Early voting is open now in towns and cities across North Carolina, plus more news, this week in CIB:

Campaign Watch: Early Voting Underway; More Mayoral Showdowns

Early Voting Underway: The final round of campaign 2013 is underway now in cities and towns across North Carolina: Early voting has opened in the contests for mayor and city/town council seats to be concluded November 5. If you live in one of dozens of municipalities across our state, you will have the chance during the next two weeks to help decide who will make public policy for your community over the next two to four years.

Remember that city elected officials make land use planning and zoning decisions; oversee water, sewer, and stormwater treatment facilities; make decisions on solid waste and recycling; plan and implement transportation systems–from rail and bus to bike paths and sidewalks–and build and operate greenways and city parks. Who we elect to run our towns and cities matters to our environment.

If you don’t already know, check your local county Board of Elections website for information on who’s running for what in your community see here.

For the hours and locations of early voting in your county, see here.

More Mayoral Showdowns: Among the contests of interest to be decided in the round of local elections now underway are the mayors of several of our major cities, including Asheville, Charlotte, Durham, Fayetteville, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem.

One noteworthy example is Asheville, where Vice-Mayor Esther Manheimer led her October 8 primary for mayor and faces the runner-up in the general election. Manheimer is an attorney with a focus on land use law, advocates for environmental sustainability issues on her council, and has received support from local environmentalists including the Sierra Club. Her opponent is John Miall, a retired city employee who has focused on city fiscal management issues.

Executive Watch: Naming the CRC

Gov. Pat McCrory has named nine new members to the state Coastal Resources Commission (CRC), one of the key state environmental boards stripped of members in one of the anti-environmental measures passed during this year’s General Assembly session. These new appointments will allow the CRC to re-start meetings and take up again its oversight responsibilities over the state’s coastal resources management rules and programs.

Among the new members named by McCrory was Wilmington coastal developer Frank Gorham to chair the commission. A potential bright spot among the appointments is Suzanne Dorsey of Brunswick County, the executive director of Bald Head Island Conservancy and Smith Island Land Trust.

For more information on the new appointees, see here.

Washington Watch: Voters Disapprove of EPA Shutdown

The anti-environmental demagogues in Washington who crowed that their artificially engineered shutdown of the federal government had idled their despised EPA really need to check the poll numbers. In polls taken nationwide and in several key states (including North Carolina), Americans overwhelmingly disapproved the sidelining of EPA efforts to protect human health and the environment.

In a poll commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and carried out by NC-based Public Policy Polling, 65 percent of those polled nationally (and 64 percent of those polled in North Carolina “oppose the EPA being prevented from doing its work because of the shutdown.” Seventy percent opposed furloughing EPA inspectors and stopping work on toxic dump cleanups. 65 percent opposed interference with EPA’s work to develop standards limiting carbon pollution from power plants. Almost three-quarters of respondents expressed disfavor toward a politician who claims closure of the EPA during the shutdown was a good thing.

NRDC’s governmental affairs director David Goldston said, “Americans count on the EPA to protect our air, water and health. The House extremists who virtually shut down this vital work were way out of step with the American people. The public understands that the EPA is a needed guardian of our environment and health. They expect protection from pollution–and they wanted our environmental guardians back on the job.”

More details on the poll and its findings are found here.

NRDC president Frances Beinecke also posted a review of ways in which the shutdown jeopardized public health and the environment, including the idling of key experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the delays that caused in dealing with a major salmonella outbreak that hit almost 300 people in 18 states. For Beinecke’s full comments, see here.

That’s our report for this week.