Moore: 'They want to see us govern'
After a sometimes tumultuous four years, GOP House Speaker-designee Tim Moore says lawmakers and the public want to see the "state can be run like a business." Moore says he won't use his prerogative to pull North Carolina out of a controversial action seeking to preserve the state's same-sex marriage ban.
Posted — UpdatedIn January, Moore expects to take full control of the machinery that runs the state House. The 74-member House Republican Caucus on Saturday named him the speaker-designee, all but assuring he'll assume the top job in the state House.
Right now, he said, he is simply focused on the job at hand.
Moore was first elected in 2002 and served his first two years in office under the quixotic co-speakership arrangement when Republicans and Democrats split the state House 60-60. After that first session, Moore was in the legislative minority until the election of 2010, when Republicans took control of both the state House and the state Senate. In 2012, Republican Pat McCrory took control of the governor's mansion.
Although the two legislative chambers and the Republican governor haven't always gotten along, they have generally signed onto a set of policies far more fiscally and socially conservative than their Democratic predecessors.
"We have righted the ship and dealt with what I had considered to have been a hard left turn the state had taken in the years before the Republicans came to majority," Moore said.
Issues such as abortion, voting rights, gun laws and same-sex marriage have largely been dealt with and are now off the legislative agenda, he said.
"What I think I'm hearing from the caucus and from the folks out there is they want to see us govern," Moore said. "They want to see the state move forward, show that the changes done can be implemented in an appropriate manner. They want to know that the state can be run like a business, that we can live within our means."
Moore said he will continue to push forward with legal action challenging the rulings of federal judges that struck down the state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
"Whether folks support it or oppose it, a majority of voters in this state went to the polls and approved the marriage amendment," he said. "I think we owe it to the voters who did that to stand up for the law."
"I would hope we don't just scrap everything that's happened," he said. "That would be a waste of time, waste of resources. Even though (this is) government, I hope we can do it better than that."
"We want to make sure the teachers who have been there for many years are fairly compensated also," he said.
"One thing we can do, I think, to make it easier, is to have more (predictability) about the schedule, knowing when folks need to be here, trying to keep the sessions limited," he said. "Anything we can do to keep legislators home as much as possible with their families, their careers, all of that, the better off we are."
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