- [Kelly] The North Carolina General Assembly opens the 2024 short legislative session.

This is "State Lines."

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[lively music] ♪ - Welcome back to "State Lines."

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me now is former North Carolina Attorney General Rufus Edmisten, News and Observer Capital Bureau Chief Dawn Vaughn, Public Relations Consultant Pat Ryan, and Campbell Law School professor and former legislator Rick Glazier.

Hello, everybody.

- Hello.

- Hello.

- It's good to, you know, hey, it's short session week It opened.

Should I send my congratulations.

- You mean this is the short session we have today?

- That's what I'm told.

Well, this gonna be a 30 minute session.

Do we send Dawn our congratulations for another exciting short session Rufus or our condolences for another grind in the basement of the Capitol Bureau office?

- She can handle it.

- You got it.

- Yeah, the 2024 North Carolina legislative session opened this week.

The top issue as every year will be adjusting the second year of the current state budget law.

Other high level issues are certainly going to be under consideration, but Representative Glazier, let's start with an overview of the short session with you.

The rules are republicans still have that super majority in the House and Senate, but House Speaker Tim Moore presiding over his final session.

Do we call him a lame duck yet or does he have some, you know, juice left in the tank to power through another legislative agenda before he maybe heads to Congress?

- No, I think he has some juice left, and I think it'll be a relatively short, short session with the extensions after the general election.

After the general election.

But I think that there are gonna be a number of issues.

The budget obviously is the key one, and they start with a $1.4 billion surplus.

But they're also looking at a revenue outlook that's less than rosy in the out years because of the corporate cuts and the other tax cuts.

They've got education issues they've gotta deal with.

They've got a childcare cliff that they're looking at.

With the Covid funds now evaporating, they've really got to look at and how Speaker Moore talked about this, childcare subsidy issues and filling in the gap.

They've got Medicaid issues they're gonna have to look at despite the influx of the money from the federal government.

They've also gotta look at the normal election year things, COLAs for the state of retirees or bonuses and then teacher pay, which they had a decent teacher pay raise in the last budget of about 7% on average, but still behind and still way behind the Leandro plan and the governor's proposal.

So all that sits there.

On the non-budget side, there's gonna be a push on immigration issues I suspect.

There is nationwide, and it's a political issue about trying to get the sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration authorities on deportation cases.

They're gonna be looking, I think, at the continuing issue and saga of medical marijuana issues and legalizing that.

I think there's issues sort of sitting there as a result of hemp derivative and edibles that sits there.

They've got criminal justice reform possibilities of sort of dealing with expunction and driver's license restoration.

And finally, not to say the least, there's the DEI controversy that's sort of wet the UNC Board of Governors, but the legislature may wanna jump in as well.

So other than that, not much gonna happen.

- So when you're a legislator, and you were in leadership on the democratic side, and it's an election year and a short session, is it distracting to know you have to go back to Raleigh knowing that if you, even if you get out June 30th, it's just July, August, September, October, and then it's election night.

- Yeah, I mean, you know, things have changed in the sense that so much becomes partisan play for votes for the general election, which you don't have as much in the long session.

And so we'll see some of that.

We'll see some of that not happen.

Senator Berger, I think has been clear and makes a very good decision, I think, for the state that abortion is not gonna likely be a topic in the legislative halls this year.

It's certainly gonna be a topic in election because it is nationwide, but I don't think we're gonna see that legislatively.

- Pat, at the top of the legislative leadership, he's right.

You have to have something to feed your potential voters, but you have serious issues facing the state.

Inside, in your case the Senate President Pro Tempore's office, how do you decide where to go, where to push on an off year so you can A, get business done, B get outta town and get back on the campaign trail?

- Yeah, I think it just depends on the year, the nature of the relationship with the executive branch and with the house.

All sides this year is talking about wanting to have a very short session and get home.

But look, I mean, we can segment policy choices between, you know, political fodder and quote unquote serious, but at the end of the day, these folks are elected by constituencies who, you may not think that, you know, sheriffs complying with ICE detainers is that important or impactful, but a lot of people do, and those are the ones at the end of the day who decide who is going to represent them in the legislature.

And so, you know, there I think needs to be a focus on issues like that because that's what people want and look for and hope for.

And then on the, I guess more wonky side, right?

There's questions of budget and taxation, and I think opportunity scholarship funding will likely get the most sort of public attention because it's just a major education funding policy issue, right?

But yeah, I think that it's just a mix of all those things that goes into it.

- We know how the relationships are going down there.

Dawn, let's talk about the agendas.

Phil Berger has mentioned different things.

Tim Moore is mentioning different things, and the longer you stay down there as a journalist, the more you do get in the weeds 'cause once you understand the game, it gets a lot more fun.

What do people want to know about coming out of the legislature in terms of action this year?

Because you have readers out there, and they only have so much bandwidth to read and watch news.

- Oh, yeah, well, raises and taxes.

I mean every year that's the top lines of the budget of what people wanna know.

Education funding, whatever version of it that, you know, that you support.

But like clockwork, every time I write any sort of story about any budget, any raises, I hear from a retired state employee that says what they're unhappy about with the pitches, and Cooper's pitch is a COLA bonus, one time money.

That's almost, I feel like as long as I've been covering the budget process, both Democrats and Republicans, it's always just one time.

And retirees don't always like that.

Sometimes there's nothing for retirees in the budget proposals, and they're not happy about it.

- Yeah, Rufus, another year is down.

It's 2024 short session, is it different than any other year?

Should we be more hopeful that we're gonna see a budget June 3rd?

- Well, thank you Kelly.

In my 20 years of state government, I heard short session, short session, and what Rick read off there was about five years worth.

No such thing as a short session.

This one could be shorter because the stakes are higher.

I look at some of the non-budgetary matters as stirring people up, the voucher program or they call it scholarship, I don't like that term used on this.

It's not a scholarship, it's a program that I do wish that on their opportunity scholarships that they would have some control over where the money goes and especially to purely religious schools, Kelly.

- Let me ask you about that.

Some of these funding things, the Republican leadership's actually saying, "We'll take out of rainy day reserve."

I've never really heard of them doing this.

But they wanna take rainy day reserve to maybe pay state employee bonuses and the voucher or the opportunity scholarships.

- There's a little budgeting gimmick there that the John Locke Foundation wrote an article about this week, about this reserve fund.

There's a difference in the budget and reserve budget and so that's where a lot of things, there's no transparency in the reserve budget 'cause it's just set aside and then with the notion behind the scenes that it's going to do this, it's going to do that.

- And I think one thing we didn't talk about, but really they're gonna have to deal within the budget, they have serious vacancy issues in the prison system, in psychiatric hospitals and in educational facilities and that's partly pay, partly other issues, but they're gonna have to deal with that this year.

- The vacancy rate is- - Also law enforcement.

Sorry, Dawn.

- Yeah, law enforcement.

- Well, the vacancy rate is still 23% as of December.

Budget director, Kristen Walker said, but the governor's pitch for raises for state employees isn't as high as teachers and state employees, obviously you need them to make the state run and you need to look at turnover.

Do they start working for the state and wanna stay and realize it's something that benefits them or do they think it's not great and they leave.

- Yeah, I never quite understood why the governor's proposals doesn't provide equal recommended raises for teachers and state employees.

I think it's been rather unequal over the years.

But on the question of vouchers, Rufus, you're a man of the people, the people demand and want, there's a a 38,000 person long wait list for these opportunity scholarships and there's clearly a desire and support from a lot of families in the state for a model in which the education funding follows the student to whichever school that child's parents think is best for him or her.

- But if you're filthy rich Pat, why do you get a chunk of that?

All I was saying about accountability.

- You can come back and talk about opportunity scholarships if you'd like.

- Well, I Dawn't wanna get off on that too much.

- The governor has a huge budget too.

He has his own ideas, ladies and gentlemen.

Governor Cooper has his budget, he released it hours before the legislative session opened.

Dawn, I guess you were there, gubernatorial budgets.

Rick, they're very symbolic.

They deliver them, even if it was a Republican governor, he'd delivered that budget and they say it goes in the trash.

They read it.

I know they read it.

- We do.

- Governor Cooper wants 8.5% pay raise, Dawn, for public educators, 5% pay raise for state employees, to Pat's point, the governor does not propose any tax increases.

He wants the state to hold that corporate tax rate at 2.5%, 3% COLA adjustment, as you said, for retirees, and there's a five years worth of items in there.

go for it.

- Well, there's also, yeah, I was there and Cooper had this, he basically used reporters to hear his pitch and then go ask the lawmakers across the street, what they think about it, which we did.

And they're like, "Well, I haven't read it yet."

And I'm like, "Well, we've only read some of it "because this all happened within about 10 minutes."

But the other raise that lower raise for state employees and Cooper's pitch is also for all the non-certified school personnel, which there's other vacancy issues, bus drivers, the people who were paid the lowest are also getting the lowest raises in that pitch and I've said this before, it's sort of this "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" porridge where Cooper wants everything, the Senate wants nothing and the house in the middle is like kind of where things sometimes land.

Representative Jason Saine one of the head budget writers said that with the childcare issues, yes, they want to do something to address that.

No, they Dawn't need to listen to Cooper if they Dawn't want 'cause they have a super majority, but they're going to anyway and we're still pretty early in the process.

There's that first day of school that everybody's been talking about where everyone's happy to see each other and has ideas and we'll see what happens in another month.

- Yeah, but what happens at recess, Pat?

[panelists laughing] It's a shadow budget.

Old school, I guess parliamentary British style.

Paul Stan used to love doing a shadow budget and giving it to you Rick.

What do you think of the governor's budget?

It's okay to ask for everything in it when you know you're not gonna get much of anything at all, right?

There's no harm in it.

- Yeah, why not?

It's an annual PR tradition.

Dawn probably could have written her story about this year's budget proposal last year and the year before and the year before.

It's always the same items.

The governor asks for teacher pay raises, he asks for state employee pay raises and that's sort of the story and it lasts for 24 hours and everybody moves on.

I think if I held a press conference and introduced my own budget proposal, it would likely get as much attention at the legislature as the governor's annual budget proposal, which is to say not none at all, right?

Take teacher pay raises for instance, some believe that the governor is out there proposing teacher pay raises and then acting to block them such that he can then complain about it again the next year.

His first year in office, he vetoed the highest teacher pay raise in the entire country.

In 2020, he vetoed a standalone 4.9% teacher pay raise and so you look through history, I think, and we can read the same articles today as we've written in 2017 about teacher pay and it's just more of the same sort of recycled in.

- To be fair though, I remember when you were talking about that one teacher, it was 2019 when there was no budget and the session ended without the raises, there was a little bit of negotiation there between the Republicans and what they wanted along with those raises.

So that was part of the conversation and Medicaid expansion was the big sticking point.

- Sure, but the bill itself was just a standalone straight up teacher pay raise.

- But I'm thinking of the final when there were no raises- - There was a lot more going on, no question about that.

- And then nobody got any raises.

- And nobody got any raise, that's right.

- And then COVID happened.

- Yes, that's pretty much sums up that three year period.

- Professor Glazer, and that's how the game is played.

You veto a large bill and you did veto a teacher pay raise or some other popular item that would be on the state budget.

- If you take any singular vote out of context, it sometimes is not defensible.

The problem is it's all in context and it's in context as Dawn said of other policy issues, Medicaid expansion, an an enormous amount of policy issues stuck in budgets, which perennially is a problem.

So you can't just isolate a vote and say, "That vote was you stopped teacher pay."

I mean, Cooper stood for teacher pay at far greater rates than probably any governor other than Governor Hunt in our history.

- But this budget in particular, we got sidetracked a bit with the 2019's budget, but Governor Cooper's budget has some high end requests that made headlines and it did make headlines for 24 hours.

Does that just percolate inside the legislature even among a very partisan environment?

- Yeah, I think everybody knows.

I mean, the press writes about it.

Everybody knows what effect it has on the negotiations.

I tend to agree is not high generally.

When you've got a veto-proof Senate and a veto-proof House.

But I don't think it's fair to say.

I think the governor has a responsibility to present a budget that he believes or she believes is the best for the state.

I think that's what Governor Cooper did, just as his predecessors have done.

And I think it's obligatory on the legislature to at least look at those priorities and understand where they're coming from and begin the negotiations from there.

- Rufus- - That's reasonable.

- Oh, go ahead, Pat.

- I would say that's reasonable.

One other item in the governor's budget that stuck out to me was that there was this big fight three years ago, you might remember, over school construction bonds versus paying for school construction with sort of a cash account pay-as-you-go.

And I noticed in the governor's budget, I believe he introduced or suggested another school construction bond despite interest rates I think being very high.

And so I wonder if that may end up being another sort of point of contention between the branches.

- I know reporters asked Berger about it and he was pretty thumbs down.

So that's not gonna happen.

- Yeah, right.

- Probably.

- So more a way into this conversation.

You know, even back in the quote, "old days", before governor had a veto and had not so much executive power, did they do budgets well, did it matter?

- Believe it or not, there was a time when it mattered.

And I spent 28 years in public service, 10 in Washington and 22 here.

They used to have something called the Advisory Budget Commission prior prior to Rick.

And they would take the governor's budget and go from there.

Now it did have legislators on it and somebody brought a lawsuit and it came before me as Attorney General.

And I had to rule that it was purely an executive function and the legislatures had to be kicked off and oh, were they mad at me?

Even Liston Ramsey and a few said, "You've gone crazy."

But there was a time when the Governor's budget was the one you worked with in the general assembly, and especially when there were lots and lots of Democrats there.

- That seems to be the key, right?

- There's lots of- - Which party's in control.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I think there was one Republican in the Senate for a time there.

- I've not seen years where Republicans- - The guy was from Boone, Watauga County.

- I mean, Pat McCrory didn't get everything or anything he wanted.

So it's just sort of what they do and we watch.

Senate President Phil Berger says some Senate Republicans are quite interested in rolling back diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in both state government, maybe parts of public education.

The UNC system ended DEI operations at all 16 campuses last week through a unanimous vote of the Board of Governors.

Legislative leaders have apparently noted that action going through.

They say a short legislative session, which should and could end by July 1st, may not provide enough time to pass restrictions on state agencies and public schools.

Where does this go, Rufus?

You have the UNC system moving forward with a policy to end diversity, equity and inclusion offices and employees.

And senators go, "Good idea."

- Yeah, it's a shame that it's become such a synonymous thing, but with bad things happening.

Who's gonna be against diversity?

Who's against equity?

Who's against inclusion?

I think what people are objecting to is that you have paid state employees in the university system quote, "indoctrinating" students about race matters.

And I have experience as Attorney General and almost understanding how people feel that way because I've talked to a lot of students in my Super Kids program who are in college now that are in a diversity area.

And I asked them, I said, "Have these programs ever benefited you?"

And four out of the five answered, said, "No, it would be offending to us if I thought that I'd gotten where I've gotten by having some artificial diversity program helping me get where I'm going."

So I understand both sides to that, but I would hope the legislature would leave it alone.

The Board of Governors have spoken.

Legislation, when you're trying to get into a question of people's human heart, never do a good job and they won't do on this one, I promise you.

- Dawn, some media outlets are really into this particular issue even if they were into it last week with the students being outside the door and they couldn't get into sit in the audience.

You could watch it, it's publicly accessible.

And then this week it's once again a top issue, but yet there's nothing happening legislatively yet.

- Right, there's the yet.

And I have to shout out my colleague, Korie Dean, who covers higher ed and broke a lot of this.

There's some messaging there because when we talked to Speaker Moore recently before the session, as far as asking him, "Is there gonna be legislation?"

He's like, "Well, maybe the university's up to that."

That's messaging for the university system to go ahead and do something which they've moved ahead.

So from what I see, probably how it's playing out is are they going to do what the lawmakers want on their own?

And if not, the strong arm of the lawmakers will intervene for what they want.

And they've just decided... Republicans have decided this is something they wanna do and that it's going to be carried out in some way, whether they do it themselves or they're strongly encouraging the Board of Governors to.

- I think Rufus did a fantastic job of summing up the nature of the issue.

Who would or could or should disagree with the notion that diversity and inclusion and these concepts in general are good and positive things that all should embrace?

I think the issue comes in looking at those words and comparing it to what actual concepts are sometimes included in those types of programs.

And here's just one example from a UNC initiative that trains teachers and librarians, actual excerpts from the curriculum quote, "Colorblindness is a rhetorical tool to prop up white supremacist ideals."

And more and more of that.

So those are actual quotes.

And so when you compare the notion of diversity and inclusion and look at examples like that, and it's not everywhere, but examples like that, I think that's where you get the push from some corners whom I agree with, that this isn't right for any institution to be embracing.

A professor can talk about it in class.

They can teach a course on it, what have you.

They can do whatever they want.

But for an institution to embrace these ideals through its bureaucracy, I think becomes something that's over the line and certainly well beyond the notion of academic freedom.

- Rick?

- In the grand scheme of things, to Pat's point, could be some great lessons in there for all of us to learn, and then you can go through the manuals or go through the curriculum and you see that the bullet, the arrow.

- Sure.

- And reading that can make people go, "Huh."

- Yeah, well, you know, I think that's true in any program.

If you're just, again, dissecting a particular bullet point, it doesn't take away from the efficacy or the need for the program.

We live in a global society as never before, in a diverse society in a diverse country.

In order to get at even depolarizing our nation, then these programs are really important at a basic level, not with the aberrational points, and Pat's point is aberrational in my view and wrong in my view.

And so I think that it's getting back to a calmer balance and understanding of the need to have in our society diversity, equity, and inclusion as topics for us all to live better lives, to live better lives as a united country.

You know, we talked about public schools.

Well, public schools, for example, are probably the only institution that's bonded our people together under one flag and one common set of values since our forming.

And so there's a lot to be talked about in what diversity, equity, and inclusion means and not to be focusing on the aberrational point or when someone goes off script and say that's a reason not to do it.

- Well, I might add here that these universities are going to find a way to get different people in schools, 'cause that's why I went to college off of the mountains of North Carolina.

They're going to find a way to make sure people are treated fairly, and they're gonna include people.

They just don't want state employees paying for it and it have the imprimatur of being doctrinaire and mandatory.

- All right, well, the state is changing.

It may not be changing the way you might think.

The state demographer's releasing a report that North Carolina will have more 64-plus-year-olds, Rick, than 18-and-under residents by 2031.

North Carolina's population is also expected to grow about 40% over the next 17 years to over 14 million residents.

And if we get to that number, nearly three million of us will be senior citizens, Rufus.

A gubernatorial executive order sparked a look at the state's aging demographics, and I'm gonna give Ann Blythe over at the "North Carolina Health News" full credit for the story.

The data is very intense over there on the state website.

She condensed it well, wrote a great article, and I've gotta get them on the show, by the way.

We gotta talk about health one day and have them on.

That's a great group over there.

Pat, enough of me praising the "Health News."

We're getting older, or are the young people going away.

We're just not having kids.

Pat, what's the problem?

- I think it's a little bit of both.

So DHHS reports that there are already more older adults than children in 86 of the state's 100 counties, I think primarily rural counties.

It's fairly simple math, really.

Young people are having fewer children, and older people are living quite a bit longer.

This has a lot of impacts.

One is there are fewer wage earners and more retirees.

That's a problem for the tax base.

Fewer young and healthy people and more older and relatively unhealthier people has a real problem for health insurance risk pools, causes health insurance rates generally to rise, especially in something like the state health plan.

So what can we do about it?

The UNC system is already preparing for this demographic change through different programs to try to reach adult learners, for example.

I think that's great.

Others see as their patriotic duty to have as many children as they can.

Elon Musk is among this crowd, and so, you know, how we deal with it will be to talk about it for decades.

- I only got about 90 seconds.

Rick, we're living longer, we're living healthier, and we're gonna be grayer.

Or how does it change politics in the state?

- Well, it does change politics in the state, particularly when you think about who votes and who doesn't vote.

And I think that's the first thing.

The second thing is it's not just, we've got a lot of demographic changes in the state, which also should affect dramatically our workforce and workforce prep programs and what we're teaching at universities and colleges in terms of major offerings and opportunities.

It's certainly gonna change as well the technology of the state, and it's gonna change the, to some degree, the culture of the state.

- Well, the childcare issue and workforces, I mean, just to bring it all together.

- Yep.

- Yeah.

- Rufus, final word to you, as we're getting older, should we be expected to retired at 65, or should older North Carolinians as this state grays be expected to still contribute going into their golden years?

- Oh, my goodness, I go to work still almost every day.

Long live the wisdom of folks like me.

People are going to have to learn to work longer, and this whole idea that at a certain age you retire and dry up is just so foreign to me and other people.

We have a great, great talent in North Carolina in our older people, and people are going to have to understand that don't waste that opportunity to have volunteers in schools, teach, if you wanna be a good carpenter, get somebody that's an old carpenter.

- All right, it's like you're on the radio, the way you timed that.

You gave me just enough time to get outta this show.

Thank you, folks, for being on with me.

- I will be in the morning on the "Weekend Gardener."

- There you go.

I'll be listening.

Thanks to the panelists.

Email your thoughts and opinions to statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'll read your email and share them if you've got one directed at one of our fine panelists.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.

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