NC General Assembly’s “short session” convenes today

The North Carolina General Assembly returns to Raleigh today for the 2024 “short session” — a session that figures to feature debates over familiar topics like public and higher education and funding for state agencies, as well as new proposals to expand legalized gambling and to further restrict access to certain substances linked to drug abuse.

Big ticket budget items

As NC Newsline reported last week, the session will convene at a time in which the state faces big challenges in meeting its obligations and commitments for providing core public services. A combination of low pay and morale has helped conspire to produce huge staff vacancies in the state’s K-12 teaching corps as well as several government agencies, including prisons and psychiatric hospitals.

Meanwhile, the impending end of federal relief funding in June that was first provided during the COVID-19 pandemic to childcare centers across the state, is creating the potential for what many are describing as a “childcare cliff” that could cause hundreds of centers to close absent action by lawmakers to provide some kind of state-based relief.

Lawmakers will not, however, be without tools at their disposal to meet these demands if they so choose. In addition to sizable existing reserves, the state will take in about $1 billion more in taxes than expected this year, economists with the state Office of Budget and Management and the state legislature said in their forecast published last week.

The change reflects an improved economic outlook and more money coming in from individual income and sales taxes.

Despite the tax-collection upswing and new revenue from sports betting, the economic forecast anticipates only “modest year-over-year growth of 0.7%” due to tax cuts the legislature has already enacted.

Individual and corporate income tax rates will drop in 2025. The state will increase transfers of money raised from sales taxes to the transportation fund, which is used mainly for highway construction and repairs.

Education

One area that figures to consume some of the available dollars is the controversial private school voucher program that GOP legislators have been steadily expanding in recent years. Last year, legislators opened the Opportunity Scholarships to all families regardless of income. A record 72,000 families applied, the News & Observer reported.

Families whose children already receive vouchers and lower-income families are first in line. The money set aside for vouchers last year was not enough to meet the demand.

“We’ll just have to fund it — meet the commitment there,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters earlier this month. “That’s about $300 million and fortunately, we have the money to be able to do that.”

Another conservative education priority that could receive attention during the session is the move to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the state’s university system. A UNC System Board of Governors committee voted to approve such a ban last week and the full board is expected to examine the subject at its May meeting.

But it’s also possible that the General Assembly could beat it to the punch. Anti-DEI bills were considered in 2023 and House Speaker Tim Moore said earlier this month that the House could take up such legislation this year, but that the matter was “still at the conversation stage.”

Gambling and drugs

One area in which the legislature’s GOP majority could be less well-unified is on the subject of gambling.

The state legalized online sports betting last year and so-called “video poker” may be next. Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger told reporters in February that there’s interest among Republicans to legalize the video lottery terminals, WRAL reported.

The legislature voted to phase out video poker in 2006, making possession of the machines illegal on July 1, 2007.

But the machines can still be found in parlors and convenience stores throughout the state. Companies have tweaked their software and fought to convince judges that their systems were inside legal boundaries.

A plan to legalize video poker was part of a broader gambling proposal floated last year that included new casinos in rural areas. Efforts by Republican senators to push that idea through the legislature flopped. Legislators debated the idea behind closed doors for months, never holding committee meetings or public information sessions on the proposal.

In the past, sheriffs and social conservatives have vocally opposed legalization of video poker machines. Efforts of county sheriffs to shut down video poker parlors resulted in lawsuits filed by operators and manufacturers in their attempts to convince courts their machines were legal.

If the legislature considers video poker legalization this year, Moore said, he wants a “normal committee process.”

“The big complaint last year that folks had when it came with the gaming legislation was the way it was just kind of being jammed in without much discussion,” Moore said earlier this month.  “And frankly, I think those criticisms were fair. I didn’t like that process.”

If Republicans decide to move for legalization, Moore wants some Democrats on board.
“It would be something that we would seek to get bipartisan engagement,” he said.

Moore said earlier this month that drug legislation may also be on his chamber’s agenda for the short session. A House Select Committee on Substance Abuse suggested the state crack down on the antidepressant tianeptine, known as “gas station heroin.”  Tianeptine is available in vape shops, convenience stores and online.

The committee also wants the legislature to pass House Bill 563, which would regulate hemp-derived edibles and kratom. The House passed the bill unanimously in September. The Senate has not acted on it.

A proposal approved by the Senate in each of the last two years to legalize medical marijuana for people suffering from some conditions resides in the House and remains eligible for consideration  in the coming weeks but there’s been no indication thus far that movement is likely.

Criminal justice reform

Criminal justice advocates are pushing for several bills this short session they say will help people with criminal records stay out of prison or jail and move on with their lives.

The proposals would: get rid of the practice of suspending licenses for unpaid fines or missed court dates, eliminating a barrier that can keep people from getting employed and accessing health care or education; automatically expunge certain criminal charges that were dismissed or resulted in a “not guilty” verdict, ensuring those who were not convicted of their crimes are not stigmatized for something they didn’t even do; reduce mandatory suspensions for drivers who commit moving violations when their license is already suspended, and end permanent suspensions; and regulate for-profit companies that publish mugshots, requiring companies to remove and destroy them if the criminal charge has been dismissed, expunged or resulted in a “not guilty” verdict.

There will be a “Second Chance Lobbying Day” at the legislature on Wednesday April 30, where reformers will rally and tell legislators about the bills’ importance. It’s unclear whether Republican leaders will be willing to entertain the possibility. They are not new bills; Republicans have declined to advance them in the past.

Vulnerable communities

Two vulnerable communities likely to be the subject of legislation and controversy in the coming weeks are immigrants and those in search of affordable housing.

WRAL reported earlier this month that GOP lawmakers will once again seek to enact a law that would compel North Carolina sheriffs to work with federal immigration enforcement officials in deporting undocumented individuals.

Immigrant advocates and some local law enforcement officials have consistently opposed such a mandate – in part because of concerns that the fear of deportation discourages crime victims and witnesses in immigrant communities from reporting crime and talking to law enforcement officers. Lawmakers have previously passed such legislation only to see it vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper. The latest measure of this kind – House Bill 10 – passed the House last spring, but has not been heard in the Senate.

Meanwhile, if anti-poverty advocates were to get their way, lawmakers would devote substantial attention to the state’s affordable housing and homelessness crises. Advocates at the North Carolina Justice Center and North Carolina Housing Coalition are both calling on lawmakers to devote greater resources to the construction of affordable housing, the enhancement of tenant rights, and the protection of vulnerable consumers.

A proposal introduced last year by Democratic Wake County Senator Sydney Batch to establish a state department of Housing and Economic Development would have sought to move the state in such a direction, but Republican lawmakers have yet to even assign it to a substantive committee.

How long will it go?

Down through the decades, lawmakers traditionally convened the short session during Year Two of the legislative biennium to make adjustments to the two-year state budget enacted during Year One, and to consider a limited number of bills – typically, legislation that either impacts the budget, that has received the recommendation of study committee that met during the interim, or that remains pending after having passed at least one house during the previous year. Often, lawmakers convened the short session with the stated intention of completing their work prior to the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

With large, often veto-proof, supermajorities at their disposal in recent years, however, Republican leaders have often strayed from this pattern – sometimes allowing the “short session” to linger, of and on, for several months. Thus far, neither Speaker Moore nor Senator Berger have offered any definitive predictions for this year’s session – though they generally retain the ability to set aside rules and consider any proposal they deem important at any time.

NC Newsline will provide coverage of this afternoon’s opening House and Senate sessions and continuing coverage of the General Assembly’s return to Raleigh over the coming weeks. Check back for regular updates.