News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
HCA plans to demolish St. Joseph’s Hospital, Mission spokesperson says • Asheville Watchdog
HCA Healthcare plans to demolish Mission Hospital’s St. Joseph’s campus, whose origins date back more than a century, Asheville Watchdog has learned.
Mission spokesperson Nancy Lindell said Thursday that a teardown was the only way forward after Tropical Storm Helene had compounded existing issues on the campus.
“Given current building codes and the deterioration of the facility exacerbated by the storm, the only real option for that campus is its eventual demolition,” Lindell said in a brief statement. “Plans will be made for demolition and future use of the site when appropriate.”
There have been rumblings about demolition of the campus for some time. Nurses told The Watchdog this week that they were informed of the eventual demolition by multiple members of leadership staff, including Mission CEO Greg Lowe at a recent employee town hall meeting.
Two main buildings make up the St. Joseph’s campus, located at 428 Biltmore Ave. These were built in 1960 and 1980, according to property records. The buildings and land combined are currently valued at $22 million. The $1.5 billion that HCA paid for the Mission Health system in 2019 included $547.8 for several facilities on the sprawling hospital campus In Asheville, including the St. Joseph’s land and buildings.
Records show nearly 30 permits for repairs and improvements on the nearly 12-acre property have been issued since 2015.
Dr. Scott Joslin served as medical director of Asheville Specialty Hospital, located on the St. Joseph’s campus, from January through September 2022 before he became head of Mission’s hospitalist program. Joslin told The Watchdog that Mission’s decision to build its North Tower facility in late 2019 was prompted partly by the recognition that the St. Joseph’s campus was nearing the end of its useful life.
Joslin, who now works at the Asheville VA Medical Center, described a range of issues facing St. Joseph’s at the time, including water leaks as well as electrical and infrastructure failures.
“I did know that at the time that the new North Tower was being built, that one of the drivers behind the decision … was that over time, the old St. Joseph’s Hospital was becoming more expensive to maintain,” Joslin said. “It was just going to be a question of time before the St. Joseph’s campus would be completely decommissioned.”
At the time of the opening of the North Tower, then-Mission CEO Chad Patrick noted that St. Joseph’s was “a very, very old building and very expensive to upkeep.”
Deep roots in Asheville
St. Joseph’s is an integral part of Asheville and Mission’s history. Its origins date to the beginning of the 20th century and a Catholic women’s organization dedicated to healthcare.
“On Nov. 23, 1900, the Sisters of Mercy arrived in the mountains of Western North Carolina, opening an 18-bed tuberculosis sanitarium on the corner of French Broad and Patton Avenues — the first iteration of St. Joseph’s Hospital,” the Mercy Urgent Care website says. “For nearly a century, Sisters of Mercy owned and operated Asheville’s St. Joseph’s Hospital, a 338-bed facility sold to Mission Hospitals in 1998. Mercy, however, retained and focused on its satellite urgent care facilities, expanding its network one community at a time.”
By the early 1990s, St. Joseph’s and Mission were the largest hospitals in western North Carolina.

Mission Hospital was created when St. Joseph’s Hospital and Memorial Mission Medical Center began an organizational partnership in 1996. They jointly operated a laundry and a child care center to achieve efficiencies, and they had substantially overlapping medical staffs, according to research conducted by the Urban Institute.
The hospitals merged two years later, when Memorial Mission purchased St. Joseph’s from the Sisters of Mercy for $90 million.
St. Joseph’s operations are mentioned in the Asset Purchase Agreement, the 2019 document defining the parameters of the sale to HCA. The APA prevented HCA from shutting down anything at the campus for two years following the sale.
“From and after such two (2)-year period, buyer shall have the right to discontinue any LTAC (Long-term Acute Care) Service at the St. Joseph campus of Mission Hospital (Asheville, North Carolina),” the APA states.
When the APA was being finalized, HCA didn’t have any plans to shutter St. Joseph’s or the care provided there.
“Buyer has no present intent to discontinue long-term acute care services at the St. Joseph campus of Mission Hospital, as described in Section 7.13(e), until those services can be provided at other Buyer facilities in Asheville, North Carolina,” the APA states.
In addition to Asheville Specialty Hospital, the campus also has housed inpatient and outpatient services for multiple departments, including the entirety of the behavioral health department — in a separate building — before it moved to its new Sweeten Creek facility.
In November, The Watchdog reported that Asheville Specialty, the only long-term acute care hospital in western North Carolina, would be shuttered.
Lindell said then that Mission Health made the decision because it “had to focus on prioritizing our resources during and after Hurricane Helene to care for the most urgent medical needs of our community.”
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Andrew R. Jones is a Watchdog investigative reporter. Email arjones@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting during this crisis is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
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News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
Appointment power for election boards remains with NC governor
For the fifth time in a decade, a court has decided that the legislature cannot remove a governor’s power to appoint election board members. During a hearing last week in Wake County Superior Court, a three-judge panel ruled that a law attempting to give the governor’s elections appointment power to the state auditor would make it impossible for the chief executive to do their job as the North Carolina Constitution requires.
Currently, county election boards are comprised of five members, with two each coming from the Democratic and Republican parties. The governor gets to appoint the chair.
The governor also chooses all State Board of Elections members.
Ultimately, those appointment powers can give the governor, and by extension their political party, tremendous influence on election matters.
Since former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper won office in 2016, Republican lawmakers have made numerous attempts to take that deciding vote away.
Each time, they’ve fallen short.
In this latest attempt, the Republican defendants — Senate leader Phil Berger, House Speaker Destin Hall and State Auditor Dave Boliek — said they will appeal the ruling. While the players are different this time around, the case will undoubtedly end up in the hands of the state Supreme Court.
The state’s highest court has seen this play out before. But that was in 2017 when Democrats held the majority and narrowly struck down a separate attempt.
Eight years later, things have changed. Republicans hold a 5-2 advantage. That could make all the difference.
Appointment power and executive ‘hopscotch’
If courts ultimately side with the legislature, North Carolina will be the first state that grants any elections power to a state auditor.
Usually, that duty goes to a secretary of state, if anyone, but a Democrat won that office in the most recent election.
Ann Webb, the policy director for Common Cause North Carolina, hopes courts see through the “partisanship” of legislators.
But partisanship isn’t necessarily unconstitutional, as legislative attorney Matthew Tilley noted during arguments before the Wake County court.
In response, Wake County Superior Court Judge Lisa Hamilton said if they allowed this maneuver, there would be nothing stopping a future legislature from shifting election appointment power to another executive office, like the treasurer or agricultural commissioner, to ensure their party maintained control.
“I’m hoping that we’re not going to hopscotch around all nine members of the Council of State until we finally land on the one that would be appropriate,” Hamilton said during the hearing.
The court’s order reflected this concern.
While the General Assembly is allowed to assign duties to members of the Council of State, that right stops where the governor’s constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws begins, the court ruled. The faithful execution of the laws is not a shared duty among all Council of State members, they continued.
Partisanship takes center stage
The final battle is set for the NC Supreme Court.
There, the major dynamic will be “partisan perspectives and allegiance versus constitutional principles,” Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer said.
“I think the expectation is that partisanship will be a determinative factor,” he said. “Whether it’s clearly enunciated in an opinion, I think we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Webb agrees. The state Supreme Court has shown a willingness to act in partisan ways, particularly when it comes to giving the legislature power, she said.
“It’s going to be very interesting to watch whether the state Supreme Court is willing to overturn its own precedent or twist the interpretation of its own precedent to allow that (power shift) to happen.”
North Carolina doesn’t have a particularly powerful governor, but that position does come with some fundamental executive power, Webb continued.
“If that gets dissolved piece by piece by the legislature, then we end up with a false pretense of an executive branch, and that’s not how it’s supposed to work and that’s not how voters assume it’s going to work,” she said.
Legislative leaders haven’t exactly shied away from the partisan angle.
In a statement on social media after the Wake County ruling, Hall, the House Speaker, said the Democratic-controlled State Board runs elections like its operating in “a banana republic, making up the rules as it goes.”
Pat Gannon, a spokesman for the State Board of Elections, objected to the characterization.
“These accusations about the bipartisan-run elections in our state are unfortunate and unfounded. In accordance with state and federal law, North Carolina’s voter rolls are maintained through careful processes that protect our elections and the rights of the voters,” he said in a statement to Carolina Public Press.
If the sixth time’s not the charm, Webb hopes legislators will finally stop. Or, at least, take the Democratic route in attaining appointment power: winning gubernatorial elections.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post Appointment power for election boards remains with NC governor appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
The content primarily reflects a Center-Left bias due to its focus on the implications of legislative actions concerning electoral processes in North Carolina, highlighting the tensions between Republican lawmakers and the Democratic governor. It emphasizes concerns about partisanship and the influence of political parties on election integrity, while featuring perspectives from advocacy groups like Common Cause, which are generally aligned with progressive values. The content presents legal arguments that defend the governor’s authority in a manner that leans towards retaining Democratic influence in election matters. Overall, the tone suggests a greater concern for maintaining checks on legislative power than for advocating any specific partisan agenda.
News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
Dogwood Festival resumes after reports of gunfire Saturday night
SUMMARY: The Dogwood Festival in Fayetteville resumed after a brief evacuation due to gunfire reports on Saturday night. Organizers decided to proceed with the event, emphasizing its significance and the hard work involved in planning the 43rd annual festival. While gunshots were heard around 8:30 PM, police found no injuries, only a car with bullet holes. Attendees enjoyed food, music, and activities despite last night’s scare. Many felt safe and chose to celebrate, with vendors reporting a successful day. The festival concluded at 8 PM, but the atmosphere remained upbeat as families enjoyed treats and entertainment.

The Dogwood Festival in Fayetteville was back in full swing on Sunday after a nearby shooting caused festivities to end early on Saturday night.
https://abc11.com/post/police-investigating-reports-gunfire-dogwood-festival-fayetteville/16257207/
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News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
‘Our Wave’ Co-founder on support spaces for sexual assault survivors
SUMMARY: In recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein announced a new sexual assault cold case unit to support survivors, with trauma-informed investigators dedicated to solving cases. Co-founder of Rwave, Brendan Michaelelsson, shared how their platform provides safe, anonymous spaces for survivors to share their stories and access resources. Since its launch in 2018, Rwave has helped survivors from 67 countries and all 50 U.S. states. Michaelelsson emphasized the importance of confidential platforms and suggested creating cultures of respect and safety in various environments. Rwave encourages volunteers and allies to get involved through their website.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. ‘Our Wave’ Co-founder and CTO Brendan Michaelsen joined ABC11 to talk building support spaces for survivors and other resources.
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