WASHINGTON  – Three Democratic governors told a Senate panel Tuesday that efforts to curb global warming and spur the development of cleaner sources of energy have created jobs and new businesses in their states, a trend that could expand nationwide if Congress passes federal legislation.

All three states – New Jersey, Colorado, and Washington – have adopted measures to achieve reductions in the gases blamed for global warming and standards requiring a certain percentage of electricity from renewable sources.

But this view was not shared by all state leaders testifying Tuesday before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, including North Dakota’s Republican governor and a Democratic state legislator from Arkansas, highlighting regional differences in addressing climate change.

A bill passed earlier this summer by the House that is now under consideration by the Senate would impose the first nationwide limits on greenhouse gases and require electric utilities to produce at least 12 percent of their power from pollution-free sources such wind and solar energy by 2020.

“If there is a lesson…for other states and the nation as a whole, it is that good energy policy and climate policy can energize the economy and help create good-paying private sector jobs,” said Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, Jr., although he did not specifically endorse the House-passed bill.

To illustrate his point, Ritter described the transformation of Pueblo, Colo., from an old steel town to a center of wind turbine production.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said her state has already created in two years nearly twice the 25,000 new “green” jobs it set as a goal to reach by 2020. Those workers include architects who design energy-efficient buildings, venture capitalists investing in new technology, and farmers growing the next
generation of biofuels, she said.

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine said the state has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent and is looking to construct wind farms offshore. He told the panel national leadership was needed to create the energy future the country needs.

But Republican Gov. John Hoeven of North Dakota said the legislation under consideration would cause job losses in his oil-producing state. The prospect of a climate change bill already has halted new technologies to harvest oil and natural gas, Hoeven said.

He was joined by Arkansas state Rep. John Lowery, a Democrat and the owner of Lowery Oil Co., who said that while the bill may create green jobs for the West Coast and Northeast, it would harm middle America.

“It might be popular for some in Washington to demonize oil and gas, fertilizer and chemical companies, and farmers,” Lowery said, “but where I come from, they are an integral part of our communities.”

The House bill would set up a cap-and-trade system. Under such a regime, limits would be placed on emissions of greenhouse gases and a market would be created where business could buy and sell permits to pollute.

“As I’ve stated before, cap-and-trade benefits the coasts at the expense of the heartland,” said Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the panel’s top Republican.

Lawmakers from the West Coast and Northeast, which have less manufacturing and have already taken strides to clean up their energy supply, contend the bill will be an economic boon.

“We are facing two historic challenges today – the current recession, and the dangers of unchecked global warming,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the committee chairwoman. “And we have the opportunity to address both with a single solution.”

RALEIGH, N.C.  – Lawmakers elected two failed candidates in last year’s race for state treasurer for seats on the University of North Carolina Board of Governors.

State Democratic Party chairman David Young of Asheville, Republican Bill Daughtridge of Rocky Mount, and six others were elected Wednesday to eight House appointments to the board that oversees the state’s 16 public universities. Three others were in the contest, including Willis Whichard of Chapel Hill, a former state Supreme Court judge and former dean of the Campbell University law school.

The Senate elected eight nominees last week.

Daughtridge was in the state House for six years before the Republican ran last year for treasurer, a race won by Democrat Janet Cowell.

Q. There was a story in the news recently about a bear sighting near the Governor’s Western Residence. Is this her personal residence or one maintained by the State of North Carolina? – J.H.

A. North Carolina is one of just five states to have two official residences for its governor, according to a history of the residence provided by the governor’s office. Although it is an official residence, it was given to the state, and much of the money to support it comes from donations.

The Governor’s Western Residence, 45 Patton Mountain Road in Asheville, was donated to the state by the Asheville Chamber of Commerce in 1964.

The donors “believed that by having a western residence, the governor would spend more time with them – and they would have more influence in state government circles,” Carroll Leggett wrote in the “Between You and Me” column in January’s Raleigh Metro Magazine.

The Western Residence has been available to the following governors: Terry Sanford, Dan Moore, Bob Scott, Jim Holshouser, Jim Martin, Jim Hunt, Mike Easley and Bev Perdue.

Many of those governors did not spend much time there.

That may change under Perdue, who grew up in the mountains of southwestern Virginia.

“During the campaign, Perdue promised residents of Western North Carolina that she would spend time at the Western Governor’s Residence in Asheville and conduct business there,” Leggett wrote. “She stressed that although she hails from ‘Down East,’ she intends to be the governor of all North Carolina. ‘I also want to take the Council of State up there,’” she said.

The 6,000-square-foot home was built in 1939 by Tom Brimer of Washington, who owned the Good Humor Ice Cream Co.

It sits on 18 acres, including a picnic pavilion built in the 1990s that can accommodate up to 250 people.
The pavilion is available not only to the governor but also to civic and nonprofit groups and government agencies, who can use it for events.

“A minimal amount of funding for the basic operation of the residence is funded by the state,” according to a history from the governor’s office. “Major funding is secured by donations from individual citizens and corporation. The Residence is maintained by the Department of Correction, and has one full-time manager and an assistant manager.”

A nonprofit group, the Governor’s Western Residence Association, handles expenses that are not covered by the state.

The State Senate Wednesday elected eight members to the UNC Board of Governors.Twelve candidates were nominated and the top eight vote recipients were to be elected.

According to a press release from the GOP, Democrats have controlled the voting process so that the real election is conducted behind closed doors.

“Their method is to select the winners in a closed caucus; they then have the nominees who fail to make the cut ‘withdraw’ their names,” the press release said. “The vote on the Senate floor then proceeds with only eight names eligible for the eight seats. Any ballot marked by a Senate member that contains a name other than the pre-selected eight is disqualified and not counted.”

Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) made the following statement:

“Yesterday’s vote on the State Health Plan illustrated how Senate Democrats fix a bill behind closed doors. Today, we saw how they manipulate the UNC Board of Governors election. This “Soviet” styled balloting is an affront to our Democratic system and to the people of North Carolina.”

These are the members elected to the board:

• John Blackburn of Linville currently serves as Chair of the Appalachian State University Board of Trustees, of which he has been a member since 2005. He is President and General Manager of Linville Resorts, Inc. Blackburn has served on the Crossnore School Board of Trustees, the Cannon Memorial Hospital Board of Directors, and was a co-founder of the Avery County YMCA.
• Peaches Gunter Blank of Nashville, Tennessee, is a current member of the UNC Board of Governors, where she was first elected in 2005. She is private consultant in healthcare issues who previously served as Chief of Staff and Deputy to the Governor of Tennessee, President of the Hospital Alliance of Tennessee, and as a senior policy staff member for Governor Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. She served for five years as Chair of the Board of Trustees of North Carolina State University.
• Laura Buffaloe of Roanoke Rapids is a current member of the UNC Board of Governors, where she was first elected in 2006. She is a retired educator who worked at Halifax Community College, serving as Dean of Instruction from 1998-2000 and Vice President of Instructional Services until her retirement in 2005. Buffaloe is a graduate of Elizabeth City State University and received her Doctorate in Education from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and has served on numerous civic boards.
• Phil Dixon of Greenville is a current member of the UNC Board of Governors, where he was first elected in 2005. He is a practicing attorney, who has represented local school boards for the past 21 years. Dixon has served as Chair of the Pitt-Greenville Chamber of Commerce and the Pitt County Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Developmental Disabilities Area Board. He is a graduate of Eastern Carolina University and received his law degree from UNC-Chapel Hill.
• Paul Fulton of Winston-Salem is currently serving his second term on the Board of Trustees of UNC-Chapel Hill. He worked for Hanes and Sara Lee Corporations for 38 years and was President of Sara Lee from 1988-93, Dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School from 1993-97, and is currently Chairman of the Board of Bassett Furniture Industries, Inc. Fulton served as a Trustee at Winston-Salem State University for 8 years, Co-Chair of the Carolina First fundraising campaign at UNC-CH, and as Co-Chair of the state’s Higher Education Bond Oversight Committee.
• Hannah Gage of Wilmington is the currently Chair of the UNC Board of Governors, where she was first elected in 2001. She is a businesswoman and retired broadcast executive who built and managed radio stations across the Southeast. Gage served as a Member and Chair of the UNC-Wilmington Board of Trustees, on the N.C. Coastal Land trust board, and on Southeastern N.C. Community Foundation board. She is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill.
• Franklin McCain of Charlotte currently serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees for North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. He is retired from Hoest Celanese Corporation and is Chairman of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund North Carolina Committee. He received his undergraduate and Master’s degrees from North Carolina A&T and received worldwide acclaim as one of the four A&T students who took part in the Woolworth sit-in in 1960.
• Burley Mitchell of Raleigh is currently a member of the NC State University Board of Trustees. He was Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, on which he served from 1982-1999. Prior to that, Mitchell was a member of the Court of Appeals, Secretary of the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, an Assistant Attorney General, and District Attorney. Mitchell is currently an attorney with Womble Carlyle in Raleigh. He graduated from NC State and received his law degree from UNC-Chapel Hill.

The UNC-Board of Governors is the policy-making body legally charged with “the general determination, control, supervision, management, and governance of all affairs of the constituent institutions.” It elects the president, who administers the University. The 32 voting members of the Board of Governors are elected by the General Assembly for four-year terms.

President Barack Obama warned the nation’s governors Monday to spend wisely the billions of dollars in economic stimulus headed to their states — or face the consequences.

“If a federal agency proposes a project that will waste that money, I will put a stop to it,” Obama told the governors at the White House. “But I want everybody here to be on notice that if a state government does the same, then I will call them out on it and use the full power of my office and our administration to stop it.”

The first stream of the $787 billion stimulus package will trickle into the economy on Wednesday, when $15 billion to help pay for health care for the poor is made available to the states.

After the White House meeting, Gov. Bev Perdue, D-N.C., said she wants to get as much stimulus package money as possible for the state. North Carolina is slated to receive at least $6 billion in direct funding for schools, roads, health care and other needs.

At the three-day National Governor’s Association conference in Washington that ended Monday and in meetings with White House officials, Perdue said she developed a better understanding of additional funding in the legislation for which the state can apply.

Her administration plans by the end of the week to launch a Web site tracking how the money is spent in the state.

“We’re not going to throw money away. We’re going to be efficient,” she said.

Some conservative Republican governors said after the meeting that they plan to reject at least some of the available money.

Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., repeated his concerns that the plan will hinder the economy by expanding the deficit and that it contains some spending provisions that will not stimulate the economy for several years.

“I think it’s certain we won’t accept parts of the money. We’re going through with a fairly fine tooth comb right now, trying to see what makes sense,” Sanford said.

In remarks to the governors, Obama – without naming names – said he is troubled by intense criticism from some Republican governors of small parts of the legislation.

“If we agree on 90 percent of the stuff, and we’re spending all our time on television arguing about 1, 2, 3 percent of the spending in this thing and somehow it’s being characterized in broad brush as wasteful spending, that starts sounding more like politics — and that’s what right now we don’t have time to do,” Obama said.

Perdue said she would be more than happy to take any money South Carolina rejected.

“I said to Mark Sanford yesterday at lunch…that I am not a real good driver, but I will take a pickup truck to South Carolina and be glad to take any of the money that Mark Sanford and the people of Couth Carolina don’t want,” she said.

Web Extra: Hear from Gov. Perdue in Washington. Click on the video below.

WASHINGTON- After an evening of black tie grandeur at the White House, governors planned to return Monday morning for a business meeting with President Barack Obama to discuss how to spend the economic stimulus money soon flowing to their states.

Concluding a three-day winter meeting of the National Governors Association devoted largely to a discussion of the stimulus bill, governors planned to bring questions and offer ideas to Obama at a 90-minute meeting Monday morning.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat and the NGA chairman, said he planned to press the president on the need for more investment in infrastructure projects like road and bridge repair going forward.

“Although the stimulus program is a great first step, we want to impress on the president that it’s only a first step. We need to plan for the future, for the next five to 10 years,” Rendell said Sunday.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman who has criticized the stimulus plan, said he nonetheless looked forward to hearing Obama’s views on repairing the distressed economy.

“He’s a new president, and we certainly owe him that,” Barbour said.

White House officials said that for his part, Obama would stress the need for accountability and transparency in how the governors spend the stimulus funds. He issued a similar warning to the nation’s mayors on Friday, saying he would “call them out” if they waste the money.

At the governors’ meeting, Obama planned to name Earl Devaney, a former Secret Service agent who helped expose lobbyists’ corruption at the Interior Department, to head the new Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board. Vice President Joe Biden also will be given a role coordinating oversight of stimulus spending, officials said.

Obama created the board as an at-large body to oversee how the government spends the $787 billion stimulus package.

Sunday night, the president and first lady Michelle Obama hosted the governors for a black-tie dinner at the White House – the Obamas’ first since last month’s inauguration.

“Our goal is to make life easier and not harder for you during the time that we’re here in Washington,” Obama told the governors. “I want you to know that despite our occasional differences, my hope is that we can all work together.”

WASHINGTON—The nation’s governors will discuss reforming the country’s health care system during the upcoming 2009 National Governors Association (NGA) Winter Meeting, which convenes later this month.

The discussion will occur during NGA’s Health and Human Services (HHS) Committee meeting on Sunday, Feb. 22 at 2 p.m. at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C.

“More than 45 million people are uninsured, public programs are straining to afford the already frayed safety net and the coverage people receive is often unnecessarily expensive and at times of poor overall quality,” said Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, the committee’s chair. “This session is an opportunity for us to discuss ways to improve the quality of health care and meet the challenge making health care more affordable for all Americans.”

“Our nation loses money each year because of the poor health and premature deaths of uninsured Americans. This creates a significant burden on affected individuals and their families, as well as the state and federal economies,” said Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell, the committee’s vice chair. “Governors understand the need to find solutions to our system, and I look forward to discussing ways to provide quality, cost-effective health care to our citizens.”

Governors will be joined by Michigan Congressman John Dingell, chairman emeritus of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the U.S. House of Representatives, who will discuss the efforts underway in Congress to address broad national health care reform.

The Honorable Michael O. Leavitt also will join the committee to discuss his unique perspective both as former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and former Utah governor and chair of NGA.

Founded in 1908, the National Governors Association (NGA) is the collective voice of the nation’s governors and one of Washington, D.C.’s most respected public policy organizations. Its members are the governors of the 50 states, three territories and two commonwealths. NGA provides governors and their senior staff members with services that range from representing states on Capitol Hill and before the Administration on key federal issues to developing and implementing innovative solutions to public policy challenges through the NGA Center for Best Practices.

WASHINGTON— The National Governors Association Tuesday released the following statement:

“States are facing fiscal conditions not seen since the Great Depression – anticipated budget shortfalls are expected in excess of $200 billion. To address these shortfalls and meet balanced budget requirements, states have begun taking action to cut government services or increase revenue. Absent federal action, states will have to take even stronger actions that will make the recession more severe and slow the nation’s economic recovery.

“Governors support the objectives of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan to stimulate private investment, create jobs and speed recovery. Governors also support several key elements of the bill critical to states — increased federal support for Medicaid and K-12 and higher education; investment in the nation’s infrastructure; and tax provisions to spur investment. Governors also support additional transparency and accountability provisions to protect the American taxpayer.

“Governors encourage Congress to complete work on the recovery package as quickly as possible and stand ready to work with Congress as it finalizes the legislation to ensure states can immediately put federal dollars to work to preserve core services, create new jobs and increase the nation’s competitiveness.”

Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue plans to join a meeting of the nation’s governors with President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden in Philadelphia on Tuesday morning.