- [Narrator] Senate Republicans unite to propose forcing state law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE.

And some House Republican leaders are proposing teacher pay raises for the rookies and the most experienced.

This is State Lines.

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[upbeat dramatic music] - Hello there.

Welcome back to State Lines.

I'm Kelly McCullen and joining me today, Capital Bureau Chief for the News & Observer, Dawn Vaughan.

Representative Zach Hawkins of Durham County drops by for today's show.

Good to see you, representative.

- Thank you for having me.

- Senator Amy Galey joins us from Alamance and Randolph counties and Senior Political Analyst of the John Locke Foundation, Mitch Kokai, in seat four.

Hello everyone.

Welcome to the new year.

I mean, it was the spring by the time we get some of you on here and welcome back to Raleigh.

- Ah!

- Thank you!

- Thank you.

- It's a lot of fun.

- Thank you for having me.

- A lot of fun.

- You're keeping us busy.

[laughing] We're gonna start with you, Mitch, and then go to the Senator because the entire state Senate Republican caucus seems to be backing legislation that would require state law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration officials.

Senate President Phil Berger said this week, the Stein Administration is not moving quickly or moving at all to ensure state agencies are working with ICE.

This bill would force the State Department of Public Safety, the State Highway Patrol, and the State Bureau of Investigation to cooperate.

State and local law enforcement can enter these agreements with federal immigration agencies and carry out immigration law enforcement activities.

State law already is forcing local law enforcement to assist ICE.

Mitch, but sometimes, I think there are some counties that have figured out they don't really wanna help out and they've figured out a way to do so.

- Well of course, there was a legislation forcing the sheriff's to do that and was passed over then Governor, Roy Cooper's, veto.

To me, this is not surprising legislation because border security, dealing with illegal immigration has been a major Republican priority for a number of years and I think the Republican general assembly, as the lawmaking portion of state government, wants to ensure that the rest of state government follows that same priority.

To me, the most interesting thing about this is that you would think this might have some bipartisan support but when we saw the bill that dealt with sheriffs and their cooperation with ICE, that tended to split the Republicans and Democrats.

If we see that happen this time, what happens in those districts?

The Democrats just eeked out victories this last time around.

The districts, they can go either way.

Do they go with the rest of the caucus?

Do they go with what they might think that the majority of the people in the district would want?

And then, if we see a veto from new Governor, Josh Stein, and if this bill goes through early, could be one of the first vetoes.

What happens in an override?

Do we see what happened when there was no Republican super majority during the Cooper years when the Democrats all stick together?

Or do you see a few of em peel off?

I think it's gonna be a very interesting thing to watch.

- Senator Galey, Josh Stein's been in office, I think six, seven weeks now and not even that, maybe a month by the time he took the oath of office and his inaugural but, that's only four weeks and why is the grade already that he's failing to address cooperation with federal immigration officials?

- I haven't really heard him saying anything about it.

One thing that is clear from the November election is that the American people want action taken on the illegal immigration, especially those people who are here illegally, who commit crimes.

And we need to use every resource of state government and local government to be sure that our communities are safe.

And this bill is directed to ensuring that.

- Are, is there a sentiment that state agencies are subverting federal efforts or is it they aren't responding or just cooperating when the feds come in and do as they will and as they have the privilege of doing under policy.

- I think it depends on where you are in the state, the amount of cooperation that you see.

In Alamance County, we have Sheriff Terry Johnson, who has been cooperating with ICE for years.

And it's worked out very well for Alamance County financially, through using the jail to house ICE detainees that we've had a lucrative jail contract in Almentz County.

It's been very helpful for the local tax payer.

Also, Alamance County, sitting with 85-40 running through the middle of it, is a major drug hub and there's a lot of illegal activity, including cartels, drug cartels, that use our highways to distribute their goods.

So, in Alamance County, we've worked hard with federal government, and have seen positive results.

We'd like to see that around the rest of the state.

- Representative Hawkins, there's a lot of nuance in the immigration debate, particularly the Democratic party, and the poll does suggest citizens of both parties would like to see undocumented or illegal immigrants who commit crimes deported.

But how do you take it when you take a policy down to the state level, what is your perspective on that, having state agencies told, work with the feds?

- Well, the thing is as you mentioned, Governor Stein has only been there for four weeks, so we need to give grace.

And the one thing that's never mentioned in this conversation is that there's been a lot of movement in those departments.

Some of those departments are now standalone where they were not, they were in different places structurally.

And so, we need to trust Governor Stein and his agency heads to do the right thing.

Governor Stein was overwhelmingly elected, people trust his judgment.

He's a former Attorney General, they know that he understands the law and how to work alongside it.

And so, I think that's where we are, 'cause I think you're right.

And I think you're right that people across the state and the Democratic party, understand that those who do wrong need to be managed in that way.

But I think Governor Stein and his department heads can do the right thing and stand by the law as they have.

- Follow up on what Mitch was saying, let's talk about showing some grace.

Your caucus, if this comes up to a veto override, are Democrats gonna show caucus, or show grace to any members of your caucus who have to go along with an override to apply this law?

Because there are some Democrats that did squeak by.

- That's right, that's right.

- What do you do with them?

- Well, the thing is I think, especially with our new governor, we're gonna stand behind Governor Stein.

Especially on the issue like this, where we know, again, the 57% of the vote in North Carolina, people trust him, we're gonna stand with him, and that's exactly where I think we are.

We don't have to worry about what we saw in the last session.

Democrats gonna stick together this time.

- All right, Dawn, second week in a row, Democrats have gone, he got 57% of the vote in that republic, the Democrat got 57% of the vote in the gubernatorial race, and that tells us that people are behind him.

Setting aside the complexities of that campaign, so tie a ribbon on this topic for us, you've heard both sides, the Senate and the House.

- Well, Governor Stein, it's almost two months now, if we're counting the number of days since he actually sworn in that first day.

- That's right, it was like a New Years Eve thing.

- Yeah.

So, he didn't really want to talk too much about HB 10 when he was running.

I wasn't the only reporter that asked him about it, didn't get a very clear answer on that specific bill and what he thought, 'cause as you all mentioned, he was Attorney General before and Senator Galey's right, he hasn't talked about it very much this year.

So I think Senate leader, Berger, and the Senate Republican Caucus being behind this bill now is saying, one, this was something they wanted as a campaign issue, and post election, but also they're pushing Stein and they want to see what'll happen.

There's also an important thing to remember, is you can sign a bill, you can veto a bill, or you can let it become law without your signature after ten days.

And Cooper used to do this where he wouldn't veto it, but he would let it become law and then have a statement about why he didn't like it.

So that's another route that Stein can end up taking.

- Alright.

Republican representative Aaron Pare and others have filed legislation that would raise teacher pay in North Carolina.

Starting teacher pay would rise to about $50,000 a year to a new graduate.

Most experienced teachers could receive a little over $13,000 per year in raises.

And if you're a teacher with 15 to 24 years on the job, you're not included in this bill.

Forsyth County representative Donny Lambeth is also sponsoring this plan.

The reason I drop his name is he is a key house budget writer this session.

Senator Galley, you know these bills, you can't do anything with a budget before July one.

This just shows your team this might be important to some very important house members.

Your take.

- Well, I wanna start by saying I think Aaron Pare is amazing and so is Representative Lambeth.

I think they are a great elected officials who work so hard for their districts.

I think that we're asking the wrong question though when we talk about starting teacher pay.

A lot of folks in North Carolina from the Public School forum, the John Locke Society, the Hunt Institute, education people are talking about a whole model for school finance and shifting from the allotment based model that we have now to a weighted student formula.

Michael Lee and I co-primed a bill last session that would help us go in that direction.

There's a lot of energy behind that and I think that instead of focusing on teacher pay, we should be thinking about the allotment system in general, how can we improve on it.

There's over 50 different allotments.

The biggest one is the classroom teacher allotment.

It keeps us from doing a lot of innovation.

If we could do a weighted student formula and then give flexibility to school districts in how they pay the teachers and get away from a longevity or years in service tier based- - Sure.

- System, I think we would see a lot more.

I think that we would see better outcomes for children as a result of that movement.

One of the issues with moving to the weighted student formula is everybody wants to be held harmless, nobody wants to have a budget cut.

Tennessee recently moved to a weighted student formula from the allotment and they put an extra billion with a B dollars into the public school system.

- What is that?

What is weighted student?

- So that is where you have each student gets a- There's a per student funding and then depending on the circumstances of the student, you might get a weight.

So an exceptional student, a weight might be worth say 20, say the per student gets $5,000 and then you would get an extra 50% say if it was a exceptional children, exceptional child, or you would get an extra weight if it was a disadvantaged, economically disadvantaged child, or you would get an extra weight if it's a rural system with less resources.

So actually the way the student formula was brought up in the West Ed report that was part of Leandro case, school finance was targeted in that report as being something that needed to be addressed.

So love's Representative Pare.

Love Representative Lambeth.

I think the better conversation is around the formula, the funding formula itself, and less on the detail of the dollars at this point.

- Representative Hawkins, education's an easy one for Democrats.

You just blame the Republicans for cutting schools, even if they're trying to do reforms.

And you're shaking your head yes to some of these, some of the ideas floated by Senator Galley.

How do you clear the path for a near super majority Republican caucus to do some things forward for public education without the knee jerk opposition that we seem to see for anything Republicans wanna do with public schools.

- And the thing about it is is that education should be nonpartisan first off.

And I think that's really the way that we come at it because we want to do what's best for children.

We wanna make sure that they live and you know, they can leave the education system and get a job and they have a world class education while they're there.

I will praise the $50,000 in teacher pay.

I have proposed those sorts of things myself.

It puts us towards the top 10 in teacher pay, exactly where we should be.

The real conversation, though, is around fully funding public education, as outlined in many of the plans that we have discussed.

And some of those include exploring the student formula.

I did listen to the Tennessee model, and I mean, it sounds good, but with something this big, with overhaul or a change this big, it needs to be studied.

North Carolina is a state that likes to have conversation, have discussion.

They want to talk about it with their senators as well as their citizens.

And so we need to make sure that we're taking our time on something like this, because it is a big one.

But you can start with funding teachers at $50,000 or more.

The only thing that I didn't completely agree with and I think needs more discussion is that when someone gives you 15 to 24 years of their life in public service in the classroom, they need to be rewarded too.

And so, the question for me about this bill is what's the rationale for not supporting those teachers and not giving them the bumps that they need, as they end their career in public education?

- And that's a House position.

Well, 15 to 24 years, you're too far into your career to quit, and-- - Can I get this one?

- You can't retire.

Which is it?

What's going on with that, Senator Galey?

- Yeah, so data shows that there's not a better outcome for children.

For a teacher, once they hit about 10 years, they've hit their sweet spot with their ability to deliver outcomes for children.

So, that's why I think I would disagree with wanting to reward people for staying in the system.

We wanna reward better outcomes for children, and think about what's gonna improve them, which statistics shows or data shows that if a person stays in the profession for the first five to seven years, then they're more likely to make a career out of it.

And I believe that's why the Republican leadership has valued front loading the salary scale to keep people engaged and to keep them there.

And also, I don't know who in private industry gets continual raises just because they've been in the job longer.

I know that my husband's a FedEx pilot.

They don't get that.

Once you reach a certain point in a private occupation, you're maxed out, and that's it, unless I guess you change jobs or something like that.

- [Speaker] Yeah, sure.

- Allow unions, isn't that what FedEx drivers do?

No, Just kidding, but-- - It would be the opposite, 'cause he does have a union, and they don't get that benefit.

- [Kelly] Oh, my good-- - And well, one of the things is the ability, we know where North Carolina is per pupil spending.

If you increase those things, that helps to make sure that outcomes are the outcomes that we want.

And so we have to make sure that we're looking at the totality of the funding that we're given, instead of criticizing those teachers that are 15 to 24 years, 'cause they're still doing great work.

North Carolina is continuously an exemplar in many areas.

And so they need to be cherished for the work that they're doing.

And if we don't see the bump, what else can we do to further support those teachers?

- And what's their incentive to stay?

I guess retention is an issue that comes up every budget discussion.

And this seems to be the first round, and it was Representative Pare and Cotham too have in their bill that's just moving through about more pay for education.

So there are different ways that, different things that lawmakers can do to bump somebody's pay.

And then of course, you all know the local counties can do that as well.

But I think this is the beginning of the budget money talk, with raises.

- And 5,000 teachers, we have a 5,000 teacher shortage.

So that means we can't lose anybody right now.

And so again, we have to incentivize them to stay.

Teacher retention is important in North Carolina.

- Mitch, do you see the Senate would redo the allotments and how you fund students, and the House wants to give the teachers an existing pay raise as a system currently stands.

That's a huge gap, even though the goal may be the same to reward high performing teachers.

- Well, there are a couple different things going on at the same time.

I'm very happy just to sit here and listen to Senator Galey talk about our weighted system because this is something that we've been talking about for a while.

My colleague, Bob Lipke, who directs the Center for Effective Education, talks about the fact that this funding formula for schools is so complicated 'cause it deals with 60, 70, 80 different things and that it takes the average school finance officer, the people who work on this stuff, two and a half to three years to learn it.

I mean it, it takes them that long to understand it.

And so, we need a much simpler system.

And one that ties the funding to the students, wherever they go, is gonna be the best option.

But, while that's happening, there is the issue of teacher pay.

One thing that North Carolina has struggled with, for years and years, was that they started to pay really low and then just gave people a little bit more, every year, just 'cause they showed up again, which no one thought was really a great system.

And so, they changed it for a while, so that they front loaded it a little bit more.

And then people who'd been there many years didn't get much more of anything.

The system made sense to some policy wonks, but it wasn't really sold well, and did not sell well to teachers who had had some experience.

"Why are we not getting raises, while people who've worked two or three years are getting big raises?"

And so, I think, much of what is happening now is trying to, kind of, correct what was done some years ago when everyone realized the starting pay was terrible and needed to go up.

But by front loading, that also meant the people who'd been in the system 10, 20 years weren't seeing much of anything, in terms of raises.

There's gotta be a way to deal with that issue of attracting the initial teachers in with a salary that'll get 'em here, but then also make sure you're rewarding the best teachers, which is something we haven't even talked about.

Making sure that it's paying the, paying people for success and not just for showing up another year.

- Next topic.

Legislative Republicans are moving bills to halt Attorney General Jeff Jackson's efforts to sue the Trump Administration over Donald Trump's executive orders.

Republican Senator Bobby Hanig said, this week, "Council of State members' powers are only by legislative directed."

As prescribed by law, as we've discussed in previous shows.

Democrats say Jeff Jackson's only fought a few of these executive orders.

And so far, Senator, he's been on the winning side of those early court battles, attacking Donald Trump's executive orders.

So, why the continual trimming of the sails of the Attorney General's office, if not Jeff Jackson, personally?

- Well, it's not just Bobby Hanig that said that it's his duties are as described by law, it's the North Carolina Constitution, in Article three, section seven.

For pretty much all the Council of State, their duties are what the General Assembly says that they are.

I think we have to ask, "What do we want our Attorney General to be doing?"

As I said in committee this week, there are things that we can agree that the Attorney General should do, like, criminal appeals, you know, representing the state in criminal appeals.

We can agree that he should be, when requested, representing state agencies.

We've given state agencies another way to get lawyers if they want them, but he should be able to do that.

We do not agree that he should be challenging presidential executive orders.

That is not, in my opinion, an appropriate role for a State Attorney General.

There are other plaintiffs, there are other avenues for challenging an executive order that don't cost the North Carolina taxpayer.

I think that our Attorney General should be focused in on doing the work that is prescribed for him by the statutes and not be looking for the, I think, and I used the word, in committee, grandstanding.

I think, honestly, it is grandstanding.

I think that the executive orders would succeed or fail, whether or not Jeff Jackson is involved or not.

I don't think that his involvement is critical in fighting these executive orders and what, ultimately, happens to them.

- I think that he's using it to get his name in the paper.

We're talking about him right now, right?

- Sure.

- So, it's working for him.

- Well this is, if we talk about grandstanding, the only grandstanding happening is, is you know, by the Republican Party right now.

And it's because we have a Democratic Attorney General.

And the fun fact is that Republicans need to start by to start by winning the office first.

They have not won this office duly elected since 1896.

And so when North Carolinians say that Democrats, they have shown that Democrats are the ones that they believe and trust to make decisions, and four out of 70 are the ones.

So he's being judicious about his decision making.

And so we need to trust that he's gonna do what's right.

And when you start hearing you know about, you know, what's prescribed by law or the constitution, people say that when they have super majorities.

And that is an example of what, you know, that's why we don't need to have super majorities.

We don't need, you know, one party in complete control to try and redirect the powers that the people have given that elected office, that constitutional office.

And so he's doing a great job.

I love the way that he's picking and choosing, specifically around the district that we sit in, district 31, North Carolina gets $3 billion or more in federal funding.

And so him stepping up to say something about that when it's crucial to the North Carolina economy is absolutely crucial.

My district, Duke University, we have most of the people who work at UNC Chapel Hill live in Durham.

We have FHI, we have RTI, we have RTP, like we depend on those dollars.

And so stepping up on behalf of North Carolinians to save jobs, it's not just here but around the state, is critical.

And so we support it.

But of course you don't go after everything but go after the things that are important.

And that's what he's doing.

- Don, a very prominent Republican campaign consultant we both know and have met, says Senator Republicans should just allow Jeff Jackson to do what he wants.

It just creates a portfolio of options for the possible '28 gubernatorial race or any kind of Senate run in the future.

It is interesting to see this tuggle between Council of State and legislative Republicans.

- Yeah, I mean it's familiar, right?

I mean, North Carolina, again, has elected a Democrat as governor, a Democrat as Attorney General and voted, you know, wanted Trump.

When you look at like those multiple elections he ran.

I think it also shows that not everyone is in lockstep with either party and there's a reason that you vote for people, different parties and how close the margins are in North Carolina.

And I think that the Senate, or not Senate, there's a house oversight committee and Budget Director, Kristen Walker was testifying the other day and she said the state doesn't know yet what asks there's going to be if the federal government is no longer gonna give this money in North Carolina.

People are gonna turn and look at the general assembly for the money.

But right now she's dealing with known knowns, which are what's in front of her and they just don't know yet.

So that's gonna be a big part of this budget process we're talking about.

- I wanna move quickly.

Back to you, Representative Hawkins.

Let's talk about Helene Recovery.

- Yes.

- The State House has passed that fresh round of funding this week.

$500 million went through this week.

Most of the funding will help farmers and farmland restoration.

Private roads and bridges will be repaired, it will help rebuild homes.

It's over in Senator Gailey's house now.

There's also a new House bill Republicans have been calling the Cooper Act to authorize a couple hundred million dollars to jumpstart or to fuel relief efforts in Eastern North Carolina for those hurricanes that were six, seven, eight, nine years ago now.

Your take on this Helene recovery, 500 million, you got it through?

- Yes.

- And then they call out Governor Cooper and make a little political point with the fresh 200 million out to the east.

- That's right, the Helene Act, I'm oversight.

And so I was also in gov ops as well.

And we are doing the right thing.

- That was a unanimous vote.

The only thing, of course is, you know, the governor asked for a billion, but the General Assembly said, we will do more.

And so we will reach that goal because we wanna make sure that every person in Western North Carolina is made whole and that we include schools and that we have the ability to get businesses back on the ground, infrastructure back in place.

You're right, it's, the Cooper Act is a small partisan hit at, you know, his potential Senate run, right?

They wanna try and start softening him up a little bit, which is, you know, I think beneath the type of conversations we need to be having when we're talking about recovery, but the, what has happened in Eastern North Carolina as a native from Eastern North Carolina, is something that everyone should criticize.

And so we understand that a new direction is needed and new fresh resources are needed to make people down there whole.

- Senator Gelly $500 million now in the Senate.

Where does it go?

How does it get handled?

- I think it'll be probably through the budget process, but I don't know that.

I'm not speaking for the caucus or for leadership.

- [Host] You can.

- On that.

Well, I'm not, be clear about that, but, you know, everybody has this, as Representative Hawkins says, we all have the same goal of supporting the people in the West and doing what we can for them.

We do not wanna see a, you know, debacle of the down east hurricane recovery come back again.

And that is 100% on Governor Cooper, former Governor Cooper and his mismanagement of the NC Corps Program and his inability to deal with the deficiencies in that program.

- Mitch.

- And remember that the Cooper Act is the sort of the subtle, not so subtle jab at the former governor, but it actually is more money out there.

And this is based on the request that came from Pryor Gibson, the long time politico who's overseeing this now, who basically went in front of legislators and said, look, this is the money we think we need to do this, but if you're not gonna give us that amount of money, at least give us something.

'Cause if we don't get the money to do something, all the contractors are gonna leave, and none of this work that still needs to get done is gonna get done.

So I think the legislators are saying, all right, we're gonna give you the money, but we're gonna remind everyone why we had this problem.

It was the former governor whose name is C-O-O-P-E-R. - And just like that, we are out of time for this week's "State Lines."

Thank you so much for participating.

Good to see you.

- Thank you.

- It's always great to have or to be in your home or be on your computer or phone.

If you see anything in this show you want to comment on, email your thoughts to statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thank you for watching.

I'll see you next time.

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