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Governance
On Thursday the NC Senate passed SB 508, the technical corrections bill to last session’s budget. NC Sen. Graig Meyer (D-Orange) proposed using the bill to undo a provision from last year’s budget that exempts state lawmakers from public records law, allowing them to delete any records or possibly sell them to third parties. The proposal didn’t make it into the final corrections bill, which included minor changes such as opening $50 million allocated in mental health care funding to health facilities beyond hospitals.
Education Policy
On Thursday the NC Senate approved a bill that would spend an additional $463 million on North Carolina’s private school voucher program. HB 823 would provide additional funding for the so-called “Opportunity Scholarships” program to meet demand that exceeded funding capacity after the legislature opened the program last year to families regardless of income. Democratic legislators objected to the bill, describing it as welfare for wealthy families and a drain on the public school system and proposed unsuccessful amendments that would have required schools that take vouchers to provide performance data and follow state curriculum standards.
Republicans in the N.C. House filed a bill that would require sports teams at UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State to play against other in-state schools. HB 965 would require the schools to play against ECU, Appalachian State, and UNC-Charlotte home and away every six years and play against at least one of the schools each year.
Economic Policy
On Tuesday Rep. Diamond Staton-Williams (D-Cabarrus) filed a bill that would create a new state department focused on housing – the North Carolina Department of Housing and Community Development. The department would be led by a new cabinet secretary and a nine-member board, and would focus on community development projects and improving affordable housing access. A nearly identical bill introduced in the Senate in 2023 (by Democratic senators including Sydney Batch) was never referred to committee for review.
Rep. Marcia Morey (D-Durham) and Sen. Julie Mayfield (D-Buncombe) introduced identical bills in the NC House and Senate this week that would place multiple restrictions on sports betting. The bills (HB 967 and SB 788) would ban betting on individual players’ statistics in college and amateur sports (prop bets) and block in-person betting at college sports facilities starting from eight hours prior to a sporting event through the event’s duration. After mobile sports betting was legalized in North Carolina in mid-March, North Carolinians spent nearly $660 million in mobile sports bets that month.
Environmental Policy
On Thursday the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission unanimously voted to propose an amended rule, supported by findings from the state geologist, that would protect the environmental designation for Jockey’s Ridge State Park after the state Rules Review Commission objected to 30 rules that included the park’s environmental designation. The 10-member Rules Review Commission is appointed by the (currently Republican) leaders of each chamber of the NCGA. The state legislature also stepped in to protect the park’s designation, introducing a bill that would temporarily designate the park as an “Area of Environmental Concern” while the permanent rule is in question. The Republican-controlled NCGA gave the Rules Review Commission the power to eliminate existing rules last year, which allowed the commission to issue objections against numerous state agencies’ rules without warning.
This week Sen. Tim Moffit (R), who represents Henderson, Polk, and Rutherford Counties, introduced a bill that would allow those counties and their municipalities to regulate and prohibit cryptocurrency mining. Crypto mining, the process of creating new crypto coins and verifying bitcoin transactions, requires significant computing power, leading to environmental concerns over electricity use and noise pollution from server centers. SB 774 would only affect those three counties and the municipalities in them, but other North Carolina communities and counties, including Cherokee County, have previously objected to crypto mining and unsuccessfully sought additional regulatory power.
Immigration
On Thursday the NC House passed a bill that would require sheriffs to cooperate with ICE. HB 10, which passed along party lines, would require sheriffs to look up the immigration status of people charged with felonies or serious misdemeanors and to continue holding people who would otherwise be released in jail if requested to do so by ICE. Governor Cooper previously vetoed similar bills, but the Republican supermajority in the NCGA means that any veto will likely be overridden this time.
Women’s Rights and LGBTQ Rights
On Tuesday a U.S. District Judge in Greensboro ruled that some North Carolina restrictions on dispensing abortion pills unlawfully conflict with federal regulation of the drug. Judge Catherine Eagles ruled that requiring doctors to provide the drug to the patient in person is unlawful, but said that other restrictions challenged in the suit, including requirements for an ultrasound, in-person examination, and in-person consultation 72 hours before the drug can be prescribed, are not unlawful because they have not been reviewed or prohibited by the FDA. The ruling represents a partial victory for Dr. Amy Bryant, the physician who sued over the regulations.
On Monday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that North Carolina must cover gender-affirming care for employees and their families covered under the State Health Plan. The court’s decision describes exclusions of coverage for gender-affirming care as “facially discriminat[ory]” on the basis of sex and gender identity and rejects the idea that cost concerns could be a valid reason for such discrimination. The ruling will apply to all states in the Fourth Circuit district, including North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina.