RALEIGH - North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is criticizing a state budget provision by Senate Republicans that his administration says would block federal food stamp benefits to more than 130,000 people who qualify because they’re also receiving other government benefits.
The change approved in the Senate budget proposal last week would roll back eligibility requirements for what’s called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that had been expanded during the Great Recession. 

Households making no more than slightly above the federal poverty level would qualify for the food help if the provision became law. That would put added pressure on already stretched food pantries and make it harder for families to move out of poverty, advocates say. In Buncombe County, 3,100 people would lose food assistance, of which 1,100 are children. Across the region, more than 9,500 people would lose the assistance, 33 percent younger than age 18

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ASHEVILLE – Thirteen years ago Nikita Smart gave birth to her daughter with the help of strangers. She and the girl’s father had split. Her family lived out of town. So the hospital in Fort Myers, Florida, had a sitter stay in the room during labor.

Friends stopped by to check on her, but Smart encouraged them to leave. They had jobs to get to and children to look after. "I was just totally alone,” said Smart, who was considered high-risk because of pre-eclampsia, a potentially dangerous pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure.

Smart, 44, is now training to be a doula and leading efforts in Pisgah View and Hillcrest apartments to make sure expecting African-American mothers in those publicly subsidized neighborhoods never feel like help is far away.

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ASHEVILLE - Rani Khan "caught" her first baby when she was just 4 years old. Her mother, a natural health advocate, had planned a home birth and Khan's sister came sooner than expected. It was just Khan and a birth assistant there to help the laboring woman. The toddler had pushed a chair to the wall to reach the rotary phone and call for help, but the baby came before the midwife arrived.
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Kahn's mother labored for only 15 minutes. The young girl was sitting on a futon when she witnessed her sister's first breath. It was an experience she never forgot. By age 39, Kahn, now a certified nurse midwife, has delivered some 3,000 babies, even though she has no children of her own.

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ASHEVILLE - The city has turned to a Denver firm for a $320,000 yearlong business disparity study. BBC Research and Consulting should begin work in June to assess the state of city contracting with minority- and white women-owned businesses, said Brenda Mills, an economic development specialist for the city of Asheville.

The firm will analyze five years of data and organize surveys, focus groups and community meetings to understand the city's contracting and purchasing patterns. Municipalities wanting to legally justify a race-based minority business program must undertake an independent study, she said.
The city last did this research in the 1990s, shortly after its program was formed.

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