A monumental decision

Published July 28, 2015

Editorial by Rocky Mount Telegram, July 27, 2015.

North Carolina lawmakers seem to spin a roulette wheel when it comes to deciding what local government officials can do and what they can’t.

On the one hand, the N.C. General Assembly passed legislation earlier this year that would have allowed local magistrates to recuse themselves from performing marriage ceremonies based on personal religious beliefs. On the other hand, the legislature last week passed a bill banning local governments from removing historical markers, monuments and statues, no matter how controversial. That’s not something a local government is capable of deciding, lawmakers more or less said.

We can’t help but wonder what might have happened if a magistrate had objected on religious grounds to a historical marker commemorating same-sex marriage.

But this editorial isn’t about the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage ruling. It’s about the state sticking its nose into a growing list of functions a lot of us thought we could trust our locally elected officials to handle.

Lawmakers already have outlawed forced annexation and blown up the voting districts for Greensboro City Council and the Wake County Board of Education. Now they want to make sure no one gets any ideas about changing the monuments and markers that adorn our parks and courthouses.

As we’ve noted in the past, a decision about what’s on the steps of the Nash County Courthouse or on the Common in Tarboro is better decided by our friends and neighbors in the Twin Counties. It’s hard to understand why the General Assembly thinks decisions like those would be better off in the hands of lawmakers from Asheville, Wilmington and dozens of other towns and cities that are hundreds of miles from the Rocky Mount community.

The General Assembly continues to wrestle with a budget proposal that should have been passed before June 30, when the fiscal year ended. It would appear to us that lawmakers have their hands full enough already – without trying to decide what should be on every town’s square.