[image-1]This week, Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish laid out a formal ban on all “non-essential” county employee travel to the state of North Carolina.
In case you missed the news, the North Carolina legislature approved the “Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act,” which prohibits local governments in that state from passing anti-discrimination laws that protect the LGBT community. That is to say: No city in North Carolina could pass the sort of ordinance that the city of Cleveland has been sitting on for more than a year.
“A major pillar of this administration is fairness and equity for all persons. We deplore the radical action recently taken by the state government of North Carolina, and we will not support such action with our tax dollars,” Budish said in a public statement. “Moreover, we invite those businesses that share our views, such as Pepsi, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Dow Chemical, IBM and Apple, to bring their business to a much more welcoming location, Cuyahoga County.” (PayPal dropped plans recently to station a global operations center in Charlotte, N.C, due to the law’s passage.)
Budish says the executive order will remain on the books until North Carolina repeals or amends that act.
(We’ve reached out to see how many, if any, county employees have recorded “official travel” to North Carolina in the past, say, 10 years. We’ll let you know.)
This article appears in Apr 6-12, 2016.
Why was “nonessential” travel to North Carolina being paid for by the County anyway?
How dare Budish dictate how my taxes are being spent – he must not have a wife or daughter who want to share a bathroom with someone who we assume are transgender – who is going to stand there and question his or her intent. Get real and stay out of NC business. Next you will start to demand employees of the country not go to NC on vacation or to visit, without fear of being fired. Another Liberal answer to everything..