ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — As spring returns, so does the 25th annual Asheville Orchid Festival at the North Carolina Arboretum.

The annual show features world-class growers, curated displays, and thousands of orchids for sale.

NORTH CAROLINA ARBORETUM’S ‘SPRING INTO THE ARB’ RETURNS FOR YEAR 2

The event is part of “Spring Into the Arb”, a celebration of the return of spring featuring a series of activities. This year, a new and unique display takes center stage.

“We build this castle, and it’ll be a one-time thing, and we always create something special that goes with the theme. This year it was orchid kingdom,” said Graham Ramsey, president of the Western North Carolina Orchid Society.

This is an American Orchid Society-sanctioned judging event as world-class orchid growers and breeders present hundreds of carefully crafted displays.

NORTH CAROLINA ARBORETUM HOSTS BONSAI CARE DEMONSTRATIONS

Ramsey says growing orchids, while not a hard thing to get into, is an obsessive hobby.

“I started out with one orchid that belonged to my wife and next thing you know, we’re buying more, and it’s a very obsessive hobby, and by joining the Western North Carolina Orchid Society, we invite all orchid growers to come because that’s what we do, we sit around and talk about how to grow our orchids,” Ramsey said.

A North Carolina legislative committee is drawing passionate support — and criticism — as it pushes forward with recommendations to inject more secrecy and politics into a group tasked with disciplining lawyers across the state. 

The committee plans to meet again this week, fresh off a dramatic hearing Tuesday, during which members of the committee sniped at one another, at least one appeared to have had no idea they’d be asked to vote on one particularly contentious item, and security had to forcibly eject a former state lawmaker who had refused to stop yelling accusations from a podium. 

The target of that speaker, as well as the committee he was addressing: the North Carolina State Bar, a regulatory board in charge of licensing and disciplining North Carolina’s lawyers.

It’s the central focus of the State Bar Grievance Review Committee, which has tussled with the Bar and its supporters in the state’s legal community as it has sought to investigate allegations of cancel culture against politically outspoken lawyers and as it has recommended other reforms or demanded political inquisitions.

The committee, created in 2024, is a rarity in North Carolina: It consists of zero members of the state legislature. It’s led by Larry Shaheen and former state Sen. Woody White, two GOP insiders close with Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger. It can’t make changes on its own but can recommend them to the state legislature for approval. 

Some previous suggestions by the committee have won broad and bipartisan approval at the state legislature, such as limiting who can report lawyers to the Bar.

But its most recent proposals — including making lawyer discipline a more secretive process, controlled entirely by political appointees — has raised concerns inside the Bar, as well as with some of the lawyers who make a living fighting the Bar on behalf of their clients.

Some of the new changes Shaheen and others on the committee are backing would ban non-lawyers from being involved in hearings of the Bar’s Disciplinary Hearing Commission, which is tasked with deciding whether — and how harshly — to crack down on lawyers accused of things such as stealing clients’ money, sleeping with clients or abusing drugs or alcohol.

The committee also wants to staff the Disciplinary Hearing Commission entirely with political appointees — almost all of them Republicans — and decrease transparency in the process, making more details confidential. 

The Bar has deep reservations about those and other proposed changes, saying they’ll harm its goal of protecting members of the public from predatory or simply bad lawyers. The committee has not asked for the Bar’s input during this process, and relations between the two groups have become strained. 

State Bar Executive Director Peter Bolac told WRAL he questions the need for these changes, which he said appear to have been put together “without broader input or a comprehensive understanding of the State Bar’s work.”

Bolac was at the most recent hearing on the changes, but he wasn’t invited to speak — whether to provide his own presentation, or to answer questions and concerns. He told WRAL the committee should attempt to learn how the Bar works, first, before trying to change it.

“Without a clear and shared understanding of how the current system functions, it is difficult to engage in a meaningful discussion about potential improvements,” Bolac said. “Nevertheless, we remain willing to participate in thoughtful, good-faith dialogue aimed at strengthening the system.”

Shaheen says he knows firsthand how the process works, having served on Disciplinary Hearing Commission he and his committee are now targeting. And he sees it as his mission to drastically change the way it operates, saying he has lost friends because of his association with it. “I have several lawyers, who have been long term friends of mine, who have come to me and, because of some of the things said to them, feel like I’m the devil,” Shaheen said.

‘Radical changes’

The committee’s most recent meeting was just the latest in the committee’s years-long attempt to make reforms to the Bar.

Alan Schneider, who has represented more lawyers facing disciplinary hearings than perhaps anyone else in North Carolina, often finds himself at odds with the Bar. He previously gave a formal presentation to this same committee on suggestions to reform it.

But he says the latest suggestions, to ramp up the political appointments, go too far.

“There were problems in the past in terms of maybe old cases weren’t heard as quickly as they could,” Schneider said. “But the changes were made. The State Bar heard, and the State Bar has acted. What I’d like this panel to understand is the necessity for all these radical changes. I believe it is unnecessary.”

White and Shaheen said the changes are necessary. Shaheen said increasing political control over the Bar would increase accountability, by making members of the Bar answer to politicians who ultimately answer to the people.

Under the new proposal, 19 of its 26 members would be chosen by various Republican politicians and the remaining seven would be chosen by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein.

“To have more folks appointed by public officials, we want to create more accountability, to make sure that the process is not weaponized against attorneys,” Shaheen said at the committee’s meeting on Tuesday.

White defended the push for less transparency.

“Nowadays when you can weaponize allegations in a nanosecond and publish them, put them out in a political context … that is unfair, for a lawyer to be accused of something before he or she is convicted of it,” he said.

‘Such sweeping reforms’

The committee is set to meet again Wednesday. The committee hadn’t released information on what issues it plans to discuss, but it’s expected to be closely watched by the state’s legal community.

The relative lack of public notice on what this committee is considering also raised the ire of interested parties at last week’s meeting.

Jane Meyer, a Tharrington Smith attorney in Raleigh who also chairs the Bar’s disciplinary group, questioned why the proposals voted on Tuesday were only made public a few days beforehand, and with no opportunity for the Bar — or the general public — to respond.

White had originally attempted pushing through a vote Tuesday without allowing members of the public to speak. But he relented after Andrew Heath, a conservative lobbyist who serves on the committee, urged him to allow Meyer and other members of the public to have two minutes each to give brief comments.

“That troubles me — that such sweeping reforms are being considered without much study, and without asking for input,” Meyer told the committee.

Given the sweeping nature of their recommendations, Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby suggested the committee should “do a little bit more study and maybe get a little bit more information.” 

Willoughby specifically criticized the proposal to make it harder for members of the public to learn about accusations against attorneys.

“We should not be trying to restrict and make things more confidential,” he said. “We should make it more open. The public needs to have quicker and more complete access. I think people find their lawyers now, not from their Sunday school class or their bowling league or their Lions Club, but through the internet searches. They want information.”

They were among the passionate speakers at the hearing, but perhaps not the most passionate. 

Two-plus hours into its most recent hearing on Tuesday, former state Rep. Edwin Hardy had his mic cut off and then was escorted out of the room by security. He was several minutes into speaking during the open public comment period as his comments turned into a rant involving former President Barack Obama, the late Gov. Jim Hunt, allegations of political favoritism, cocaine usage and more.

Hardy, a Republican who used to represent Beaufort County in the state House, was the only one ejected — even though he was also one of the few speakers who appeared to support the committee’s goal of major overhauls to the Bar. His comments were in line with the allegations White, Shaheen and others have been claiming for years about cancel culture.

“I got very vocal online because Obama won,” Hardy told the committee. “… Well guess what: I was very vocal, and the day after Obama won reelection, I got a phone call and the Bar told me I had been randomly picked for an audit.”

State records show that that 2012 audit found Hardy had been using poor accounting practices with trust accounts where he held onto money for clients — including taking actions that “allowed entrusted funds to be disbursed in a manner not authorized by or for the benefit of the client.”

However, the Bar found he didn’t steal any of the money, and that there wasn’t any evidence of his clients being harmed by his trust fund missteps. It allowed him to continue practicing law.

RALEIGH — NC State replaced Kevin Keatts with Will Wade in March 2025, introducing him 368 days ago in front of the Wolfpack community at Reynolds Coliseum. A little over a year later, Wade decided to leave his new program to return to LSU, the school that fired him for cause in 2022, beginning a long journey back to Power Four basketball.

Now, athletic director Boo Corrigan and the rest of the NC State administration must find a new leader for the men’s basketball program. To make matters more complicated, they won’t have a lot of time to do so, as the new head coach needs to be in place firmly before April 7, the day the transfer portal opens. However, early noise indicates the group in charge has eyes on two candidates.

Who are the candidates?

According to multiple reports, Corrigan and other power brokers at NC State zeroed in on Saint Louis head coach Josh Schertz and Tennessee associate head coach Justin Gainey as the primary two candidates for the opening. Both names were expected to be in the mix as soon as the Wade exit became more and more likely, although Corrigan shared no specific names during his Thursday press conference.

The NC State University Board of Trustees hosted an emergency meeting on Friday, with the primary subject being Wade’s buyout negotiation. Of course, speculation began quickly that there were discussions about the next coach of the Wolfpack, but that’s been confirmed not to be the case in the behind-closed-doors meeting for the board.

Even so, it seems as though NC State plans on making a strong push for Schertz first, despite his status as head coach at Saint Louis still and his recent agreement to a contract extension. That certainly makes things more complicated, but hiring Schertz would allow NC State to maintain any sort of positive momentum established by Wade and his regime in Raleigh. Still, Corrigan isn’t totally committed to a sitting head coach.

“I don’t think it has to be a sitting head coach at this point,” Corrigan said. “I think we want to find someone that knows how to coach and is a great coach, and has the ability to connect with people, both internal and external, with the players, be able to recruit. You have to be a good recruiter in this day and age.”

NC State will move as quickly as it possibly can, with Gainey and Schertz atop the list. That doesn’t rule out other options entirely, but all signs point to one of them being the most likely to be the next coach of the Wolfpack, ending the Will Wade era as quickly as it started.