When the North Carolina General Assembly convened for its summer “short session” in late April, lawmakers appeared poised to legislate. With a veto-proof supermajority in both chambers of the legislature and an anticipated state budget surplus of roughly $1 billion at their disposal, Republican lawmakers set forth ambitious agendas.
But as the summer drew on, that prospect of compromise dwindled. The Republican leadership clashed, and November’s looming election likely deters lawmakers from enacting any dramatic legislation that may swing voters one way or another. While lawmakers eventually made compromises on major issues, they failed to deliver much legislation.
Education
Republicans in both chambers first rolled out plans to expand state funding for private education. Senate Republicans aimed to appropriate over $460 million to North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarships program — a household income-based school voucher program — and expand access to over 50,000 students who had applied for the program.
The Republican-led House eventually agreed to include plans for some increased teacher pay and master’s degree bonuses in its mid-June budget proposal, adopting similar versions of plans put forth by state Democrats and Governor Roy Cooper. But when Senate Republicans couldn’t agree to package the proposed teacher raises with their voucher plan, they seemed to end any prospect of more appropriations being made to education.
“The only thing that we were asking is that there be components in there to also put funds to our traditional public schools,” Speaker of the N.C. House of Representatives Tim Moore (R-NC111) said in June, “and we were unable to get that agreement from the Senate.”
Eventually, both chambers managed to come together and take some small steps on funding education. The House and Senate agreed to increase teacher pay by 3%, as well as approve over $67 million in new funding for childcare operations facing the end of pandemic-era funding. Both of these efforts were signed into law by Cooper back in early July.
Constitutional amendments for elections
The state legislature proposed several constitutional amendments that would modify election processes in the state. That included a proposed amendment to reword the state constitution’s language surrounding voter eligibility in elections, which currently states that “every person born in the United States and every person who has been naturalized” is able to vote. The amendment— now on the ballot in November— would simply reword the language to mean “only a citizen of the United States.”
Another similarly repetitive amendment sought to reiterate North Carolina’s standing requirement that all mail-in voters provide identification when voting. That proposed amendment passed in the Senate before receiving no votes in the House.
A third proposed constitutional amendment that failed to pass on to the ballot box included abolishing the state’s literacy test for voters. Although the Jim Crow-era procedures of literacy tests were nullified nationally by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, North Carolina voters later reaffirmed their commitment to the procedure by voting for it just years later. While the amendment repealing literacy tests passed unanimously in the House, it failed in the Senate.
When asked why the Senate failed to vote on the amendment, Republican Majority Leader Phil Berger (R, NC26) explained that the bill “kind of popped up at the last minute,” adding that “nobody had talked about it.”
What does it all mean?
It would make sense that the legislature would stop short of enacting what could be viewed as too drastic legislation before an election. With issues like education being voter-sensitive topics to North Carolinians, a lack of comprehensive reform or overhaul to public education in particular was to be expected.
Their summer marked quite the contrast from outgoing Governor Roy Cooper, who after briefly being considered for Vice President Harris’ running mate, aggressively pursued a massive medical debt relief program. All the while stumping for the Harris/Walz ticket.
The backdrop of an election can also be cited to explain the appropriation of reserve funding to economic development initiatives such as infrastructure preparations in Randolph County for an incoming Toyota megasite. Efforts to invest in the state economy are likely beneficial for lawmakers to campaign for re-election upon.
Now, lawmakers will await the results of the state’s 2024 gubernatorial race to determine the viability of their future legislative agenda.
