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HAMLET Breaking a pattern of raucous encounters across the country, more than 600 people Monday attended a town hall meeting marked by civility, substance and even bipartisanship.
Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr and Democratic U.S. Rep. Larry Kissell joined two Cabinet secretaries in fielding questions from an overflow audience at Richmond Community College.
Virtually every question involved education and rural development, not the hot button health care issue that has polarized such meetings elsewhere.
“We've got a tremendous health care challenge. I don't think I want to get into that today,” Burr said in the middle of the 90-minute meeting.
In a news conference later, the senator welcomed the Obama administration's apparent retreat from a “public option” for a federal program to compete with private insurers.
“When we left Washington,” he said, “there seemed to be only one path (to health reform). Now there seems to be multiple paths. … If you get health care reform wrong, the first place you're going to feel it is rural America.”
Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan did not attend the meeting, citing a family commitment.
Last week hundreds of people packed town hall meetings in North Carolina to protest the president's proposed health care reforms. On Friday about 250 showed up outside Hagan's Raleigh office carrying placards with such messages as “We the people say no to socialism,” and “Pack your bags Congress, you're fired.”
The only sign at Monday's gathering was taped to the college doors. “No signs or banners,” it said. And in one of North Carolina's most rural regions, other problems appeared to trump health care, with questions about everything from forest maintenance to child nutrition.
Brenda Williams, a Marshville high school teacher, asked about options for students who can't go on to college. “I lose too many students each year because they have no place to go,” she said. “I'm tired of losing my students to the streets.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the country “has lost its way on vocational education.”
“We are losing far too many students,” he said. “We know there are no good jobs out there for dropouts.”
Both Duncan and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called education and job growth essential tools for rural development. Both said money from the federal stimulus package is being targeted to areas such as Richmond County.
“There's a rural renaissance about to take place if we just put the resources behind it,” Vilsack said.
An African American farmer asked Vilsack about his department's historic discrimination against minority agriculture.
“In many quarters even today it's considered the last plantation,” Vilsack said, adding that he's begun to address the issue. One specific area he talked about involves red tape that often hurts small farmers.
“Our rules and regulations do not make a great deal of sense,” he said.
One man asked Duncan about school vouchers, or public subsidies for private schools, saying they would give families more choices.
The secretary said vouchers would help only “1 percent” of students at the expense of others in public schools.
“We can't help 1 or 2 percent,” he said, “and go home and sleep well at night if the others aren't being successful.”
Vilsack won applause when he said his department is working on policies that would do more to link food producers to consumers.
“Your resources are going to food that was processed thousands of miles away,” he said. “Wouldn't it be better if that went to your local farmers?”
Though there were no acrimonious exchanges, not everybody who attended is happy about the Obama administration. Jim Webb, an Air Force veteran from Rockingham, said it seems “the government's taking over, telling us what we can do.”
“They're treating us like we're in the first grade,” he said after arriving at the meeting.
Others came to hear what Washington can do for them.
“If our government is going to use stimulus money, I want to see results,” said Joan Shelar, laid off in June from a construction company in Aberdeen.
Duncan and Vilsack, who have gone on other such “listening tours,” gave often detailed answers. Roger Sheats of Robeson County appreciated that. “I thought we had some great questions and I really thought they were listening,” he said later. “They seem to be very well informed.”
Kissell, whose 8th District includes Richmond County, was not surprised by the civility. “The people who came today,” he said, “understood this was a way for them to hear about issues fundamentally important in their lives.”
Jim Morrill: 704-358-5059
