NC House votes to strip power from incoming Democratic governor, AG as part of Helene aid bill

The Republican-led North Carolina House advanced a bill Tuesday to earmark an additional $227 million in relief aid for victims of Hurricane Helene — a measure stuffed with unrelated provisions aimed at stripping power from the governor, attorney general and other incoming Democratic leaders.

The effort comes on the heels of victories in this month's elections by Democratic Governor-elect Josh Stein and Democrat Jeff Jackson, the congressman who won the race for attorney general.

The vote passed the House 63-46 late Tuesday. The state Senate is expected to approve the bill on Wednesday. If it passes the chamber, it would go to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who could approve it, veto it, or let it pass without signing it.

The bill has skipped typical processes for debate and committee-level vetting, being released to the public just minutes before Tuesday's session began. Republican leaders in the House and Senate met in secret to hammer out the details ahead of the vote.

On Tuesday, Republicans focused on the Helene-related pieces, saying they were focused on rebuilding western North Carolina, which was ravaged by the September storm. But House Democrats roundly criticized the proposal, calling it was a thinly veiled power-grab that had little to do with disaster relief.

Multiple changes in the bill would limit the power of the attorney general, such as banning the office from taking stances in court that don't align with the opinions of state legislative leaders, and banning the office from automatically being allowed to advocate for customers at the state commission that oversees Duke Energy and other utilities.

It would also enact a new strategy to strip the governor's control over the State Board of Elections — a goal state Republican leaders have been chasing for nearly a decade, only to be repeatedly thwarted by voters and state courts. And it would eliminate state commissions on energy policy and school safety that are led by offices currently held by Republicans, the lieutenant governor and superintendent of schools, in offices Democrats won the elections for this year.

"Many people and communities are hurting and need our help, but instead of stepping up, the Republicans in the General Assembly are grabbing power and exacting political retribution," Stein wrote on social media Tuesday. "How about they do their jobs so we can do ours? North Carolina deserves better."

During Tuesday's debate over the bill, GOP House lawmakers remained largely silent on their motivations for passing the bill while Democrats hammered them in speeches over the course of almost two hours. The few Republicans who did speak mostly focused on technical details within the bill. After the vote Rep. Destin Hall, a top-ranking member of the chamber's Republican leadership, told reporters that some of the changes targeting Stein, Jackson and other Democrats were "in response to some elections" this year. He defended those changes as responsible and necessary.

Rep. Eric Ager, a Democrat from the western North Carolina county of Buncombe, slammed GOP leaders on Tuesday for pushing a bill that he said will do "almost nothing" for Helene relief but contains plenty of power grabs and other politically motivated provisions.

"Calling this bill a disaster relief bill is pretty rich," he said. "It moves some money around here in Raleigh, but it doesn't get it into the hands of the people that need it. Instead, this bill is focused on a whole host of political priorities."

The 131-page bill was made public just minutes before lawmakers were scheduled to begin voting on it at 6 p.m. Tuesday. WRAL obtained a draft copy of the bill earlier in the day to analyze the proposed changes. Democratic leaders suggested it would take weeks to understand the full scope of the proposal.

Notably, three House Republicans joined every Democrat in voting against the bill, a rare phenomenon in a body that typically votes strictly along party lines. That's more than enough opposing votes to give Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper hope of successfully vetoing the bill if it makes it to his desk. All three GOP objectors were lawmakers from western North Carolina: Reps. Mike Clampitt, Karl Gillespie and Mark Pless. None publicly explained why they voted against it.

'Last-minute power grab'

The first 12 pages of the 131-page bill deal with Helene recovery efforts. The rest is dedicated to unrelated provisions.

Critics said Republican lawmakers are trying to push through changes to state law this year while they still have a veto-proof supermajority at the legislature. Democrats broke the supermajority in this year's elections, but new members won't be sworn in until January.

"It's a last-minute power grab," Liz Barber, policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union's state chapter, said in an interview Tuesday. She said the changes proposed to the attorney general's office are particularly striking, since it would force the attorney general to defend unconstitutional actions by the legislature, as well as severely limit the N.C. Department of Justice's power to go after companies or government entities that are harming people or violating their rights.

Republican lawmakers took similar actions following the 2016 elections, enacting sweeping changes to weaken the governor's office in the days after Cooper unseated Republican incumbent Pat McCrory.

Hall, the high-ranking Republican lawmaker, held a brief press conference with reporters on Tuesday prior to the vote. He declined to answer questions about any of the provisions in the bill except the Helene-related items, which included $227 million in funding that lawmakers will transfer from a general savings fund to a Helene-specific fund.

"I'm fully committed to doing everything that we can to rebuild western North Carolina," said Hall, who on Tuesday was chosen by Republican lawmakers to take over next year as the new House speaker. He'll replace Speaker Tim Moore, who's leaving for Washington after being elected to Congress.

Last month, Cooper outlined a plan for $3.9 billion in state spending responding to the damage in western North Carolina. Republican lawmakers have so far approved $877 million in funding. If Tuesday's bill becomes law, the legislature will have approved about $1.1 billion in relief aid.

Rep. Donny Lambeth, a top House budget writer, said he expects the legislature to pass more Helene aid in early 2025. "There's a lot of work still that needs to be done," Lambeth, R-Forsyth, said during Tuesday's vote. But Democrats aren't happy with what they see as a slow, under-funded response to the disaster so far.

"We have yet to put any money into state grants for small businesses to stay open or reopen," said Rep. Lindsay Prather, D-Buncombe. "We have yet to fully fund the request from [the Department of Health and Human Services] to support our most vulnerable western families. ... Western North Carolina needs your help now. This is a transparent power-grab pushed through by a supermajority that's not happy with the recent election results — and you're calling it a disaster relief bill. This is shameful."

Some of the unrelated changes included in the newest Helene bill Tuesday would:

• Create new judicial positions to be appointed by the legislature instead of being elected, like most judgeships in North Carolina are. It's a strategy lawmakers began last year to ensure more Republican judges are in office around the state.
• Eliminate the Wake County judicial seat held by Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins, a Democrat who ruled against GOP lawmakers in a high-profile 2018 lawsuit over gerrymandering and voter identification requirements.
• Make the State Highway Patrol an independent agency, giving the legislature the ability to vote down Stein's pick to run the agency. Lawmakers did the same with the State Bureau of Investigation last year.
• Take away the governor's ability to pick a majority of members on the Utilities Commission, which regulates energy companies.
• Eliminate the state Energy Policy Council and the Task Force for Safer Schools, each of which are chaired by state leaders who are currently Republicans but which Democrats won election for this year — lieutenant governor and state superintendent of schools.

Barber said the various changes seem particularly undemocratic given that they all appear directly aimed at rejecting the message voters sent just days ago, in the 2024 elections, about what they want from state government.

"This entire bill, as it pertains to the changes in the powers of the executive branch, is just a slap in the face to North Carolina voters," she said. "And attaching it to disaster relief is just a further insult."

Changes aimed at governor, AG

The bill's changes targeting the attorney general would prevent that office from arguing that any state laws are unconstitutional — something that has happened, though infrequently, in the past. The bill would also ban the attorney general from intervening in other outside lawsuits, a common practice in states around the country.

"My mission as attorney general is to stand up for people," Jackson told WRAL Tuesday. "My team and I will overcome any obstacle to accomplish that mission. The bill under consideration should be focused on Helene response to help our people. It shouldn’t be used to sneak through major policy changes that shift power toward the General Assembly."

The bill would also restrict the attorney general's ability to interact with the Utilities Commission, the state agency tasked with regulating energy companies. Earlier this year Stein, as attorney general, objected to the commission's approval for a rate hike by Duke Energy that Stein said would raise the typical customer's bills by $20 a month.

The bill would also take away Stein's influence over the Utilities Commission: Currently three members are appointed by the governor and two by the legislature, but this bill would give one of the governor's picks to incoming Republican State Treasurer Brad Briner instead, creating a GOP majority on the board.

Another major change outlined in the draft would take away the governor’s power over elections starting in 2025.

Previous GOP-led efforts to transfer elections power to the legislature have been ruled unconstitutional. The new proposal tries a different strategy: It would still take away the governor’s power — but instead of giving that power to the Republican-led legislature, it would give the power to an executive-branch official who’s a member of the Republican Party.

If the new bill ultimately becomes law and survives expected legal challenges, control over the North Carolina State Board of Elections would be taken away from Stein and given to incoming Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek starting in 2025.

Boliek is an ally of legislative leaders who appointed him in 2019 to a coveted seat on the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees. Boliek announced he’d resign from the board after winning the race for auditor this year over Democrat Jessica Holmes.

Elections power struggle

In addition to changing who appoints the election board's political members, the bill would also make a number of technical changes to the rules for future elections, the head of the State Elections Board said in a written statement to WRAL. Nobody in the legislature asked the state board's professional election experts for input on the proposed changes, according to Karen Brinson Bell, the state's elections director.

Those rule changes, if approved, would make it more likely that valid ballots are thrown out in future elections, she said.

"State Board staff were not consulted about this significant piece of legislation that transfers authority of the State Board of Elections and makes substantial administrative changes that may make it impossible for the county boards of elections to adequately ensure every eligible ballot cast is counted, especially in high turnout elections," she said.

Republican Rep. Grey Mills, R-Iredell, is a top lawmaker for election law issues. He said Tuesday the changes should allow the state's vote-counting process to go more quickly. He dismissed concerns over unintended consequences.

After the 2024 elections, about 98% of North Carolina's votes were counted and publicly reported on election night. The other 2% were largely provisional ballots, which required further investigation to determine if the voters in question were eligible to vote, in a process that lasted two weeks after the election. Mills said he thinks the changes will speed up that process. "Our voters expect us to be able to provide election results in a timely fashion," he said.

Mills also defended the decision to transfer elections power to the auditor's office after Democrats said that's not what voters thought they were voting for in this year's elections, and that no other state handles elections that way.

State law has long said that the governor must appoint members from both major political parties to the State Board of Elections; the governor’s party gets a 3-2 majority on the five-member board.

Republican legislative leaders have tried changing the elections board multiple times since Cooper beat McCrory in 2016. But the GOP efforts were struck down for violating the state constitution’s separation-of-powers rules. So in 2018 they asked voters to change the state constitution. Voters overwhelmingly rejected that proposed amendment; it received just 38% support at the polls that year.