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VOLUME 2 ISSUE 7
www.NSJONLINE.com | wednesday, March 22, 2017
“I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not doing anything illegal. I want to be legal and I don’t want to worry about it.” Bill Sherrill, owner of Red Oak Brewery
eamon queeney | North State Journal
Red Oak Brewery owner Bill Sherrill explains how the brewery will expand at its Whitsett campus into a public beer hall and garden with a gift shop and even an art gallery, March 20, 2017. Sherrill, owner of one of North Carolina’s oldest craft breweries, is fighting to change state law with the Craft Freedom legislation.
the mid-week
News BRIEFing UNC Health Care announces possible patient information breach Chapel Hill UNC Health Care released on Monday that 1,300 patients may have had their private medical records released accidentally. The “possible information breach” came from home risk assessment forms filled out by prenatal women at N.C. Women’s Hospital or UNC Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Rex in Raleigh. UNC Health Care usually passes the contact information of Medicaid eligible women to counties who can provide them services. However, UNC says that records of women who were not Medicaid eligible may have inadvertently been released as well. Patients potentially affected visited the hospitals between April 2014 and February 2017.
Gold Star Highway dedicated to military families Fayetteville The N.C. Department of Transportation formally dedicated portions of N.C. 24 as the Gold Star Highway. The counties included in the designation are Carteret, Cumberland, Duplin, Harnett, Onslow, and Sampson. The N.C. Board of Transportation approved the highway name change in June 2016. Transportation Secretary James Trogdon, speaking at the ceremony at the Airborne and Special Operations Museum, said the department will install 12 signs along the route, including one at each county line, to remind travelers of the service and sacrifice of Gold Star families.
NORTH
STATE
JOURNaL ELEVATE THE CONVERSATION
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Donald Trump warned Republican lawmakers Tuesday that voters will remember if they do not approve a plan dismantle Obamacare, as pressure grew on the businessman-turned-politician to win the first major legislative battle of his presidency. According to Republican Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina,Trump told lawmakers in a closed-door meeting that if the Republican bill does not pass, they would face “political problems.” Jones said he thought Trump meant lawmakers could lose their seats. “The president was really clear: he laid it on the line for everybody,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, the leading proponent of the bill, told reporters. “We made a promise. Now is our time to keep that promise ... If we don’t keep our promise, it will be very hard to manage this.” See OBAMACARE, page A3
“The president was really clear: he laid it on the line for everybody. We made a promise. Now is our time to keep that promise .” — House Speaker Paul Ryan
Red Oak Brewing, along with Craft Freedom, backs a bill that could change distribution laws that have stood for more than a decade By R. Cory Smith North State Journal
Republicans revamp Obamacare bill as Trump promotes overhaul By Donna King North State Journal
NC lawmakers set to propose bill to raise craft beer distribution cap
WHITSETT, N.C. — Bill Sherrill stands next to a nearly 3,000-square foot building known as the Beer Hall towering over Interstate 40/85. The roof and building itself are as unique as the beer that Sherrill distributes as the owner of Red Oak Brewery. The concrete is laid. The roof is attached to massive beams stemming from the entire block of land Sherrill owns. It all leads to a gift shop that slowly arches upward toward an empty plot of land. That’s where the art exhibit is expected to go. All of this stands behind a constantly changing digital billboard that reads “Free craft beer, contact your legislator,” “Freedom to grow and compete a ‘Right’” and “Free enterprise: Freedom to compete without state regulation.” Let’s just say subtlety isn’t Sherrill’s strong suit. As one might imagine, his stance on raising the distribution cap in North Carolina is fairly stern. Red Oak, along with Olde Mecklenburg Brewery, Raleigh Brewing, NoDa Brewing and several other breweries, restaurants and bottle shops support the movement known as Craft Freedom. What it comes down to for Sherrill, quite simply, is guaranteeing
Gorsuch says he is a lawyer, not a policy maker in confirmation hearings By Donna King North State Journal
Check out NSJ’s new mid-week business section for the latest economic, tech and entertainment news. Business
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See Beer, page A2
High court nominee shows independence, likability
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that his product is up to his standards. “Our product is unfiltered, unpasteurized, no chemicals, no preservatives, it’s a live product and it needs to be kept well,” Sherrill said. “We rotate and clean the lines every two weeks. A lot of the wholesalers say they do, but I can tell you if we had our salesman here now … they would tell you that they go in these places and the yeast is coming out of the spigot. That’s just terrible.” The way the law in North Carolina works currently is when small breweries reach a sales limit of 25,000 barrels per year, all sales and delivery must be turned over to a wholesaler. Located just outside of Greensboro, Red Oak has the capacity to well exceed those numbers and keep the quality at a premium. The 25,000-barrel cap puts N.C. behind 31 other states that have either higher caps or an unlimited self-distribution law. It’s a stand-out statistic for a state that currently has 192 total breweries — the eighth most in the United States — and a fledgling craft beer industry that has more companies on the horizon. State House Rep. John Hardister (R-Guilford) didn’t mince words when discussing his reasoning for the bill.
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JAMES LAWLER DUGGAN | Reuters
U.S. Supreme Court nominee judge Neil Gorsuch is sworn in to testify at his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 20, 2017.
WASHINGTON — Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, faced his second of four days of Senate hearings on Tuesday. Known for his independence and scholarly approach to law, he told lawmakers that he would have no trouble ruling against the president. Answering questions from senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gorsuch said Trump never asked him to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion nationwide, saying if the Republican president had done so “I would have walked out the door.” Trump promised during last year’s presidential campaign to appoint an anti-abortion justice who would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, which many conservatives want reversed. If confirmed by the Senate as expected, Gorsuch See Gorsuch, page A3