This guy really is a prick:
http://www.citizen-times.com/...
N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, wants fewer taxes and more user fees in North Carolina. If Tarheels wind up paying more out of pocket in fees than taxes, well, freedom.
The NC Department of Transportation project to widen I-26 here in Buncombe County may not be shovel-ready, but in his Mecklenburg County district Tillis supports widening I-77 from Charlotte to Mooresville. With toll lanes.
“Lexus lanes,” opponents call them. Other critics call I-77 “Thom’s Tholl Road.”
Residents along the crowded interstate stretching north from Charlotte long anticipated seeing the highway finally widened. Except where citizens expected general-purpose lanes to relieve their daily commutes, Tillis backs a public-private partnership (P3) featuring High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes instead.
Oh, there will be new lanes all right, but to use them drivers will pay tolls to a foreign developer. What Raleigh saves today, Tillis’ neighbors will pay out of pocket for the next 50 years. Or else spend more time in traffic and less with their families or sleeping.
WidenI77.org, a citizens’ group led by small-businessman Kurt Nass of Cornelius, writes, “Tillis not only favors I-77 toll lanes, but is willing to go to the mat to make sure we’re stuck with them.”
Tillis told opponents that with state revenues shrinking (because of tax cuts?) they had a choice: toll lanes “or no improvements to I-77 for 15 or 20 years.” It’s Thom’s way or no highway. - Asheville Citizen-Times, 8/22/14
Tillis is just making himself like a guy who bullies people to get his way. He's also been trying to look like he gives a shit about this:
http://abc11.com/...
State House and Senate leaders say lawmakers have reached a compromise on legislation that would make Duke Energy curb pollution from its 33 coal ash dumps across North Carolina.
A statement from House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate President Phil Berger said conferees reached an agreement Tuesday that would give the state the strictest regulations in the nation. The statement said the legislation would make the state the first to force the closure of all coal ash ponds.
The statement said the bill sets a 15-year timetable for closing all unlined coal ash ponds. It also eliminates the practice of wet ash disposal. - ABC 11, 8/19/14
But I would take him seriously about that:
http://www.newsobserver.com/...
Robert Murray, chief executive of Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp
Money from coal companies has been fueling Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis’ race to unseat U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, including $21,100 from the nation’s largest privately owned coal company.
The contributions came from the Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp. The owner and founder, Robert E. Murray, is a major backer of Republican candidates and a fierce opponent of President Barack Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency, especially over a proposal that would limit heat-trapping emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Murray Energy is Tillis’ fifth-largest contributor. He has received money from the owner, company officers, employees and family members, and the company’s political action committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog group. - News Observer, 8/7/14
Democrats have been spending a lot of money to take down Tillis and since he's the face of the unpopular, extremist GOP controlled General Assembly, Senator Kay Hagan (D. NC) is pushing to make that her advantage:
http://www.npr.org/...
Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan wants voters to punish her Republican challenger Thom Tillis, the speaker of the North Carolina House, for . Tillis wants to aim anger toward President Obama at Hagan.
It's expected in elections for candidates to run against each other's records, but in purplish North Carolina, Hagan is hoping she has some unusually potent fodder.
Tillis, as speaker of the state House, was one of the guys at the helm when Republicans took over both houses of North Carolina's Legislature and governor's office in 2012 — the first time that had happened in more than a century. Last year they went on a historic lawmaking binge, enacting new voter ID laws, slashing unemployment benefits, cutting taxes, passing new abortion restrictions and allowing concealed guns in bars and restaurants.
erupted across the state, with thousands demonstrating in rallies and hundreds arrested throughout the year.
Gerald Silver, the pastor of Freedom Temple Church in West Raleigh, N.C., was one of those arrested.
"There's always been this undercurrent in North Carolina of wanting to return back to those days of Jim Crow. But they didn't have the political means to do it," said Silver — until now.
Hagan is hoping to ride that anxiety — that feeling that a vote for Tillis is a vote to return to North Carolina's uncomfortable past — to victory. - NPR, 8/21/14
We have to make sure our base comes out and votes this November so please do donate and get involved with Hagan's campaign so she can be ready to defeat Tillis:
http://www.kayhagan.com/...