SE North Carolina News

A state legislator alleged that there is a double-standard when it comes to regulating big box stores versus small businesses and questioning why that is the case in an opinion piece he published to his website on May 18. 

“The current executive orders shutting down certain parts of the economy, while letting others operate at their own choice, are so discriminatory that it defies description,” Rep. Frank Iler (R-Shallotte) said on his website. “The government is saying, ‘You small businesses are not smart enough to operate safely, but we in Raleigh know much better what is good for you.’ Instead of providing guidelines for basic safety, they issue orders punishable by fines or imprisonment. Experts in Raleigh and Washington are telling us what to think and do in our local communities and businesses.”

Iler cited the shut down of the Calabash Restaurant, a popular local seafood chain as an example in his post.

A North Carolina legislator posted an opinion piece to his website about what he believes is a double standard when it comes to businesses. | Stock Photo

“Calabash, right here in Brunswick County, is known as the seafood capital of the world,” he said in his post. “Calabash restaurants and others along our southern coast provide hundreds of jobs and form the basis of much of the sales tax and other taxes that support our county and municipal services. Many other retail and hospitality businesses depend on this traffic to support families and their communities.”

Iler accused state officials and North Carolina’s Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, of playing control over people’s lives.

“If you can keep law-abiding citizens locked up in their houses, you can release criminals from the prisons into the streets and also get their votes,” he said in his post.

Iler said Republicans do not have a supermajority at the House and Senate necessary to override Cooper’s vetoes. He called the shutdown orders unconstitutional.

“Is it politics?” Iler asked in his post. “If the answer is ‘Yes,’ then what is the agenda and the point of all this control and denial of our Constitutional rights?"