Lindsay Regner and Megan Hauser tromp down an old railroad line, their steady pace creating a predictable beat of feet dragging across road-grade gravel. 

Many rural county jail populations are growing at a higher rate than urban county jails or even state prisons, according to research done by the Center on Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice.

If you don’t have much experience within the criminal justice system, trying to navigate the system can be frustrating.

With the deadline to adopt a new budget drawing ever closer, Jackson County Commissioners are still deliberating how to handle $1 million in last-minute budget requests. That’s on top of an already planned $979,800 public safety increase that’s spurred a 1-cent per $100 property tax increase in the proposed budget. 

Tempers flared at the Franklin Town Council meeting Monday night as board members tried to find a solution to a public bathroom dilemma for its summer Pickin’ on the Square series. 

I’ve been covering local governments in North Carolina for 30 years, and a small item in Macon County’s budget for 2018-2019 caught my attention like a flash of lightning: the public education budget is $8.5 million, or 18 percent of the total budget; the public safety budget (law enforcement and jails) is $13.9 million, or 28 percent of the county’s budget.

For decades, education and human services (DSS and health departments) have traditionally been the most expensive items for county commissioners. Now we’ve reached a point where it seems law enforcement and jails will take an equal amount or more of our local tax dollars, which inevitably means local schools will be squeezed even tighter.

More than 100 people gathered at the Macon County Courthouse on May 8 to rally in support of Scott Knibbs’ family, who are still grieving his unexpected and tragic death.

It’s been a full morning on top of a full week, and I’m tired when I file into the fluorescent-lighted classroom Tuesday afternoon. A large, laminated topo map of the Cashiers area is sitting on the table when I arrive at my seat, a dry erase marker and protractor tool arranged on top. 

The lawyer for a Franklin resident killed by a Macon County deputy claims the shooting was not justified and that the victim was just trying to protect his family.

As the opioid crisis continues to rage across the nation and the state, legislators, law enforcement and medical professionals are placing a renewed focus on stopping the next generation of addicts from starting.