- Coming up on "State Lines" a conversation with Governor Roy Cooper about what's ahead in 2024.

- [Narrator] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[bright music] ♪ - Hello, I'm David Crabtree.

We thank you for joining us.

I'm here with North Carolina's governor, our Chief Executive, Roy Cooper in the People's House, festive for the holidays.

Governor, thanks for having us.

- Always glad to be with you, David.

- We've sat in this room many times over the years talking about your priorities, talking about challenges.

Many times in this room we have discussed Medicaid expansion and the need for it.

It's here.

Talk to me about what it was like once this was done and it began to become effective for people.

- Amazing.

I've spent years talking to people who did not have healthcare coverage, childcare workers, people looking after our seniors, people who are stocking our grocery shelves, making too much to qualify for Medicaid, making not quite enough to qualify for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

Their employers can't afford to provide them health insurance.

They can't afford it themselves.

December the first was one of the best days I have spent as governor because I spent time in an enrollment center where people were actually coming in and signing up for Medicaid.

And to talk to a woman who had health insurance for the first time in her adult life with tears streaming down her face was such a moving experience and one that for me, made it all worth it.

We pulled together a lot of people who knew this was the right thing to do, from doctors who see it every day, from advocates who want everybody to have healthcare, from tough on crime Republican sheriffs whose deputies were spending a lot of their time dealing with people with mental health issues and substance use disorder issues, who actually came to the General Assembly, endorsed Medicaid expansion and said, "A lot of these people, they just need healthcare, not handcuffs."

To see all of that come together and finally Republican County commissioners who wanted to keep the rural hospital doors open.

Small business owners who wanted to keep employees on, but couldn't afford to give 'em health insurance.

Now we have the opportunity for 600,000 working North Carolinians to get healthcare.

That's not only the right thing to do, it's a smart thing to do for our economy and for job creation.

And you know what we'd been doing, David.

Federal tax money that we pay to Washington, we'd been turning down $521 million a month, a month.

We had been turning it down and saying, we don't want it.

Now it's coming here.

And it was interesting, I talked to the Council of State Governments that came to Raleigh, states from all over the country and I said, for you 10 states that are left, the Floridas and the Texases and the Alabamas, we have a roadmap for you.

You guys can insure millions more Americans if you follow this roadmap.

It was a great day.

It was a bipartisan day where we got something accomplished positively for the people of the state.

- Governor, I'm curious, dealing with the legislature that you've had to deal with for the seven years you've been governor, new members, older members, some of the same members, Republican majorities, what was the tipping point this time that made a difference?

That made the difference, I should say?

- I think it's different for different members, and I think you have to ask them, but I think that the signing bonus that the Biden administration put forward, we were gonna get an additional $1.6 billion that we could put to mental health.

And the fact that this has bipartisan support when you have very red states who have in their constitution the ability for citizens to bring issues before the people through citizen initiative and referendum, which we do not have in North Carolina, but in those red states like Missouri and Oklahoma and Utah, where the people said, "We want Medicaid expansion."

And across the board it's Democrats and Republicans and Independents all want Medicaid expansion.

I think people finally said, "It's time.

Let's take this off the political table.

Let's don't let this be part of the next campaign."

I think people felt more secure about the fact that it is here to stay.

There are different ways we can get healthcare to people.

This just happens to be a way that we could do it without any additional state tax dollars.

The feds pay 90%, the hospitals pay the other 10.

The state's responsible for it, but because the hospitals are getting additional help and because they make more money out of this, we can afford to have zero state tax dollars go toward it.

It's just overwhelming at the end of the day.

It was the smart financial thing to do, even if you don't like a bigger government, so to speak.

It's interesting to me how I hear people who have Medicare complain about the government getting involved in health insurance.

People don't really think about the fact that we have this system in place that we can extend health insurance to people.

David, you and I have talked about these issues.

I think every person in this country, the richest country in the world, ought to have health insurance.

I think it is a moral thing, and there's different ways policy-wise to do it.

And this doesn't mean that's gonna happen.

We're still gonna have hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians who don't have access to health insurance.

So this is one accomplishment and it is a huge thing for our state, but we have work to do.

- Will you be remembered more for this, are you hoping, anything of the eight years?

- I don't think about it in that way.

I hope the result is positive and that's why I ran for this job.

Some people get into elected office to be something.

Some people get into it to do something.

I like to think that I'm in the latter category.

I've always loved getting involved in public policy and making things happen and helping Governor Hunt push through Smart Start when I was in the General Assembly, and taking on the Tennessee Valley Authority when I was attorney general and getting them to significantly reduce their carbon emissions.

I wanna make things happen and that's certainly one important thing that should have been done a long time ago, but glad that we finally got it done.

- Here we are in a season that is really tough for a lot of people.

We'll have people watching this conversation who are struggling.

It's more prevalent that we talk about this than maybe it has been in our lifetime.

Behavioral health through health and human services is a key motivator for what the state should be doing, is it not?

- No question.

I think people are finally recognizing that mental health is just as important as physical health and it is an integral part of it.

And we have been falling behind on taking care of people's mental health, and recognize getting rid of the stigma of that, getting rid of the stigma of mental illness of people who have substance use disorder, who are addicted.

And when somebody has cancer, everybody brings the casserole over and how you doing?

Someone has substance use disorder and they're struggling, or they're going in and out of a mental hospital, nobody comes around.

That's the kind of thing we have to attack head on and recognize that this is a significant problem in people's families and they can't get enough help.

They struggle to have insurance policies cover basic therapy.

This shot in the arm that we're getting with the signing bonus from Medicaid expansion will help us.

We need more inpatient beds.

Our foster care system is struggling, and we have a lot of kids who are struggling with mental health issues.

We see the number of children increasing calling in on our suicide hotlines.

It is an issue that is of epic proportions that we must, we must address.

Medicaid expansion will help because it now provides funding to help draw more providers into the state and into the system because they can get reimbursed.

I'm fortunate to have Kody Kinsley, who is our secretary of Department of Health and Human Services.

This is one of his specialties.

This is one of the things that he caress deeply about.

So he's gonna be spending a lot of his time as we expand Medicaid and as we move into trying to make improvements in this arena 'cause it's so difficult.

I think that the last couple years have been so challenging health-wise, financially for people they're struggling and that affects their mental health.

And people need to be able to take preventive steps, but they also need to be able to get treatment.

- On one hand, three years ago seems like a blink when we were dealing in the throes of COVID.

I mean hard, hard times.

Many of us have moved on from that and now we are really seeing the fallout happen.

- That's right.

- Let's talk about education for a moment.

We look at the literacy rate in the state.

We look at how students fell behind.

I know education is incredibly important to you, to members of the legislature, members of your administration.

As you enter into your final year in this role, how do you gauge of the job we have done in public education?

- Well, not well enough.

It is one of the most important ways that we can give an equal opportunity to everybody to make sure that our public school students get their constitutional right.

Our state constitution says that every child should have the opportunity for a sound basic education.

And I think a number of children we have failed.

Now you mentioned the literacy rate.

I think what this shows you is that real investment, we used federal money to invest in tutors, after-school sessions.

We have come together on a way to teach reading called the Science of Reading that comes back and uses phonics and some of the old ways we do things, but it's a combination of things, but we're seeing some real success and we're seeing how resilient children can be with the right investment.

And I think we have the best community college system in the country.

I think we have the best array of public and private universities in the country.

Although our public institutions right now are being challenged with the way our governance has been put in place, and how the General Assembly has been interfering with the higher public education, but I'm worried about our K through 12 because we're not paying our educators enough.

We need to do much better in attracting quality educators into our system.

And I'm particularly worried about private school vouchers on steroids that's just been passed by the General Assembly, which says now, essentially, that a family making a quarter of a million dollars a year who have two children in private academies can now go pick up a check from the state for $3,200 per child using a private school voucher because there are no income limits.

And there's also very little accountability for these billions of state dollars that are gonna go.

And, look, private schools are fine, but what my problem is using taxpayer money for them at the expense of our public school students.

And that's what's happening with these private school vouchers.

So I'm gonna spend my last year here working very hard to lift the level of respect for public schools.

I know I've had a lot of conversation with Republican legislators and there's two things we really agree on.

Some things in education we don't, but two we do.

That you get good education with a quality teacher in every classroom, and a quality principal in every school.

So why don't we gather around those two points of agreement and invest what we need to invest in order to make sure that that's happening all across North Carolina.

- At the same time understanding it's much harder to get that teacher and that principal.

And I'm just using this as an example maybe in Perquimans County than it is in Wake County, Johnston County, that's a real challenge.

- And that is where the constitutional case of a sound basic education for every child comes in.

Right now we have a court order in place that would require investments in those counties.

- Does that court have teeth?

- Well, we're about to find out.

We're about to find out.

- No one's going to go to jail for not doing this, it's not criminal, but it sounds in your mind emotionally it could be criminal.

- Well, the court has ordered it.

So the issue is whether it's going to happen.

And now this new state Supreme Court has taken the case back.

The General Assembly once again has refused to invest this money as the court has directed it and gone back to the Supreme Court.

And we will see whether or not they are on the side of North Carolina school children because this is decades of precedent now, decades that the court has been telling the General Assembly that we need to make these investments.

We know from studies how to invest that money and the court has ordered it to be invested in this way.

In my budget that I presented to the General Assembly, a balanced budget provided every penny of that money that the court ordered.

It also provided for 18% teacher pay raises.

And it was a balanced budget that didn't raise taxes.

We could do this, we could do this, but instead we're gonna give billions to private school vouchers, and instead we're gonna cut taxes for people who really don't need it the very wealthiest among us.

And we can do better.

You started this out with public schools.

We can do and we must do better for public schools if we're gonna continue to be the number one state for business and continue to grow and thrive.

- Your mother was a public school teacher.

- The very best in the state of North Carolina in history she was.

My mom was very special.

- [David] What grade did she teach?

- My mom taught junior high school and high school.

She taught English and French.

And I still have people come to me and say, I wanna pay you a compliment.

I'll think it's about me and they'll say, "Your mom was the best teacher I ever had."

And I would ask her, I said, mom, you've done this for years working on lesson plans.

She would say, "Every year is different.

Every student is different."

She worked so hard and cared so much about her children.

And that's why I'm grateful for my public school education.

Grateful for the public school education of our three daughters.

Grateful for what our public schools have given to us.

And I'm doing a tour right now.

It's a thanks for public schools.

I'm going in, I'm thanking the teachers.

We need to elevate the respect.

We need to invest more, and these students, these students matter and our public schools matter.

- Did your mother teach you to read?

- She did, yeah, very early, my mom taught me to read, she did.

Both my mom and dad did.

- So she knew that you were a person, how do I say this properly to the governor?

- I can't wait what's coming.

- Who is a policy wonk?

- I don't know if she recognized me as a policy wonk.

- Who loves to get into the minutiae of governing though.

- That has been a thing of mine over the years.

- Outside of the political part.

I mean, you understand what's in legislation, not just the name of the legislation.

- Well, I got into elected office because I was attracted by the politics.

I thought the politics is interesting, I still do, but what I found when I got elected to the General Assembly and as attorney general and as a governor, what you can do in these offices or not do?

How can you keep the government out of something?

How can you make sure that the government is a good partner in getting positive things done?

And it's truly fascinating what can be done.

And I think we have a great state of understanding how our education helps make us a better state.

How our universities, how our community colleges can help train people for better jobs.

I'm so excited, David, because we're attracting a record number of great paying jobs into our state.

We're the third fastest growing state in the country, and we gotta get our people ready for these jobs, 'cause, for example, AI is gonna eliminate some jobs, but it's gonna create a whole lot more, but you're gonna have to know more to get those jobs.

So our schools, our community colleges, our universities are gonna have a lot of pressure to make sure we get our people ready for these better paying jobs.

- And I know it's been so important to you.

We've talked about this before, that in this state, that number one in the nation for business, a couple of years running, continuing to attract new industry, high paying jobs, big companies coming here, and yet we know we don't have to drive that far for people without broadband, for people who are struggling.

That must drive you nuts at times.

- Well, the good thing is that we're now able to make generational investments in high speed internet access for North Carolina.

We started out with a plan here.

This is a bipartisan plan.

I worked with the General Assembly on this, and we started putting tens of millions of dollars to get more homes and businesses connected, but now with the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, we've turned that into hundreds of millions of dollars, about 2.5 billion coming down from the federal government.

We're actually gonna be able to do it.

We're actually going to be able to connect every household and every business.

One thing I'm trying to get the General Assembly to remember is just running fiber doesn't mean that people are gonna get it.

People have to be able to afford it.

They gotta be able to know how to use it.

And they gotta have the devices to be able to get on it.

I created the very first office in the country of digital equity and literacy to help people sign up for the programs that give them $30 a month to get internet, to give them training, to give them refurbished devices that volunteers have come in to help provide for people.

This is an exciting time in North Carolina because we're also able to invest in public transportation and fix roads and bridges and water systems.

This is an amazing time.

We're competing for every federal dollar.

We just announced more than a billion dollars to help us with high speed rail to get us all the way up through Washington, D.C. in the East Coast.

- I hope I live to see that.

- You're gonna do that.

You're staying in shape.

You're doing pretty well.

- A couple of things I wanna ask you while we still have time together.

There's a chandelier straight ahead from where we're sitting in the dining room here.

I've seen that for years and only today did I learn the history of this.

I wanna talk about that for a moment because of the times in which we are living.

You talk about all the wonderful things that are happening, and yet the divisiveness is just terrible.

It's continuing to find new lows since October 7th.

And there's living history in this People's Home, the executive residence from the Holocaust.

- I'm so proud of the amazing diversity that our state has, all kinds of different people, and that diversity makes us stronger.

Unfortunately, there are people in the world now and throughout the history of the world that have used our diversity to divide us.

We saw that in the horrendous unspeakable attacks of the Hamas terrorists against Jewish people were more were killed since the Holocaust.

We've seen innocent Israelis and Palestinians die in war.

Right here at home, we're seeing a rising tide of antisemitism.

We're seeing threats against people.

My secretary of Department of Public Safety said that "It is unprecedented in modern history the increase in threats that we have seen."

We are working closely with mosques, with synagogues, with temples, to try to keep our people safe in North Carolina.

And people need to know loud and clear that antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism has no quarter in North Carolina and we're not gonna tolerate it, but as we think about what's happening now and the rise in antisemitism, this chandelier belonged to the Horowitz family who escaped the Holocaust.

And we just had the son of Miss Horowitz here in the mansion tell the story.

It was a long circuitous route that got them to be able to escape.

And they had a family to keep the chandelier there and it avoided the Nazis taking it, but they finally immigrated to North Carolina.

He grew up in Western North Carolina.

And to thank the people of North Carolina, they gave this spectacular chandelier in the dining room.

And in fact, we found out about it because Carolyn Hunt, Governor Hunt's wife, sent my wife Kristen a letter that had been included with the chandelier.

Sadie Weiner on my staff tracked down the history of how it got here.

And when you think how this beautiful chandelier is here.

It illuminates with its own light, but the crystals reflect the light all around it.

- Governor Roy Cooper, we could talk much longer, but time does not allow for that.

I am grateful for your time.

I'm thankful for your service for those who put themselves out for this work to serve the state of North Carolina.

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year, and I hope to be back this time next year when you can reveal what you're going to do when you leave.

- Okay, that's a deal.

- 'Cause I know you're not going to tell me today.

[bright music] ♪ - [Narrator] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.