- Hi, I'm Mitch Kokai, filling in for Mark Rotterman.

Coming up on Front Row, a Moore County power outage raises security questions.

Education reform in North Carolina.

And new concerns about young people's mental health.

Coming up next.

And by... A complete list of funders can be found at PBSNC.org/Front Row.

♪ - Welcome back.

Joining the conversation, Donna King from the Carolina Journal.

Political analyst, Joe Stewart.

Democratic State Senator Jay Chaudhuri.

And Asher Hildebrand, professor at Duke University.

State and federal authorities are looking into the circumstances of the recent Moore County power outage.

Someone fired shots at two Duke Energy substations causing damage that left much of the county with no power for days.

In addition to the investigation of what happened, there's talk of what needs to happen moving forward to protect the electrical grid.

Donna, this reminds us we're very vulnerable in some respects.

- It really is, and this is a huge wake up call I think to much of the country because this is happening.

There's been a few other instances in Oregon and other areas.

Federal regulators this week said they want an investigation and they want a review of security standards.

They want a report within 120 days with recommendations on how we can shore up security at these critical junctures.

You know, you had about 45,000 people without power.

They lost everything in their refrigerators, freezers $600 on average of wages.

But really high-definition cameras, 24 hour security maybe some opaque walls.

Those recommendations coming in about 120 days from now.

- Joe, what stood out to you?

- Well, I think there are a lot of vulnerabilities and not just to the electrical grid.

I mean surface water reservoirs are also in peril.

And I remember back at, after 9/11, I worked in the state treasurer's office.

We realized there were a lot of vulnerabilities to usual functions of state government.

We just had never thought about this before.

Golly, when was the last time we had these concerns?

1942 when they moved the Rose Bowl from Pasadena to Durham, North Carolina.

- Right.

- Because they were afraid of a possible Japanese attack on the West coast.

But we have to think about the world in a slightly different way.

These sorts of vulnerabilities throughout our utility and governmental infrastructures have gotta be addressed because that's the type of threat we face today.

- Senator, I'm guessing that you and your colleagues are going to be spending at least some attention on addressing these types of issues in the new session?

- Yeah, no, I think this will be a top priority within the general assembly.

My sense is the responses really are gonna fall in two categories.

One is gonna be what we can do to prevent such attacks and that includes hardening the grid, which we've heard from some legislators.

And the other is gonna be focusing on a response, which is I think will also include enhancing criminal penalties.

Cause as my understanding is, someone who commits an offense may not even serve jail time at this point.

You know, Senator Paul Newton who's a former Duke Energy executive is taking the lead on this.

He's bringing a lot of experience with him.

And I think that he's right when he says this is an area where the state can get ahead of the federal government.

Because I think what's interesting is when you look at energy security there's not a single federal agency that's responsible for protecting our energy sector.

And so we at the state level have a real opportunity to get ahead of the federal government.

- A lot of things at the general assembly end up being partisan, R&D, left and right.

My guess is this is something that you all will probably come together on?

- I hope so.

I mean, I think making sure that our citizens have energy and I think also as we've discussed how vulnerable the grid is.

There are 55,000 substations in this country.

If nine of them are taken out you can see a coast to coast blackout in the country.

So it's a real issue and it's a real wake up call.

- Asher, this is something that's gonna be of interest at the state level, also at the federal level too.

- That's right.

And I'll just add that, you know, I'm very encouraged so far by the bipartisan response, federal, state and local level investigators all working together to get to the bottom of this.

And I think we'll see some action at both levels.

I'll just add that it does feel a little bit like the debate we sometimes have after a school shootings where we're talking about hardening doors, arming teachers instead of getting to the root causes of the violence.

And while we don't know whether this attack was in fact an act of domestic terrorism or whether it was related to the drag show that had just begun in Southern Pines at the time.

We do know that two days before the attack, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning saying we can expect ideologically driven attacks against critical infrastructure.

That was borne out not just in Moore County, but in a string of attacks in Oregon and Washington.

And we also know that attacks against the LGBTQ community have been rising sort of independent of whether this was related to that.

And so I'm encouraged by the response.

I also hope that our elected officials will show as much concern for those other trends as they do for the power grid itself.

- You alluded to the fact that once the knowledge about this came out, we saw that there was actually a lot of information about other similar attacks across the country that hadn't gotten as much national attention.

This has to worry us.

- I think it's a trend that's not gonna go away, whatever the motivations.

And, again, I think hardening the grid is the first step, but we also have to look at the rise in domestic extremism as a possible cause of these attacks and do much more to address that as well.

- Quickly before we move on, do you think we'll see some legislation, Senator, in this next session that will address something about this?

- I think so.

There's already discussions about enhancing criminal penalties but it'll be interesting to see if we do things on the preventive side, including hardening the grid.

But this, again, is a real opportunity for a lot of different agencies to come together to figure out what we need to do.

- Very important topic.

Let's talk about another one.

Two different groups finalized reports this week designed to improve public education in North Carolina.

The Joint Legislative Oversight Committee and a special House Committee on the future of education are talking about things like school calendar flexibility, competency-based education, early literacy, changes in high stakes testing, even the powers of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Joe, you've been watching legislative action for a long time.

Is any of this going to lead to any actual changes?

- Well, it's interesting I think in public education issues, I'm reminded of the scene from the movie "North Dallas Forty", where the football player complains that when the players want to talk about it as a business, the coaches want to talk about it as a sport and when the players want to talk about it as a sport, the coaches want to talk about it as a business.

Public education is a huge part of what the State of North Carolina does, just from an expenditure standpoint.

If we're gonna change public education, we probably need to change it holistically, instead of trying to fix little pieces of it.

It's a very difficult and complex thing and undoubtedly there is a public education institutional industrial complex involved in this and everybody has a role and everybody has a say.

The Oversight Committee in its report I thought was interesting.

It talked a little bit about apprenticeship.

Now, this is a clear indication that at least there's some recognition that K-12 education in this state has to help at least in part prepare people for the types of employment opportunities there are in the economy of the 21st century.

Apprenticeships have been proven as a great way to get young people familiar with a particular trade or vocation and get practical skills towards that.

We don't think of apprenticeship necessarily as an element of our educational infrastructure, but it should be, and I'm glad to see that in the report.

The other Special Committee, they talk about structural piers, the fundamental things within public education.

Representative Torbett has done a lot to try to bring attention to these issues, but I think a systemic change still comes back to this point.

If you're gonna try to fix something that you think is broken, it's always gonna be like patches on the highway.

It might be a little smoother, but not entirely smoother.

Ripping up the road and starting over, that's probably where we need to go.

- Senator, what stood out to you?

- Well, I think there were some things that were not surprising and some things that were surprising, particularly in the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee that you mentioned.

In the not surprising category, I'm not sure we needed a committee to tell us that students need a high quality standard education.

Something to me that sounds vaguely familiar, similar to the State constitutional provision in making sure that each child requires a sound basic education.

And also in that category, they recommended that we need to do a better job of hiring and retaining teachers.

I think any parent or principal you asked could tell you that.

But I think in the surprising category, the Committee did find that local boards of education should have greater flexibility.

Calendar flexibility also is a very controversial issue at the General Assembly, and I think that that finding is interesting, coming out on the fact that three school districts now have defied the calendar school law, and we have Union County that was voting this week.

And also in the surprising category, and probably the most controversial recommendation, is the one to grant authority to the State Superintendent, a change that would require a constitutional change because of the division between the State Board of Education and the Superintendent that's created perhaps more strife than support, but I think there seems to be a better relationship there today.

- Asher, what stood out to you?

I'm actually gonna focus on a couple of the not surprising things because I think while it may sound a little boiler plate, the fact that this committee chaired by Representative Torbett is saying, "yes, we still believe that every student in this state deserves a high quality education", they don't mention the Constitution, but that's a right in our State Constitution, and saying that the State should continue to increase teacher pay to address the teacher shortage, those are things we should all be able to agree on.

The second one hits especially close to home for me as the parent of a child who still does not have a full-time teacher in his classroom halfway through the school year.

So before we get to some of this other stuff, I think let's start with the basics.

I would only add, of course, that if Representative Torbett and his colleagues are truly interested in fulfilling these recommendations, there's a clear and easy way to do that, which would be to let the State Supreme Court decision stand and fully implement the Leandro agreement instead of fighting the decision, and I'll leave it at that.

- Took us about three minutes to get to Leandro.

[laughter] Donna, we've got about 45 seconds left.

- Sure, sure, so this report did have a lot of recommendations, most of which are not actually in the Leandro Proposal that was in there.

Among them, calendar.

Some have said Memorial Day to Labor Day, or Labor Day to Memorial Day.

One of the things that came out of this, teachers said we are really frustrated with discipline.

We need better discipline systems.

We need better accountability.

And really, higher pay based on performance, rather than on time of service.

And that's something else that came out of this.

I'm really actually excited.

I like the idea of flipping it upside down, coming up with new ideas, and just sort of starting from scratch to really fix this.

We have a real problem.

And we need to do something about it.

- Well, you're excited about this.

But I don't think anyone's gonna be excited about this next topic.

It's actually kind of disappointing, or maybe even disturbing.

The State's Child Fatality Task Force heard a report this week about the state of mental health among North Carolina's young people.

Among the key findings of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, just 49% of students reported feeling good about themselves.

That's down from 60% in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senator, we're gonna start with you on this tough topic.

That's gotta be something of concern to everyone, but especially people making policy.

- Yeah, I mean, look, I think as a parent of two kids in public school, and as a policymaker, this is a great concern.

I mean, I think if you take apart the numbers that were put out by this report, also troubling is that half of the students that were lesbian, gay or bisexual considered suicide, versus 15% of their straight counterparts.

And for female students, they saw the number of those that considered suicide to jump from 23% two years ago to 30%.

So we know that mental health is continuing to be a challenge.

The other part of the report that I found really interesting it's worth noting that 17% of the students said that they did not go to school because they felt unsafe in some way on the way to school or at school.

That's up almost double compared to five years ago.

And that's a real issue, as we confront gun violence in school.

I think it's important to recognize, as someone said during the presentation of this report, I mean, this is really the only survey we have that uses student voices.

And so these are students talking about themselves.

- Asher, you talked about having a child in school.

This has gotta be something disturbing to you too.

- To me, on that level.

And as someone who teaches college students for a living, I see it every single day.

And I think this survey provides striking new evidence of something we already know to be true, which is that the last few years have just taken an incalculable toll on the mental health of children and young adults.

And that this represents a public health crisis whose urgency and severity we're only beginning to grapple with.

I also think it can and should represent an area of bipartisan consensus.

President Biden in his State of the Union address at the beginning of this year unveiled a national strategy for mental health.

In July, he followed through on that by awarding $300 million to expand mental health services at schools.

The gun safety legislation enacted by Congress, which had bipartisan support, included 1.7 billion for mental health in communities and schools.

And many Republican governors have made this a centerpiece of their agenda.

Now, with divided government on the horizon in both Washington and Raleigh, I'm not optimistic of action of the kind of magnitude we truly need.

But there's absolutely no excuse for this not to be an area of bipartisan concern.

- Absolutely.

- Donna, you have one child in high school.

- Yes.

- And another in college.

- Yes, and I have to echo, of course, what Asher said, the toll particularly for high school and college students, you cannot understate how significant it is.

We've had universities in our area have five, six, seven suicides this semester alone.

And I think what we're seeing is, because really, we're comparing it to 2019, these kids are suddenly back in the classroom.

They have broken connections with peers, broken connections with advisors and teachers.

And taking a mental health day and sending everybody home, that's not going to do it.

No matter how many yoga sessions and craft projects you do on campus, the kids are just gonna go back to their dorms and apartments and think about what's going on.

Professors are gonna go home.

That doesn't help, these kids have lost their trail.

They've lost all the internships and proposals that they have coming, and the idea of furthering their education and getting new jobs, and that hope for the future has completely dissolved during that time that they were out of school.

And that's what they need to re-institute.

Every single advisor and professor needs to make an in-person touch with every student that they work with, and help them rebuild that hope, that's what they've lost.

And I think that's why we're seeing it so significantly in that teenage, college-age group.

- Joe, we've got about a minute left.

- Yeah, no, I think the one thing I would say is COVID has certainly exacerbated this.

But we are at a different place in our culture and society.

Young people, and all people, quite frankly, are exposed to far more information and available resources on what are the bad things going on in the world.

This isn't just a phenomena of COVID.

This is not just a temporary thing that we've gotta address.

I think in some ways we have gone beyond our species' ability to navigate the culture and society that we have, in terms of all of the information the pressure, the societal changes that have taken place.

We just need a different way of thinking about providing the types of services people need to make sure that they have a good mental health outlook on life.

Telemedicine has made the accessibility for professionals, for people that have serious concerns and wanna talk to a professional.

So I think a holistic approach to this is very important.

COVID was a big problem, that's not the only part of this.

There's more going on in our society and our culture that's really a big challenge for everybody.

- This topic is going to be with us for a while I think.

North Carolina, Senator Thom Tillis, has attracted extra attention in recent weeks.

Tillis was a key Republican involved in finalizing federal legislation that protects same sex marriage.

He had also been reported as working with now independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema on an immigration reform compromise.

That one fell short.

But both of those issues have surprised some in North Carolina, including those within his own party.

Asher Hildebrand, what do we make of Thom Tillis and what he's been up to?

- Look, I think Senator Tillis has clearly demonstrated that he's willing to compromise and reach across the aisle to get things done.

And the fact that we're taking note of it reflects the fact that it's an unfortunately rare quality among many of our elected officials these days.

It will not surprise you that I feel compelled to point out that being willing to compromise is not the same thing as being a moderate, right.

This is the same Senator Tillis who led the effort to amend our state constitution 10 years ago to ban same sex marriage and who called the decision to overturn Roe versus Wade historic and monumental, and who unlike our senior senator, Richard Burr, voted to acquit Donald Trump.

On the other hand, the Institution of Congress only works if you have members of both parties who are willing to occasionally stare down their base and expend political capital to work with their political opposition in common purpose.

And Senator Tillis, to give credit where credit is due, Senator Tillis has shown that he's one of those members.

- What do you think is up with Thom Tillis?

- Well, you know, I think exactly that.

I you know, I've watched him for a long time and I found him to be an extremely strategic person.

He operates, you know, nothing is exactly what you see.

He's always got a plan working.

He's always thinking about the next step.

And that's just the kind of person he is.

But he's always been, even when he was here in the General Assembly, I found to be very willing to pull in people from across the aisle to accomplish one plan in general.

But I do think it's gonna be a challenge.

Is he gonna come back and maybe jump in the gubernatorial primary?

And he's thinking about that.

Will he be able to find the financial support and the, you know the just infrastructure you need on the Republican side with those two things hanging out there?

I mean, it's gonna be a challenge, but I really think it's difficult to, you know, you can't really count him out in that way because he's very good at talking to people.

He's good at, you know unifying people behind a common cause.

- Joe Stewart, you've been watching North Carolina politics for years.

What do you think about the latest actions from Thom Tillis?

- Well, you know if politics is anything, it's interesting.

So this is interesting to me in this regard.

If you look at who Senator Tillis is working with, Senator Sinema from Arizona announcing she's even decided to change her partisan affiliation, who knew that Joe Manchin would become such a significant US Senator as a result of the close.

Kevin McCarthy having to scramble to get votes even to be speaker of the house.

These are strange times in politics.

And so it's not surprising that someone like Thom Tillis, to your point exactly, didn't necessarily come into politics as a politician, more of a pragmatic business minded person, worked as a consultant, helping solve problems within corporations.

And so perhaps Senator Tillis sees this as an opportunity this new landscape in Washington, to rise above the fray and try to come up with some solutions to problems that we face.

And we may see that Senator Tillis is gonna have the heat turned up on him a little bit among Republicans back here in North Carolina.

There was some speculation, maybe he would be a prospect for governor in 2024, others saying, well how would he ever get out of a Republican primary for that?

But it, I know him well enough to know, I think he does the things that he believes in and he feels strongly on the issue that he will champion that cause even if it means crossing a line that frustrates or angers some people within his own party.

But I can see him now in the role of the senior senator now that he will become the senior senator.

Maybe he sees the opportunity for leadership in a different way than he did when he was the junior senator.

- Senator, we've got about a minute left in this segment.

You're one of these people who has to cross the aisle at times to work with the other side.

What do you make of what Senator Tillis is up to?

- I, you know, I think this may represent the evolution of Senator Tillis based on what Asher talked about in his role as speaker, which I think he did have such a reputation but I think it's important to think about even during his time in the Senate, during his first term where he wrote an op-ed criticizing President Trump for using his emergency powers to build the wall and also voted against that bill.

But then three weeks later turned around and reversed his decision.

But, I, you know, I think Senator Tillis may be having his moment.

I mean, it's not only just on immigration reform.

He was a key player in NATO expansion, gun reform electoral count act reform.

So we've seen him really kind of work across the aisle.

I think it's also interesting to point out that I think he played an instrumental role in ousting Madison Cawthorne from his time working in Congress.

And so, you know, that I think it represents an evolution.

But if you also look in his polling data that just came out, he has some of the highest unfavorabilities among Republicans right now.

- Well, we'll be watching him very closely.

In our last segment, we wanna go around the horn once again and ask you all for a story, something else that's happening that we should be paying attention to.

You've got about 45 seconds each.

- Donna?

- Absolutely.

I've been watching Senator Richard Burr, Congressman G.K. Butterfield, and Congressman David Price, all farewell this week.

They're heading off, they're retiring from their role representing North Carolina.

You're really looking at a combined, more than 80 years of experience on Capitol Hill representing North Carolina.

Done a lot of amazing things while they were there.

So, noting their contributions to the culture there and some of the things that they've been able to accomplish is really remarkable.

And also noting that Madison Cawthorn is also leaving.

Not quite as many years under his belt there on Capitol Hill.

- [Asher] But probably as much controversy - But just as much controversy, and I think- [all laughing] - [Joe] He packed it in.

- Yeah.

He's not been seen much around the Hill here lately, but the others delivering farewell addresses.

- That's right.

Joe, what else should we know?

- Revenue collections for the state of North Carolina slightly above projections, about 10%, the most recent announcements.

Talking to some business leaders across the state, this has been a good year for a lot of businesses, which mean generally the tax collections will be slightly higher when they're reported in the early part of next year.

So going into the legislative session, you may find that there are resources, not necessarily recurring, but some significant resources that could be handed out to address some of these concerns that we've had and talked about even on the show today.

And so things look good for North Carolina.

Recession may be on the horizon, but for now we're doing pretty well.

- Senator Chaudhuri, what else should we know this week?

- Well, I think one of the interesting things to observe this week is WRAL had a story about the North Carolina Democratic Party that seems to be experiencing a lot of self-reflection.

And I think the discussion and debate within the party's important because of what's happening, what's gonna happen in 2024.

There's one school of thought of national Democrats that believe that they should not invest in North Carolina given our track record with statewide elections that have happened both at the U.S. Senate race and judicial races.

We are compared to being similar to Lucy trying to kick the football in politics.

But on the other hand, we are the bluest of red states.

We're on the knife's edge.

And there's an argument to say that national Democrats didn't invest more in this state.

But I think you're gonna see a microcosm of those debates taking place with the North Carolina Democratic Party right now, which goes to recruitment of candidates, how to turn voters out, and whether we're doing a good job messaging or not.

- Those elections, the last couple cycles have been 51-49, 52-48 for Republicans, not 55-45 or 60-40.

- Well, but you're right.

But I think the problem has been just around expectations.

I think North Carolina was always viewed as being ahead of Virginia and even Georgia, and now we're seeing both of those states able to actually elect Democrats that we haven't been able to do.

- Asher Hildebrand, what else should we know?

- Doesn't count as under the radar, but on Monday, but I think some people have stopped paying attention, on Monday the January 6th committee will be holding what is widely expected to be its final hearing, is going to be making criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, and issuing its final report.

Big question is whether Donald Trump's name is among the criminal referrals, and if so, what the Department of Justice and its new special counsel decides to do with that.

But I wanna set that aside for the moment just to point out that this is a committee that has now talked to over 1,000 witnesses, reviewed millions of documents, has held about a dozen hearings, has operated with seriousness of purpose on a bipartisan basis, at least among those who are serving on the committee.

And so I just think it's something that will go down in history as an important part of this period in our nation's history, and that we should recognize and celebrate that accomplishment regardless of what its final report says or what criminal referrals are made.

- Yes or no, have people paid enough attention to this group?

- No.

- Very interesting.

Well, a lot of interesting topics, a lot of great conversation.

I wanna thank the panel for joining us once again.

We want to thank you for watching the program, and we continue to support you watching us, and we wanna have you join us again next week on "Front Row."

Thank you.

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