was a bipartisan effort then and fortunately we have Republicans in the Gen. assembly like Craig Korn, who are mindful of that report and thinking about ways to incorporate that when we have a budget that stable like we we currently have and thinking about ways to use what that report told us should be done in North Carolina and could be done to improve our current system. Dr. Terry stoops with the John Locke foundation. He's VP of research.

Also, the director of education studies Terry, thank you, thank you. Say with as much North Carolina journal radio to come in just a moment tired of fake names tired of reporters with political axes to grind. What you need to be reading Carolina journal, honest, uncompromising, old-school journalism, you expect and you need even better, the monthly Carolina journal is free to subscribers sign up@carolinajournal.com you'll receive Carolina journal newspaper in your mailbox each month. Investigations into government spending revelations about boondoggles who the powerful leaders are and what they're doing in your name and with your money. We shine a light on it all with the stories and angles. Other outlets barely cover but there's a bonus print newspapers published monthly by our daily news site gives you the latest news each and every day lot onto Carolina journal.com once, twice, even three times a day. You won't be disappointed. It's fresh news if you'd like a heads up on the daily news sign up for daily email do that Carolina journal.com Carolina journal rigorous unrelenting old-school journalism.

We hold government accountable for you. Welcome back to Carolina journal radio I Michiko guy, the US Supreme Court decided last year that a government worker can't be forced to pay dues to a union if he is not a member of that union is that the end of the story.

Will the winning plaintiff in that case joins us now to help answer that question mark.

Janice is now a senior fellow at the Liberty Justice Center. Thanks for joining us all thank you for having me appreciate it when you won this case though you were not at the liberty just to center your Republic employee in Illinois tell us when you will. In this case, what is that mean well it it meant that approximately 5 1/2 million public sector workers now had a voice and a choice to decide their own fate if you will as to whether they want to be a member of the union or not.

Prior to this ruling of many, many public sector union people. They were forced to pay an agency fee or a what they called a fair share fee depending on where they were located and which meant they had to contribute in the neighborhood of 80% towards you know the full full share dues of a union member. However, even though they pay only paid 80% roughly they didn't have a choice in a vote. You know the could decide anything, you know, and in the way the unions were voting and decided their fate and because they were mandatory in so many areas like in the state of Illinois. They just you were forced into paying this and it just didn't have a choice for voice and anything we're case with all the all the way to the Supreme Court. You won the case, so now it's overripe public sector workers don't have to worry about unions taken their dues if they don't want to be members correct well yes and no. In many cases, such as the state of Illinois, for example, on the day of the decision.

Our Gov. Gov. around her issued an executive order that stopped all agency your fair share fees on that day and that became automatic. However, in other states wasn't quite that easy.

There was some pushback there were some you know different states and different attorney generals that read the opinion different ways and interpreted different ways and they kept charging. You know, until there was no some kind of further discussion or resolution or litigation in medications and at the same time the unions were doing a major pushback in the fact that they felt that you know there their rights were being violated, which I found very interesting because they were the ones that mandated these fees and force them upon all these workers and you know the workers didn't have a choice and now the Jews on the other foot and all of a sudden they're all up in arms about, so to speak, will I was kind asking that question with a bit of a tongue-in-cheek because I know that one of the issues that that that you continue to talk about is the fact that unions are taking this ruling blind out there fighting back over there fighting back, and in lots of different ways there providing the gist of a plus or of misinformation to their members you know and or public sector workers.

In general, saying that, well, you know, if you don't guard a member of our union. You know, you could lose your pension will that's totally false because the pensions are mostly administered by the employer in order that the government entity and so that's not correct there saying that you could leave, you lose your health benefits. Well, that's false because again the employer provides the health benefits. They also say you could lose your wages will how you lose wages because you got a contract that says that you're going to get paid a certain amount of money based on that contract and the thing you have to remember is that many of these public-sector unions across the country.

They wanted this all-inclusive collective bargaining whether a union member or not. And like in the state of Illinois. They got it legislatively passed quite a few years ago. Things like 1990, which mandated that the unions collectively bargain for everybody where there union member, not in what's interesting is several years ago Illinois policy advocated legislation that took away that all-inclusive and said look, if you want to negotiate for the nonmembers. You don't have to, you know, just negotiate only for your full share members and the union oppose that legislation, which I find interesting because now that we have this ruling, you know there now in the process of of rethinking this but they still seem to want to continue their monopolistic ways. That is the voice of Mark Janice who is a senior fellow at the Liberty Justice Center and if his name sounds familiar, that's because he was the winning plaintiff in this US Supreme Court case decided last year dealing with government workers and whether they could be forced to pay union dues after you and your colleagues one this case. Were you surprised that the unions have adopted these additional tactics. Well not really, because during the. The initial filing of the case in 2015 and the fact that there were some previous cases such as Friedrichs versus California teachers, which was originated on California and that case was actually a parallel and very very similar to my case it was so resulted in a four for time because just as Clea passed away and so therefore our case then became you know the next one in line if you will. And what was very very interesting is that the unions had approximately three years to prepare for this, which they did by putting out mountains of propaganda going to their state legislatures and getting laws passed, you know, to try to circumvent and were seen today. There still legislation being passed in various states across country where the unions are sir trying to circumvent the ruling. For example, you know they say they no longer call an agency fee or a fair share fee. Now they're saying that well yes you can get out of the union, but you owe us a service fee so they're just changing the name for the same thing that they had before now have to ask because you spent several years in court fighting this you one so we have that the Supreme Court said that you were the victor in that case you could've just said okay I'm done I buy one and thank you and I'm good go on my merry way. Why did you decide to continue to work on this issue.

Well, mainly because I saw that the large amount of pushback that the units were putting out there. The massive amounts of misinformation and the fact that I saw workers that even though we had this decision were not allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights. Their freedom of speech and the freedom of association and the fact that the unions were not letting people get out if you will, if that's what they chose to do and I want to emphasize that, you know, this case is not about putting unions out of business. It's not about ending collective bargaining at all. It's mainly giving workers the choice to make their own decision which they have not had in the past and it's all this case does you know, if you choose to be a member of the union and want to pay the fee or the dues of God bless you.

Go ahead, that's your decision but you should also have the right in the ability to choose not to. Just like we do with everyday life in our day-to-day in a work environment or home environment. This story is far from over.

Do you think at one point, we will get to the state where a government worker will have that choice everywhere across the country only think so. It it's going to take several years on minutes.

It's like a lot of other Supreme Court decisions that have come down the pike, so to speak where people you know they they resisted initially but then eventually they fall in line because quite frankly there's a lot of litigation out there at Liberty Justice Center know who I represent network for we have cases filed all over the country. We have California, New Mexico, we have Hawaii and more and more every day. That is the voice of Mark Janice, a senior fellow at the Liberty Justice Center thanks Mike, thank you.

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Republican state representative Craig Horn of Union County sponsors the measure. I want to start by asking you a question is rhetorical so I don't expect an answer.

I want you to think about the question that question is to questions of ever any of you ever had children in the third grade and if so, why are they in the third grade is because there eight years old so that's worth or eight-year-old third grade or is it because every subject that they're taking third grade 3rd grade level and if you think that's true on the challenge that notion, and suggest you the different kids learn different things at different rates and actually we need to take a different look at how kids progressed through school and look not at their age chronological age and look not at their grade level, whichever arbitrarily grade level with the men look at the competency their competency.

Can they do are they doing the work that's why Horn sponsored House Bill 714 do directional State Board of Education to recommend how we can treasure transition. Our education system in this state away from the traditional kindergarten first second third year there, because really the right age to a competency-based system that's being done in some schools in the state. This being done in some districts in this nation.

I think it's time for us to look at kids themselves with the delivery of education to a child in a way that works for each and every child.

All this Bill asked State Board of Education to begin that process, Democratic state representative Charles Graham asked for more details. You mentioned that there are some locations were competency-based assessments are successful in their getting away from the traditional replacements.

I have some firsthand were competency-based assessments and competency-based schools for proprietor are successful as Westminster, Colorado week.

A few weeks ago we had the superintendent from that entire public school district come to talk to the principal's Association and about how they transitioned to a competency-based system so it can work it is working it's it's a difficult change and that's why at first we need to take a look at it, let's get the professionals here in North Carolina. Take a look at it and recommend how or should we do that in our state. A unanimous statehouse approved the measure you need support from the Senate to become law for Carolina journal radio minimum where doubling down on freedom at Carolina journal radio were proud to bring you stories that impact your life and your wallet.

And now get twice as much freedom when you also listen to our podcast headlock available on iTunes and@johnlot.org/podcast Locke is a little bit different.

It's a no holds barred discussion that challenges softheaded ideas from the left and the right light. Carolina journal radio headlock is smart and timely but with headlock you'll hear more about the culture wars get some more humor as well. We guarantee great information and a good time double down with that's listen to Carolina journal radio each week and listen to headlock to remember, you can listen to headlock@johnlocke.org/podcast or subscriber download each week iTunes Carolina journal radio and headlock just what you need to stay informed and stay entertained both brought to you in the name of freedom by the John Locke foundation. Welcome back to Carolina journal radio why Michiko God. There's no doubt that the feminist movement has had major impacts on the lives of women, men, how has it affected them next guest address that topic during a recent presentation for the John Locke foundation's Shaftesbury society moment. Sharon is a senior fellow at the ethics and Public policy Center is also the most recent Pope lecture speaker at North Carolina State University. Thanks for joining us like pleasure. Thanks for having some guessing most people when they think about the feminist movement and the impact it's had. Think about women doing, why should we also be thinking about how this is affected. It's a huge untold story. We have we have a culture and society that is very focused on the needs of women, often in very good ways women have special needs at work. Women have to deal with sexual harassment.

Women have challenges of various kinds with juggling home and family A+ work. All right, that's fine. But what we don't tend to pay much attention to is that man in our society are falling behind in worrisome ways we have now a situation where 60% of the undergraduate bachelors degrees that are awarded good women. A similar number of graduate degrees in many fields. Women are graduating from high school at higher rates than men. Women are employed at higher rates than men. Men are also falling away from their family responsibilities and from fatherhood and what I'm worried about and what I think our culture needs to grapple with and pay attention to is that the decline of men as fathers and the decline of appreciating that very important role in their lives and in our society has some has had many many very baleful effects it had bad effects on women, girls who grow up without fathers in the home have many more problems than girls who have involved dad but what we found recently what the social science tells us, and what some of those data that I was just citing suggest is that growing up in a fatherless home is much more devastating for boys and they are paying a much heavier price in terms of life success so boys who grow up without dads or we all know that there much more likely to get involved with the criminal justice system. That's a well-known statistic, but it's also true that there are less ambitious, less likely to want to go to college and less likely to be employed as adults, then their sisters grew up in the same home without a father, and so we need to be particularly attentive to the fact that boys need guidance in order to grow up healthy and happy and frankly to Paul when guys grow up without fathers.

They have much less likely to be the kind of man that women want to marry and so that's another aspect of this assertive were all connected together so much of a tendency to say what's good for women versus what's good for men.

When I try to say in my talk when I said my talk, but I say my book sex matters is that we cannot cannot bifurcate what's good for the sexes that way. World War II connected men and if we women are thriving at the expense of manner of men are failing to thrive. It affects women and vice versa.

We are chatting with motor chair and she is senior fellow at the ethics and Public policy Center. These harmful effects for men. Do you think result from the feminist movement, or is this just something that has happened because of such a focus on women that men of God left behind its that's a very very complicated question. I think to a degree, especially the early second wave feminists that serve the iconic now ready for Dan and Gloria Stein and Jermaine Greer and so forth that crowd certainly contributed to this problem because they were content to talk about women's advancement. They also denigrated men and they denigrated marriage. They felt that marriage was a chat for women and they were very, very keen to destroy what they called the patriarchy and by that they meant not just that men tend to have the corner offices but that marriage itself was a kind of oppression of women and and I think that as and as a matter of intellectual history that did affect the culture it did affect it did serve to devalue marriage and diminish its importance for many people. Obviously there are other things going on as well. The economy is changing to less of an industrial economy were now in a postindustrial information age economy the kinds of jobs that those that are economy now tends to provide our tend to be service oriented jobs where women might have a slight advantage because women are more interpersonally sophisticated Charlie say that men and in general not always, but these things are roughly true and so those things are also contributing but chat but I do think that the that the feminist movement insofar as it denigrated marriage and the importance of fathers in particular played role. We could talk for a long time about what we do now that we know about the problem but what you see is sort of the first thing we need to recognize and address. Now that we know that this problem exists for. We need to focus on the fact that people in the upper third of our society college educated, have figured out that marriage is important. They have a plan for their children and they know that in order for their kids to take their places in the upper echelons of our society that they need to parents and that they need fathers for the most part obviously of same-sex couples. That's not always good to be possible, but time with the other two thirds of our society.

Which is the fast majority of Americans. Marriage has fallen so far out of favor that is almost not the norm.

Now if you look at the numbers of high school dropout women. For example, who have their first baby out of wedlock like 67% and it is no longer the norm for the fit for people with little or so only some college education. So what we do about that. Well, one thing I'll quote Charles Murray here. Mary says that the elites need to preach what they practice because you know don't keep it a secret that this is one of the ways that you can have a successful life and a middle-class income or above and that your child, children are like thrive so very important to message you get the sense that some people are now getting this evidence is so obvious that people see there's a need to act.

I'm not so sure about that but what I do think is that it very much matters how you frame it, you cannot come to people and and chastise them and say you're bad person because you had a baby out of wedlock or you father children out of wedlock. Following the social norms that they inherited. They didn't think they were doing anything particularly wrong.

It's up to us to say hey you might want to rethink this. Here the facts here think the things that you might not have heard about that may not. I quoted a young woman from inner-city high school beautiful young gal smart who was told she said I never was told about the success sequence that is you know that you should do these things in order and be sure to be married before year before your first child. She said no one ever talk. The book is titled sex matters. The author is motor chair and she is senior fellow at the ethics and Public policy Center, also the most recent lecture speaker at NC State University. Thanks much for joining my pleasure on Carolina journal radio just a moment really influence you either have it or you don't and at the John Mott foundation we have it, you'll find our guiding principles in many of the freedom forward reforms of the past decade here in North Carolina. So while others talk or complain or name call. We provide research solutions and hope our team analyzes the pressing issues of the day jobs, healthcare, education, and more. We look for effective ways to give you more freedom, more options, more control over your life. Our goal is to transform North Carolina into a growing, thriving economic powerhouse, the envy of every other state. Our research is how policymakers make decisions that ensure you keep more of what you are. Expand your choice of schools for your kids. Widen your job opportunities improve your access to doctors. The recipe for stability and a bright future for truth for freedom for the future of North Carolina. We are the John Locke foundation. Welcome back to Carolina journal radio I'm Donna Martinez depriving criminals of their ill-gotten gains is clearly a desirable goal for society to challenge, however, says our next guest is to do that in a way that protects the rights of innocent property owners and discourages abuse by law enforcement agencies.

Fact is, that can be a problem but some states are leading the way in trying to prevent it down to say, is director of legal studies at the John lock foundation and he has just released a new report on what is technically known as asset forfeiture. John welcome back to the program start. First of all, North Carolina does have a law about this issue and it protects us.

Might do you say that that's not enough help us understand where where North Carolina is on this issue are asset forfeiture laws rush among the very best in the country under North Carolina's criminal forfeiture statute. If you before property can be taken from somebody who suspected of having used it or acquired through a crime. That person has to be accused and convicted and has to be shown that the property really was connected with the crime in some way. That's very good that protects the incident also discourages abuse is another factor that discourages abuse North Carolina's best law enforcement agencies cannot keep the property or the proceeds of from property that they acquire through forfeiture under North Carolina law. Instead, the proceeds go have to be used for public education that's very good because it takes away the incentive to abuse the system, which is bit of huge problem in many other states. In fact in your report you do point out that North Carolina actually leads in terms of protections but that the federal government has some other laws in some other ways of doing things that allow in some cases law enforcement agencies and skirt North Carolina law. That's right, is called circumvention in the way it works is this under a program called Google sharing state and local law enforcement agencies can use federal law to process seized assets and then they get to keep all or part of the proceeds from those forfeiture John is this a problem in North Carolina.

Well, I don't think it's a problem please if it is not a huge problem. We've looked at. We haven't really found very many in which this process has been abused by North Carolina law enforcement agencies was been a few, but overall all law enforcement agencies have maintain their integrity, a part of the reason they have. Where other states are slipped into abusive police practices is because we have these good protection of the North Carolina law we think is important is to ensure that law enforcement agencies North Carolina are tempted to use this federal anticircumvention process as a way to get around North Carolina protections and that would be led into abusive practices help us understand how the federal law works under what circumstances it can a law enforcement agency in a state actually work with the feds. What is actually true. Ways state and local law enforcement agencies can take advantage of equitable Sherry.

The first way is if they're involved in some kind of a joint task force or joint investigation with a federal agency. When that happened.

If property is forfeited under federal law. That property gets shared. The proceeds from sale so that property actually gets shared between the feds and the state agencies. According to a formula based on how many hours each department is working so I'm that's one way the other way is through a process called adoptions. Now the adoptions program really exists only for one purpose and that is to circumvent state laws away adoptions works is a state law enforcement agencies could seize property instead of processing under state law, with all the protections provided there, they can simply have adopted by federal agency pressed by the Department of Justice or the Department of the Treasury get processed under federal law, and then they get 80% of the proceeds back.

The feds weren't involved in this law enforcement operation all their only job was basically to launder the proceeds through the federal system they keep 20% for their services. Now I'm not an attorney and and I'm not in law enforcement but when I hear you describe those two ways.

The John I one the joint investigations frankly sounds okay to me it sounds like you've had the federal government in a state or local law enforcement agency work together to try to get a bad guy off the street and then the assets that were used as part of that criminal activity. They've split the the proceeds to that, it seems fair.

It is located in a different weight certainly everybody once state law enforcement is to be able to cooperate with the feds whether the law enforcement purpose of doing so and one of the difficulties it states of having try to frame anticircumvention legislation is to do it in a way that doesn't prevent that. So everybody agrees. We do when joint investigations. We do want our agencies to work with the feds. The question is what happens if there's assets sees in the process. What we don't want is that for a joint investigation to be an opportunity for state and local law enforcement to circumvent the state laws and that's what some of these other states have come up with ways to avoid that. Let's talk a little bit about that because I know you're going to be writing another report here.

I'm shortly about North Carolina and how we can address this issue in our state. What we learn from other states have you come up with three particular lessons and one is this to ban or severely restrict federal adoptions because that really are zeroing in on that adoptions process I have for a couple reasons. The main one is to simply no legitimate purpose for the adoptions serve only one purpose about the circumvent state law so that we don't need him if if somebody suspects it property has been used for crime. They can they can see that property vacant forfeited under state law is no reason to go through federal law, other than the fact that if they go through federal law. They don't have to charge or convict the property owner. They don't have to show a nexus with the crime and they get to keep the proceeds that's very important if they process it under state law in North Carolina.

The proceeds go to public education if they process it through the federal system they get to keep those proceeds and no one would want a profit motive to become high on the priority list when you're talking about public safety and law enforcement. Absolutely not what we see in other states were they don't have the protections we have here is we end up with what I call predatory policing the terms of police predators turns the public into their prey that that that opposite of what we want from law enforcement. That's lesson number one. You also write about this recommendation that don't divert forfeiture proceeds away from want force. Yes, the reason we don't want to do that. I made my first glance you might just think well this just excessive the same thing happens it happens in the North Carolina law, even if they process it to federal law, they still have to turn it over to public education that will work. Unfortunately because there's federal rules that say forfeiture proceeds can only be used for law enforcement purposes.

Now I'm sure that that rule was put in place, thinking that it was a good idea, but what it does is it prevents the best way of protecting the public in North Carolina so other states have done this and found it once it went for put that kind rule in place. The feds will cooperate with the majority investigations. We don't want that. And you also write that some states have been trying to experiment with that. What are known as minimum thresholds in order to figure out exactly when when to get involved in this type of thing and when not to house at work. That seems to be the most promising approach to continuing to cooperate with the feds in joint investigations, but avoiding the possibility of abuse in the way these thresholds work as they say. If the if the forfeited about is below a certain threshold. Either you can send it to the feds or you can keep the proceeds both ways have their advantages and disadvantages. But since the vast majority of forfeitures or for small amounts, putting a threshold protects a lot of people, but because most of the actual revenue comes from a large forfeitures doesn't jeopardize the process we been talking with John today. He is the director of legal studies for the John Locke foundation very much. Thank you.that's all the time we have for the program this week.

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