North Carolina legislative Republicans are treating Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's veto as nothing more than a speed bump.
Lawmakers on Tuesday overrode Cooper's veto of six bills, making them law. The GOP-led legislature has overridden all Cooper's eight vetoes this session, including on a bill to tighten abortion restrictions.
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Republicans won a supermajority in the Senate in November's elections and earned a supermajority in the House when Democratic Rep. Tricia Cotham changed parties earlier this session.
North Carolina was the last state to grant veto power to its governor, not giving the chief executive that power until 1996. Cooper has vetoed 83 bills since taking office in 2017 with the legislature overturning 31 of them — 23 during his first two years when the GOP also had supermajorities and all eight this year.
No other North Carolina governor has vetoed more than 20 bills.
To override in the House, 72 votes are needed. Some Democrats voted with the 72 House Republicans on the overrides.
The six bills that were overridden and became law Tuesday:
Farm bill
The House vote 78-40 to override Cooper's veto of the state's annual farm bill.
The main point of contention was over what Senate Bill 582 would do to the state's wetlands, particularly just inland from the coast in Eastern North Carolina. Cooper said the bill, if it becomes law, "means more severe flooding for homes, roads and businesses and dirtier water for our people."
Republicans have downplayed concerns over the weakened protections for wetlands in the bill, saying looser rules will help economic development. Bill sponsors have said these lands, many of which aren’t wet year-round, have been over-regulated for years.
"Being myself from Eastern North Carolina, where most of your wetlands are found, I'm pretty sure I know what is a wetland and what is a rainy day puddle," said Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson, a farm owner and the bill's lead sponsor.
The state’s building industry, among others, have pushed for loosened regulations over wetlands.
The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality estimates that the bill will eliminate protections for 2.5 million acres of wetlands — which Sen. Graig Meyer, D-Orange, said is half of all the wetlands statewide. He's concerned what will happen the next time "when we have a hurricane that drops millions of gallons of water on us that has nowhere to go," Meyer said.
Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, said "this is probably the most destructive environmental bill this chamber has voted on since I was elected in 2004."
Diversity, equity and inclusion
The House voted 72-47 to override the veto Senate Bill 364, which bans public universities and state agencies from asking current or prospective employees to state their opinions on social issues. It comes as several universities have ramped up their focus on pro-diversity initiatives — something Republican lawmakers have said they see as an attempt to keep conservatives out of state government jobs.
The law also broadly bans training programs if they endorse certain ideas about racism, sexism and other topics. Democrats see it as an effort to ban training on DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion. Republicans have largely avoided questions of whether they intend for the new rules to do that.
Cooper said when he vetoed the bill last week that the legislature itself is proof anti-racist trainings are still needed. He pointed to an incident last month when Republican Rep. Jeffrey McNeely publicly questioned whether a Democratic lawmaker, Raleigh Rep. Abe Jones, would’ve gotten into Harvard had he not been a Black athlete.
"In North Carolina, the diversity of our people is a strength,” Cooper wrote when he vetoed the bill. “This legislation attempts to eliminate training that can help us understand the unconscious bias we all bring to our work and our communities. It is troubling that a legislature that witnessed open racism on the floor of the House of Representatives wants to stop training aimed at creating a more effective and understanding workforce.”
But Rep. Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, said people doing the hiring can still perform checks of social media or online content when making decisions.
"This bill is simply about not compelling citizens of the state or anybody applying for a job with the state from saying things that may be contrary to their political beliefs to get a job," Hall said.
Environmental, social and governance factors
The House's 72-46 vote to override Cooper's veto of House Bill 750 that would ban state agencies from using “environmental, social and governance” standards to screen potential investments, award contracts or hire and fire employees. House Bill 750 also says the state could not weigh how a company promotes sustainability, engages with its community or structures its leadership to support those goals.
The Senate also overrode Cooper's veto Tuesday.
The measure stems from Republican efforts nationwide to counterweight a focus by big business on environmental sustainability and workplace diversity that they say is so extreme that it harms shareholders and pensioners.
At least two other states have already enacted laws banning such criteria, and elected officials in several other red states have derided them or proposed similar policies to stop investors who contract with states from adopting them.
And on state investments like those in pension funds, the bill says the state treasurer could solely consider factors expected to have a material effect on the financial risk or financial return of an investment.
“This bill does exactly what it claims to stop," Cooper wrote. "For political reasons only, it unnecessarily limits the Treasurer’s ability to make decisions based on the best interest of state retirees and the fiscal health of the retirement fund.”
Rep. Wesley Harris, D-Mecklenburg, said the bill is so vague that it could stop investments from picking an American company over a Chinese one or stop companies from not investing in countries like Iran, North Korea or Syria. "None of these have to do with any of the finances, but you weren't allowed to do anything with them," Harris said.
State Treasurer Dale Folwell, a Republican who is running for governor, supported the bill.
Lending rates
The passage of Senate Bills 329 and 331 will let lenders charge higher interest rates and fees to borrowers in North Carolina. Supporters say it’s needed to help finance companies make more money as they face pressures from inflation. Opponents say regular people are struggling from inflation, too, and shouldn’t be forced to pay even more money to get loans.
Most Democrats had voted in favor of the pro-lender bills originally. But after Cooper vetoed them they largely changed course and voted to uphold his vetoes, to no avail.
The House overrode the vetoes on SB 329 and SB 331 by identical 76-43 votes.
Local government audits
A 75-44 override vote in the House led to the passage of a new law focusing on what happens when local governments fall behind on the internal audits they’re supposed to conduct regularly. It would allow the state government to step in and seize local tax dollars to force an audit through.
It comes as the state has had to take over a number of small, financially troubled towns in recent years — most notably the Fayetteville suburb of Spring Lake, where investigators discovered missing cash and town-owned vehicles that couldn’t be accounted for. The town’s finance director pleaded guilty last year to embezzling half a million dollars.
State Auditor Beth Wood, a Democrat, supports the bill. So did Folwell.
Folwell chairs the Local Government Commission, which is in charge of taking over troubled towns like Spring Lake and turning them around. He and Wood wrote in a joint statement that giving the state the authority to seize local tax dollars will incentivize city and county leaders around the state to do the audits they’re supposed to be doing already, to hopefully catch any issues before they spiral out of control.
Cooper vetoed the bill, saying he thinks the proposal is well-intentioned but that he thinks taking money away from small towns is a bad idea, since it will harm local residents who depend on city services that might now go unfunded or underfunded.