Leverage and 7 other things Republicans want from NC's annual spending plan
Rather than needing to woo Democrats on this year’s state budget, North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers are looking at how many conservative policies they can make their more liberal colleagues agree to.
The reason for the newfound leverage? Medicaid expansion.
Some conservatives erupted in outrage when the Republican-led legislature voted to expand Medicaid several weeks ago. But GOP leaders assuaged their supporters, telling them they didn’t give away something for nothing. By tying Medicaid expansion — something Democrats have pursued for years — to the budget, Republicans believe they can use the budget to also pass unrelated conservative goals that failed to gain enough traction on their own.
There is a caveat: The budget almost certainly will change over the next few months, so more could be added. And items currently in it could be taken out.
House Republicans issued their proposed state budget last week, with plans to pass it this week. After that the Senate will get to proposed changes of its own, setting the stage for negotiations between the two chambers later this spring or summer.
This initial budget draft includes language banning pro-environmental policies, millions of dollars for antiabortion groups, an expansion of the state’s private school voucher program and public school policy changes, including a new way to ban classroom books.
This first draft gives at least a rough idea of what Republican lawmakers think they can get Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to approve, even if he holds his nose to do so.
Cooper has been highly critical of that strategy. Tying Medicaid expansion to the passage of the budget — instead of just letting expansion happen immediately — could cost hospitals around the state a billion dollars or more, Cooper has said. Medicaid expansion will bring in an estimated $521 million per month — funding that’s now delayed until the budget passes.
That didn’t sway Republican leaders, who spent over a decade opposing Medicaid expansion before their recent change in opinion, and now can use the budget to advance other priorities.
Here are some of the GOP leadership’s priorities.
Antiabortion funding. The budget doesn’t contain any language banning abortion, which Republican House Speaker Tim Moore had previously said would be the case. GOP lawmakers are still engaged in private debates over new abortion restrictions. But the budget does spend millions on various anti-abortion groups called crisis pregnancy centers.
Rep. Julie von Haefen, an Apex Democrat, and the North Carolina Republican Party got into a spat over that part of the budget on Twitter.
“Imagine being upset that unwed pregnant mothers might receive more help and assistance in order to avoid ending the life of their baby,” the GOP wrote, prompting von Haefen to respond that she had every right to be upset about the government funding “fake health centers who lie to pregnant people when women are literally dying in our state due to the lack of maternal healthcare.”
Funding for crisis pregnancy centers has been common in past Republican-backed budgets, too. But there’s also new policy language this year that would target groups such as Planned Parenthood, potentially putting a dent in the group's revenues. That's related to teen pregnancy prevention programs the state funds currently. New language in the budget this year would ban the state from hiring any outside groups to help those programs, if those outside groups offer abortions.
The budget sets aside $3.5 million for the state-run teen pregnancy prevention work, and significantly more for outside groups, particularly religious charities that work to stop abortion. Among them:
- Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship: $6.25 million per year. It’s a nonprofit group that helps various crisis centers around the state and would be required to spread much of the money among those local clinics.
- Human Coalition: $5 million per year. The Texas anti-abortion group has an office in Raleigh.
- Mountain Area Pregnancy Services: $50,000. The Asheville anti-abortion group also got $550,000 in last year’s budget after its office was vandalized following the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
- Various Boys & Girls Clubs statewide: $3 million per year. The money could be used on a variety of causes ranging from teen pregnancy prevention to anti-gang messaging.
Classroom materials. Republican budget writers included language that requires schools to post nearly all classroom materials to the internet. House Republicans have tried to pass similar legislation in the past, but didn’t get it over the finish line. Democrats tried to strip this from the budget bill Thursday, without success.
“The problem is this becomes so burdensome on educators,” Durham Rep. Marcia Morey said.
Rep. Jeffrey Elmore, a Wilkes County Republican who is a teacher, acknowledged the language creates extra work for educators, but he said it’s worth it to provide parents with the transparency they’ve come to demand from public schools since the pandemic closed classrooms in favor of at-home studies.
“The idea of creating transparency has really become a very public issue,” Elmore said. “There is a burden there. I’m not disputing that. But many of our materials now are already online. … It is some extra work, but it is not unobtainable.”
Book ban process. The budget would create a new, standard, process for removing books from public schools, allowing parents to submit challenges to a new “local community media advisory committee” in every district.
These committees would include a principal, teacher, library coordinator and parent from a high school, middle school and elementary school in the district. Challenges could be filed against classroom materials, but not “optional supplemental materials available through the school library.”
Once a challenge is filed the committee would have to hold a hearing within two weeks, and then make a recommendation within another two weeks to the local school board, which would render a decision at its next meeting. That decision can ultimately be appealed to the State Board of Education.
Most North Carolina school districts now have a policy by which parents can inspect and object to instructional materials, but this proposal would implement one formal process for every system, and it would involve state officials in what has been a district issue.
WRAL News and other media outlets recently reviewed objections filed over the past two years in North Carolina schools, finding at least 189 book challenges across the state’s 115 public school districts. The challenged titles spanned a wide range of topics, but the most-challenged books had been written for middle school readers on topics about race and racism, or they were coming-of-age books including characters with LGBTQ identities.
Banning cap and trade. Cooper’s administration has been working to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate agreement to cap the amount of carbon dioxide power companies emit.
It was never guaranteed the administration could do this without approval from the General Assembly, but the House budget proposal specifically forbids it.
The budget would also similarly ban the North Carolina Utilities Commission, a body appointed by the governor that regulates Duke Energy and other utility companies, from ordering any cap-and-trade rules in the future.
With the commission implementing major power sector reforms the legislature passed in 2021, adding cap-and-trade would be counterproductive, according to Rep. Dean Arp, a House budget writer who often works on energy policy.
"We are committed to a cleaner energy future,” said Arp, a Union County Republican. “But RGGI, as a mandatory market-based program, raises costs and hurts economic development and growth, and that runs counter to the policies we outline in our budget. I don't see that as necessary to get where we want to go in terms of carbon reduction."
The Southern Environmental Law Center said the prohibition would take a tool in the fight against climate change “permanently off the table, endangering our economy, health, and communities across the coast, piedmont and mountains.”
The House budget also forbids new emission controls for motor vehicles, which is designed to block a Cooper executive order meant to speed the transition to zero-emission trucks by pressing manufacturers to produce more electric heavy duty vehicles in the coming years.
Crime lab move. The State Crime Lab moves from the Department of Justice, which is overseen by the attorney general, to the State Bureau of Investigation under this budget, which would also promote the SBI to a cabinet-level department.
Right now the bureau is under the Department of Public Safety, where it's meant to be an independent agency, but Republican lawmakers have been questioning just how independent it is.
SBI Director Bob Schurmeier accused the Cooper administration last week of involving itself too deeply in bureau hiring decisions and pressing him to resign. The Cooper administration acknowledged expressing "concerns" to Schurmeier "about his leadership and the culture and practices at the SBI," including discrimination complaints alleged against him, the details of which are not public.
The House budget came out one day after Schurmeier made the comments at a hearing organized by House Republicans. If the bureau becomes a cabinet agency, its director would still be appointed by the governor, subject to confirmation by the General Assembly. But whereas now only the governor can remove the director for specific issues set out in state code, the House budget says either the governor or a three-fifths majority of the General Assembly can remove the director.
The budget also tinkers with some hiring language meant, according to Moore, to give the director clearer authority to making hiring decisions on a handful of bureau positions that are essentially political appointments. Schuremeier, who was initially appointed to the job by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, said last week that he has had to negotiate those hires with the Cooper administration.
The budget would also give the SBI $33 million to build a new headquarters building if it does become its own independent agency.
Childcare grants out for now. The House proposal does not include $300 million to boost teacher pay in daycares and preschools around the state, which is a top priority for the state’s business community.
This money would replace pandemic-era federal subsidies that run out later this year, and which are used now to boost salaries in an industry struggling to find workers. Rising wages in the retail sector make it difficult to keep teachers in these jobs, according to daycare owners, which means long waiting lists for child care, which makes it difficult for some parents to have jobs.
Cooper included the funding in the budget he proposed in March.
The House’s omission was surprising because state Rep. Donny Lambeth, a House budget writer, co-sponsored a separate bill that included the money. The NC Chamber of Commerce also supports the funding as part of a broader response to worker shortages in the state’s daycare system, which has bipartisan support.
Lambeth, R-Forsyth, said the House’s health and human services budget committee didn’t recommend the money, so it wasn’t included. Rep. Larry Potts, one of that committee’s co-chairs, said Thursday that he expects some of the money will be added before the budget is final.
There is one much smaller, more targeted child care grant in the budget. Community colleges would get an extra $1.2 million per year to give child care grants to students with children, a nearly 50% increase to that program’s current budget.
Public defender salaries. One of the few successful Democratic efforts to amend this budget would boost the salaries of assistant public defenders around the state.
Raises for assistant district attorneys and assistant public defenders traditionally have been “in lockstep,” according to Mary Pollard, executive director of the North Carolina Office of Indigent Defense Services. But this proposal initially had much larger raises for prosecutors.
That changed Thursday when Republican lawmakers accepted an amendment from Morey to increase assistant public defender salaries.
House lawmakers also budgeted new funding to add four new public defender offices around the state. Pollard had asked for eight new offices, though, as part of a multiyear expansion effort. Right now 61 of the state’s 100 counties don’t have a public defender, relying instead on private attorneys that the system pays to represent indigent defendants.
Those rates run $65 to $100 an hour, less than what private defense attorneys typically charge, and less than what the system paid in 2011, Pollard said. House budget writers declined to increase those rates in this budget.
Supreme Court retirements. House Republicans included a bill in the budget that would raise the mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court and Court of Appeals judges from 72 to 76.
That would allow Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby to stay on the court past his 72nd birthday, which is in 2027.
And since court vacancies created by retirements are filled by the governor, the change would keep a Democratic governor — or whoever wins the 2024 election to replace a term-limited Cooper — from appointing Newby’s replacement.
That would help Republicans defend the 5-2 majority they won on the state’s highest court in the November elections.
The bill would also help Republicans keep their majority on the larger state Court of Appeals. Republican Judge John Tyson would, like Newby, also be forced to retire before the end of his term under the current rules.
For Democrats, the change could also affect who runs for at least one seat on the Supreme Court in 2024. Democratic Justice Michael Morgan is up for re-election next year and, at 67 now, would hit the retirement age well before the end of another eight-year term if he were to win.
