A budget amendment adopted by the county commissioners at a Jan. 19 meeting will enable the Moore County Board of Education to proceed with an Information Technology SMART Board initiative and infrastructure in the middle schools.

The commissioners voted unanimously for a budget amendment to allocate the sales tax refund from school bond construction projects and interest earned on funds, with $340,000 designated for the SMART Board and $34,731 for infrastructure.

However, the board decided to retain the bond premium, which will go into debt service toward payment of the schools' capital projects.

The school board asked the county to amend the budget to use an estimated $500,000 for the SMART Board project. The money was to come from the bond premium, interest collected on the bonds before they are spent on contracts and from sales tax refunds. The request was presented at the Jan. 4 meeting, when the commissioners decided to delay a decision until their next meeting.

The sales tax refund covers taxes paid by private contractors at the time purchases are made for materials used in school construction projects. Because the projects are for nonprofit public entities, the contractor may apply to the state for a refund on taxes paid on those purchases. The refund is then payable to the local government contracting for the new construction.

MORGAN - County Commissioner Cindy Morgan has added writer to the several hats she wears.

Morgan, who also chairs the Board of Social Services, is associate vice president for innovations and professional development for the Association for Home and Hospice Care of North Carolina.

Morgan recently penned an article on infection control for the association's publication.

The article opens with a reminder that Benjamin Franklin was co-founder of America's first public hospital and is the source of the adage "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Morgan reports that an estimated 1.2 million infections occur annually in about eight million adult and pediatric home health care patients in this country. In the article she covers measures and guidelines for addressing this issue.

TEXTILES - Congressman Howard Coble defended exclusive sports apparel contracts during a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing Wednesday.

Coble told his colleagues that the National Football League has a right to enter into exclusive agreements with apparel companies, including one in the 6th District, and not be in violation of antitrust laws.

In his opening statement, Coble said that the NFL and VF Imagewear, a division of VF Corp. in Greensboro, can sign contracts with each other because the league is one business entity and not 32 businesses colluding to keep others out of competition.

"When it comes to protecting jobs, particularly in the textile industry, I will take a back seat to no one," Coble said. "The VF Corp. has a very significant interest in its business with NFL Properties - manufacturing NFL jerseys, and as you can imagine, we are very interested in today's hearing. It seems relatively clear to me that any sports league must act as a single entity in order to produce the sport.

"Without a schedule, rules, basic equipment or other guidelines, the sport would have no value. There would be chaos if the Carolina Panthers had to negotiate who they were playing and the rules of each game."

Coble is the ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy.

Contact Florence Gilkeson at (910) 693-2479 or by e-mail at florence@thepilot.com.