Education Chairman

Sen. Tony Foriest, D-Alamance, has been tapped to succeed the late Sen. Vernon Malone as a co-chairman on two key education committees. Senate leader Marc Basnight announced Foriest would become a leader of both the Senate Committee on Education and Higher Education and the education appropriations subcommittee. Malone died last month. Foriest is in his second term in the Legislature.(THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 5/06/09).