Sam Neill, a former Democratic Congressional candidate and 12-year-member of the UNC Board of Governors, has been disbarred for stealing trust fund money. Neill agreed to give up his license and admitted misconduct.

Neill, who is from Hendersonville, is a well known fixture in Western North Carolina political circles. He twice ran against former U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor and lost. He served as chairman of the UNC Board of Governors for two years.

According to The Asheville Citizen-Times, Neill was named trustee of a charitable trust by Barry E. Clemo, who died in February 2009. The trust called for Neill to distribute the money to the Community Foundation of Henderson County and Four Seasons Hospice.  A recent court filing said the two organizations received nothing from the trust, and that Neill hasn't accounted for the money when asked.

The Hendersonville Times-News reported on a recently filed lawsuit that alleges that Neill took about $900,000 from the trust fund.  Now there are “little to no assets remaining in the trust to be distributed to the beneficiaries,” according to the suit.

The N.C. State Bureau of Investigation is investigating. District Attorney Jeff Hunt has asked the state Attorney General's office to lead the prosecution; Hunt told the newspaper he wanted to avoid any conflict of interest in prosecuting his long time friend.

Republicans will soon outnumber Democrats on the UNC system's Board of Governors.

This shift becomes official later this summer when 16 members appointed this week and last by the new Republican-led legislature take their seats.

As Jane Stancill reports over on our Under the Dome blog, Republicans outnumber Democrats 18-13.

Have a look.

The legislature's new Republican majority has made its first move to put an imprint on the UNC system. On Thursday, the Senate appointed eight new members to the UNC system's Board of Governors.

The eight new appointees don't signal a dramatic shift, in that four are either re-appointed current or former board members. But taken collectively, they are seven white men and one white woman; meanwhile, the board stands to lose four African-Americans and at least five women once all appointments are made.

The House appoints eight additional new members next week.

Here's today's story.

Reappointed to the UNC Board of Governors were long-time education advocate Ann Goodnight, wife of SAS Institute CEO Jim Goodnight, and Peter Hans, a senior policy adviser with the Nelson Mullins law firm in Raleigh.

Former board members H. Frank Grainger of Cary and John Fennebresque of Charlotte also were appointed. Grainger is part-owner of Fair Products Inc. and Tritest Environmental Lab, and Fennebresque is an attorney.

The four newcomers were Fred Eshelman of Wilmington, executive chairman and founder of Pharmaceutical Product Development Corp.; W. Louis Bissette Jr., an attorney from Asheville; Thomas Harrelson of Southport, vice president of AECOM, a former state legislator and DOT secretary appointed by Republican Gov. Jim Martin; and Phillip Walker, senior vice president with BB&T in Hickory.

The UNC Board of Governors has decided not to make any changes  in its leadership for the next two years as it grapples with massive budget cuts and a national search for a new president to replace Erskine Bowles.

Re-elected Friday by the other members were chairwoman Hannah D. Gage, vice-chairman Peter D. Hans and board secretary Estelle "Bunny" Sanders. 

Gage, who lives in Wilmington, joined the board in 2001 and in 2008 became the first woman to lead it when she was elected to her first two-year term as chairwoman.

The board oversees the state's 16-campus public university system. The state legislature, which faces a revenue shortfall this year of $800 million, is pondering whether to trim the system's budget by as much as $175 million. That, says university officials, would cause serious damage to the system, which has already suffered  $575 million in cuts in recent years.

After she was elected, Gage quipped that she had been told by several people that no one else would want the job, given the challenges the system faces.

Gage is a retired broadcast executive, and a 1975 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill. She is a former chairwoman of of the UNC-Wilmington Board of Trustees and members of her family have ties to a host of system universities, served as trustees of three different campuses and on the board of the UNC system when it had six campuses.

Hans is a 1991 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a senior policy advisor with the law firm Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough in Raleigh.

Sanders is mayor of the Town of Roper and a graduate of Howard University.

The State House added eight members to the UNC system Board of Governors today.

Five incumbents return to the board, and three new members were added.

The N&O's Under the Dome blog has the details here.

The State Legislature is reviewing names to elect to the UNC system Board of Governors today, and there's some controversy brewing over in Raleigh.

A couple of the candidates have some folk clucking over potential conflicts of interest. One in particular is Bob Greczyn, who runs Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. Another is Paul Fulton, the outspoken UNC Chapel Hill trustee.

The N&O's Under the Dome blog has the story here.

In a separate post, Dome reports that the state House has selected a slate of candidates to vote on in April. Here are those details.  

Happy New Year!

For the next couple of months, officials with the UNC system and at public university campuses across the state will deal with two intertwined economics issues: budget cuts and tuition increases.

One thing is certain: Budgets are being cut. Less certain is whether tuition will increase at public universities next year, and if so, how much.

Tuition at UNC system campuses has risen steadily over the last two decades or so. In fact, there has been a tuition hike each year since 1989 except in 2005-06, when the UNC system's Board of Governors held tuition steady for in-state undergraduates. It did so then as a step-back-and-take-a-breath measure after seeing tuition rose 80 percent over the preceding four years. 

The UNC system's board subsequently put a series of consistency measures in place, limits that would give campuses guidance when making tuition hike requests.

University officials generally dislike the idea of raising the cost of college, but usually do so with targeted purposes - financial aid, faculty salary increases, graduate or professional student stipends and other support, etc. But this year, with the lagging economy hurting so many North Carolinians, there will surely be a lot of discussion and an extra dose of reluctance to raise tuition and fees.

"We'll be looking at the availability of financial aid and all the things that affect North Carolina families," said Hannah Gage, who chairs the UNC system's governing board. "It is a tough spot. Tuition is never an easy decision. It's made more difficult this year.'

The board will have its first tuition discussion next Thursday morning and will likely make tuition decisions in February.