Lawmakers approve Republican school raise bill as budget fight continues

The vote pulled three Democrats in the House, but otherwise fell along party lines, 62-46. It passed the Senate 28-21 on a strictly party-line vote.

Senate Bill 354 presents Gov. Roy Cooper with a choice: Accept slightly higher raises for public school teachers across the state – and significantly higher ones for bus drivers and other non-certified school personnel – or continue to fight the Republican budget plan, the business tax cuts in it and its lack of Medicaid expansion, one of Cooper's top priorities.

There's little doubt what Cooper will choose, and Republicans don't have the numbers to overturn his veto. They likely won't have a chance to try again until January, because the legislature is on a break after Thursday.

At any rate, the governor trashed the proposal Thursday morning on Twitter.

"Republican leaders hold teachers hostage," the governor said Thursday morning in a signed tweet indicating that he, not his staff, sent it. "Demand sweeping corporate tax breaks and their entire bad budget in exchange for paltry teacher pay raises that are less than other state employees. Like kidnappers wanting ALL the ransom $$ and still not letting victims go."

Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger said on the social network that "nobody should accept this as true." The bill would give teachers a 3.9 percent pay raise over the budget's two-year cycle whether Democrats accept the Republican budget or not.

That's what they were scheduled to get in the budget the GOP majority passed in June.

Cooper and his fellow Democrats used the veto to hold out for more, as well as for Medicaid expansion. Republicans are dangling a half-percentage-point additional raise for teachers and 4 percent raises for non-certified school employees if Democrats will accept the original budget, which includes tax cuts and a number of capital projects in various lawmakers' districts.

The Twitter war bled onto the House floor Thursday. House Minority Leader Darren Jackson rose after the bill passed to chastise Republicans for questioning Democrats' integrity and independent thinking during the debate. House Majority Leader John Bell responded: The governor literally called us kidnappers this morning.

House Speaker Tim Moore acknowledged the tension in a session now in its 10th month.

"The acrimony could be cut with a knife at times," Moore, R-Cleveland, said. "We don't ever want to view each other as enemies. ... If we'd all just treat each other the way we'd want to be treated, we probably wouldn't have the problems that we have."

Left unmentioned: Moore called a surprise budget veto override vote in September, taking advantage when most Democrats failed to show up for an early morning vote to move the bill back through his chamber. Democrats said they were told no votes would be taken that morning.

At the end of Thursday, lawmakers started a long-awaited break, though they will come back in mid-November, likely to redraw Congressional districts targeted in the state's latest redistricting lawsuit. As it stands now, the adjournment resolution controlling that return to session won't allow for veto override votes until the General Assembly returns again in January.

As for the teacher pay bill, Republicans said it includes $250 million in new education funding over the next two years.

"These are great investments that we are making in our hard-working folks in public education," Moore said, leaving the speaker's dais and moving to his desk on the floor to take part in the debate. "I don't know how anybody can say that a quarter of a billion dollars in new money is not serious."

Jackson, D-Wake, said it's not good enough, particularly since rank-and-file state employees get higher raises in budget bills already signed into law. Explain, he said, why a school janitor doesn't deserve the same raise as one that works in the Legislative Building.

"I'm happy to listen to that debate," Jackson said. "Why do teachers deserve less of a raise than other state employees?"

Republicans have said repeatedly in this fight that the last several budget cycles focused on teacher pay, which now averages roughly $54,000 a year in North Carolina. They wanted to focus this year on state employees, they have said. But Democrats noted a measure last year, guaranteeing state employees at least $15 an hour, didn't include school employees like bus drivers and cafeteria workers.

Democrats and Republicans alike seemed frustrated by the lack of negotiation.

"We can do better," Rep. Carla Cunningham, D-Mecklenburg, said. "We can do better. But do we want to do better? That's the question."