Bills filed, votes to come. Here's how your NC General Assembly works
One hundred seventy people — the members of the North Carolina General Assembly — have ideas they think should become state laws, and they have been empowered by North Carolina voters to file official legislation and see if they can get others to agree.
One of those ideas: Require business to take cash. No card-only retailers. Another: Only hands-free cell phone use for drivers. Holding a phone while driving would be illegal. Another: Requiring potentially expensive new security measures for power stations to stymie attacks and blackouts.
There will be hundreds more. North Carolina, your General Assembly is back in session, and here’s how it works.
Any of the 120 members in the North Carolina House and 50 members of the North Carolina Senate can propose a bill. Republicans control both chambers by wide margins, so Republican bills have an exponentially better chance of passing.
Democrats, for example, proposed bills last week codifying Roe v. Wade in an effort to protect abortion access in the state. It will not pass.
Instead, new abortion restrictions will likely pass, written by Republicans. It’s too early to say what they’ll look like or whether they’ll survive an almost certain veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
The topic will be heavily covered. So will debates over the state budget, which lawmakers will rewrite in the coming months, setting salaries for teachers and state employees and spending some $30 billion in state tax revenue. So will culture-war bills — such as bills limiting discussion of race and gender in schools — as well as gun bills and immigration bills.
Someone in the General Assembly this year will propose legislation that others might find ridiculous. There’s a good chance it won’t pass. Lawmakers filed 2,095 bills and resolutions over the last two years, and 283 of them passed.
A bill is legislation that, when finalized, becomes law. A resolution is something less. Usually a statement of belief from one or both of the chambers.
You may see disconcerting national media coverage noting that a controversial bill “passed first reading.” All bills pass first reading. It simply means the bill has been filed and noted as filed on the floor of the House or Senate.
A much better sign that a bill has legs: If it gets a hearing in a legislative committee, which is a smaller group of lawmakers that hash out details on a bill. Better yet: If it passes committee. Better still: If essentially the same legislative language passes committee in both chambers.
Once bills leave committee, they must pass three readings each in the House and Senate to make it to the governor’s desk. Then the governor decides whether to sign that bill into law, veto it and send it back to the General Assembly, which can try to overturn his veto, or to let it become law without his signature.
There’s a flow chart, from the state’s legislative library, that breaks this all down.
There are less traditional pathways for bills to become law, too, including wholesale cut-and-pasting of one bill into another that’s already further along in the process. That lets lawmakers bypass the committee process and, at times, some of the chamber votes. Even in those cases, the House and Senate must both vote on the same, final language and the governor gets his chance to veto.
More influential lawmakers also like to paste bills into the state budget, forcing others to either accept that idea or vote against a massively important spending bill.
It takes three-fifths of both the House and Senate to overturn a veto, and Republicans are a single seat short of that margin. They might may successfully recruit Democrats this year to overturn some of Cooper’s vetoes. They also may pull parliamentary maneuvers to clear the three-fifths threshold, which is not calculated from the legislature’s total membership but depends on how many lawmakers are on a chamber floor at a given moment.
This session started Jan. 11, but bill filing opened Wednesday.
Below are some of the first bills filled, but being filed first is not an indicator that a bill will pass. Republican leadership in the two chambers decides what to prioritize and how quickly to proceed.
To look a bill up it helps to have the bill number, but the General Assembly’s website has a search function too. Questions? We do this all day. Email here: tfain@wral.com.
House Bills
HB 9 – The Fair Maps Act. An annual bill from Democrats to change the way North Carolina draws election maps, requiring the legislature to establish an independent commission rather than drawing maps themselves. This bill has not advanced in past sessions.
HB 17 – Elect the SBE/SPI as SBE Chair. Would ask voters to amend the state constitution to elect the State Board of Education, which is largely appointed by the governor now, though the legislature confirms those appointments. This idea has been proposed before.
HB 20 – The Cash Commitment Act. Would require retailers who accept payments in person to accept cash, though they wouldn’t have to accept $100 bills or larger. Violations could bring a penalty up to $2,500 for a first offense and $5,000 for a second. Sponsoring state Rep. Brenden Jones, R-Columbus, said the trend toward only accepting bank cards discriminates against people without cards. “Every North Carolina citizen should have the option to pay for critical goods and services in cash and not be at the mercy of private banks or retail businesses,” he said.
HB 23 – Gooru Contract. Requires the state to contract with Gooru, a computer software company, to “evaluate and improve student learning and performance” in public schools. This language is also in House Bill 26, a broader education bill. Rep. John Torbett, a bill sponsor, said lawmakers expected the state Department of Public Instruction to have issued a request for proposals on this project, part of the state response to pandemic learning loss, for months. This bill would force the department’s hand. “We cannot wait around on the slow procurement processes anymore on this topic,” said Torbett, R-Gaston.
HB 24 – Review of Federal Acts/Rules/Regulations. Empowers the legislature to declare federal actions to be unconstitutional and forbid state agencies, local governments and any entity that gets state funding from enforcing it. Part of the bill lays out a process for the legislature or attorney general to sue the federal government to block rules from being implemented, but failing that the bill says “the General Assembly may declare the federal action to be unconstitutional." This is often called “nullification,” and similar measures have been proposed before unsuccessfully. This go-around was inspired, according to state Rep. Jon Hardister, one of the bill co-sponsors, by the Biden administration's vaccine mandates, which were blocked by the federal courts. Hardister, R-Guilford, said he wants to see a debate over where the limits are for federal executive branch mandates.
Senate Bills
SB 15 – Hands-Free NC. Would make it illegal to drive while holding a cell phone. Hands-free usage would still be allowed. This is the law in many other states, and North Carolina lawmakers have kicked the idea around for years. A first offense would bring a $100 fine but no points charged against a drivers license.
SB 16 – Preserving competition in Health Care. Would give the state’s attorney general more power to review, and potentially block, hospital mergers. The ever-growing size of hospital groups has a number of lawmakers concerned about price increases and dwindling competition.
