- [Kelly] The 2023 Legislative Session Convenes.

We discuss the issues facing legislators as they return to Raleigh.

This is State Lines.

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

[classical music] ♪ - Hello and welcome to this debut of State Lines, where every week we'll be discussing North Carolina's most important issues, with some of our state's most important leaders, journalists, and in this modern era, influencers.

I'm Kelly McCullen, joined by three influential folks, Editor-In-Chief of the Carolina Journal, and good friend for public affairs here, Donna King.

Good to see you.

- Yes, good to see you.

Thank you.

- The News & Observer's Dawn Vaughan is here.

Thank you.

- Hey.

- And representative Brandon Lofton of Mecklenburg County, a democrat, joins the panel.

Good to see you, sir.

- Thank you.

Good to see you.

- Are you ready?

- I am ready.

[chuckles] - Let's get to it.

Well, the top story in the state is that North Carolina's House and Senate gaveled in the 2023 legislative session on Wednesday.

The new session will bring new legislation for some pressing ideas, as both parties adjust to expanded their Republican majorities - The name of James White- - [Kelly] The 2023 North Carolina General Assembly convened Wednesday with the Senate opening operations under a Republican super majority.

Senator Phil Berger was reelected Senate President Pro Temporare.

- I will.

So help me, God.

We're here because the people of North Carolina placed faith in us to care for the state they love.

This day is as much about them as it is about us.

Their voices uttered through ballot boxes across North Carolina, signaled the direction they want North Carolina to take.

[crowd applauding] - [Kelly] Over in the North Carolina House.

Republicans will enter 2023 with an expanded but not veto-proof GOP majority.

House Speaker Tim Moore was reelected Speaker for a fifth time, that makes him the longest serving Speaker of North Carolina's House, regardless of party affiliation.

- It's an exciting time to be in North Carolina.

We're now, I believe, the ninth largest state, soon to be the eighth largest state.

And it's a state that is doing well despite a lot of headwinds that we've see thrown at us because of things at the federal level and because of the economy and other things.

It's a state that's doing well.

- The Senate make up is 30 Republicans in 20 Democrats.

That's enough to override gubernatorial vetoes.

The House will be comprised of 71 Republicans and 49 Democrats, one Republican vote short of a super majority.

All right, Donna, here's the story.

New session.

It's always exciting.

- It is.

- The words are always positive.

- Sure.

- And then it gets down to business about February.

- Yes, actually, yeah.

I think what we saw this week was, of course, you know, we saw the colors with the national anthem.

Everybody's really looking forward to working together and then they gaveled out until the 25th.

They're gonna come back on the 25th, get down to business.

I'm looking forward to see what happens really though actually, because in November voters sent back, as you said, sent back a super majority in the Senate, one vote shy in the House of a super majority for Republicans.

So I think we're gonna see a lot of dealing and really talking about some of these issues on a daily basis.

It is going to be a constant back and forth.

- Dawn, what's the tone inside that [mumbles] press room?

Back at it and for a long time this year.

- It's busy, it's excited.

There's a lot of like first day of the school year energy and seeing people again and they're, of course all the new members and the House and Senate.

So things have switched up a bit.

I just got to know all 120 people and now, and now it's changed.

[everybody chuckling] So there's the energy there.

There's more of heightened what you were saying about the daily, I've made this joke multiple times.

My editor said like, that's the last time you get to mention it in a story, referencing Hamilton.

but it is about being in the room where it happens.

- [Donna] Sure.

- And if you're not in the room, which is the House Chamber, when the vote is called, which I'm sure there's a lot of pressure on your caucus.

- Sure.

- Then everything changes, as with the potential for overriding vetos - Representative Lofton, the cool thing I heard in Tim Moore's speech, the Speaker of the House, 10 million North Carolinians and the same 120 in the House representing 'em.

That's a lot of people.

- Yes.

- Who according to Phil Berger put their faith in you at the ballot box.

It's a good day down there.

It's gonna be fun watching you debate these issues.

But what was the tone going in, sitting there beside the House Democratic leader?

- The tone was hopeful and optimistic.

I think we're all ready to get to work.

We obviously have a lot of challenges and opportunities ahead of us in our state, and we are ready to get to work and do what's best for the people in North Carolina.

For me personally, it was great to have my two boys sitting at the back as honorary pages.

The first time I was sworn in 2019, they came up barely to my waist, and now they're almost as tall as I am.

So it just kind of signified for me the stakes that we have in front of us and the things that need to get done.

- Donna, let's talk about the leaders of the house.

- Sure.

- Well, Tim Moore set a record.

- Yes.

Fifth term, - 10 years in [mumbles].

- Yeah, this is his fifth term as North Carolina House Speaker that actually sets a record longest serving speaker ever.

But then, you know, and that's gotten a lot of attention.

But then on the Senate side, Phil Berger elected for a seventh term as the Senate leader on that side.

So I think it really says a lot about how these two people have taken that caucus, that Republican majority and really enacted some of this agenda and been able to work within a very pretty diverse, ideologically diverse caucus.

And they took over in 2012, 2013, after Democrats had the legislature for a century.

So being able to hold that gavel for this long is pretty impressive for what they are in leaders.

- I think the session is gonna be a lot about the dynamic between Moore and Berger, and of course Cooper also, but because of the control with the Senate having slightly more control than the House but also the House having more control in a different way.

The Senate can pass what it wants with the super majority, but it depends on working the caucus and really whipping the votes in the House for everything and getting some Democrats to vote with them which they're hoping to do.

Of course, no Democrat is gonna say now, like, oh, I'm definitely gonna vote with the opposing party on this, because we'll all be writing stories about it and everything, but again, it's the people in the room when the votes are called and there's just gonna be a higher stress to really every single session day, I think.

- I think I know how this answer would go, but Brandon, Robert Reeve runs the House another session and you know, a tip of the hat to Senator Dan Blue over in the Senate.

You take on your leadership, and you'll be working with Democrats over in the Senate as well.

- Yes, so Robert Reeves is our unanimously reelected minority leader, and I'm excited to be a part of his leadership team.

So Robert's the leader, Ashton Clemens is our deputy leader.

Cynthia Ball is our campaign chair, and I'm our legislative chair.

So I'm excited to be a part of that team and to work to move us forward.

Obviously, with the Senate being in the super minority, it puts a little bit more focus on what we need to do in the House, and we are ready to get to work.

- And you've offered me the perfect segue because Governor Roy Cooper has vetoed more bills than any previous North Carolina governor.

Legislative Democrats, in recent years, have featured large enough numbers, at least last session, to fairly easily protect overrides if they stuck together.

But the numbers are a little bit different in 2023.

Takes a 2/3 vote in the House and a 2/3 vote in the Senate to override a gubernatorial veto for most bills, not all bills.

And that means Republicans in the Senate already have their 2/3 majority if they show up for a floor session.

But over in the House, they are one vote short of a 2/3 majority.

But, Don, if legislators are absent from the floor, it lowers how many are there.

And that makes the 2/3 a little different.

Is is it right?

- It's actually 3/5.

- 3/5?

Oh, no!

- It's 3/5, so it's all a math problem.

[group laughs] - 60%.

And I've gone on the record at 67%.

So it's easier on Representative Lofton?

- No.

[group laughs] - The math in the room, it's especially harder in the House with the Senate.

You know, we can look, be like, "Okay, what are the scenarios of who's in the room or not with the 3/5?"

But you have to do it really quick, which is what Republicans are gonna do when, you know, people are there or not.

So what I noticed on the Republican desk when I was waiting for the House session to start, under their glass on their desk, it said, "Attendance matters," because it matters for everybody.

And that math calculation of the 3/5 is going to be an everyday thing.

And that's what Representative Reeves was concerned about.

- In your position as leader representative, is it up to you to call everyone to make sure that all the Democrats are there when, you know, a veto has come, and it is subject to being overridden at any time from the moment Governor Cooper vetoes a bill?

- Yes, well, I think it's on all of us as a caucus to keep track of each other, and certainly on the leadership, we will make an intentional effort to make sure we know where members are.

But I think you're exactly right.

If these rules changes become permanent, then as soon as the governor vetoes, then we know we that any vote can be pulled without warning and without notice.

And the important thing about the rules changes, it's not just, so they struck 44.2, which required the two legislative day notice.

They changed rule five, which allows the speaker to add any bill, not just a veto override, to the calendar at any time.

So any bill can be pulled at any moment without notice.

That's a problem.

That's a problem because it's not just for us as legislators who may have work emergencies, health emergencies, or just need to step off the floor to use the restroom.

It's a problem for the people that we represent, to our neighbors community members.

We're there to make sure their voices are heard, and these important issues shouldn't be decided based upon a gotcha moment.

- Donna, people may talk about this around the kitchen table.

- Sure.

- Rule this, rule that, basically what happens?

- Well, so what happened is the new rules chairman, Dustin Hall, Caldwell County, one of the things that they talked about is that they have eliminated from the rules list this time requirement, this time constraint, on when you can override a veto, and how much notice, which provided members with notice.

So in this case, from here on out, members will get a notice that there's gonna be votes, but they may not necessarily know a veto override is gonna be on that list.

So what that ends up meaning, which, by the way, Governor Cooper tweeted out, calling this trickery, on behalf of the Republican, on the part of the Republican leadership.

But what it does mean is that, at the end of the day, everybody's gotta go to work every single day.

And it is incumbent upon the leader to say, you know, bathroom breaks and recesses and all these other things, because the voters said, "Okay, we're voting for you to go in, press red or green on every single vote, and everybody's gotta be there.

And that's what the leadership is saying.

- There's another factor too with when the votes are actually called, or if they're gonna be votes that day.

- Sure.

- So reporters pressed Speaker Moore after the session on, you know, usually the day before the session, he'll tell the lawmakers if there's gonna be votes the next day, or if, you know, it's a no-vote session.

And he said that he will tell them.

I'm like, "Well, are you gonna say that you expect that there's votes or there are votes?

And you know, what's the actual language there?"

And he said that, and he's on the record of this, we all, you know, wrote about it, that if he tells Leader Reeves that there are going to be votes the next day, then there are going to be votes the next day.

And obviously, we'll hold him to account on that.

Now he's not gonna say what votes will be the next day, which is where the Democrats, you know, obviously are concerned about if they're there or not.

But he'll probably tell maybe Republicans because that's the caucus, and that makes sense.

- We'll have to see how it plays out.

Final word.

- Yeah, would just add, all of our members care about being there on behalf of the people they represent.

We also have a part-time legislature.

We have jobs, we have families, we have health emergencies.

And it's not just vetoes we're talking about.

Again, I just wanna emphasize, the Speaker has the power to add any bill to the calendar without notice.

That's not just without notice to us, but to our constituents, to reporters, to people back home who need to know if they need to weigh in and tell their members how to vote.

The fact that we would operate a legislative body in a way where any matter can be pulled up without deliberation, without notice that this is what we're gonna be voting on, I think is a problem for deciding these issues.

- But for clarity, the rules are the rules.

They have been passed, and you are notified of those rules whether the Democratic caucus likes those rules or not.

Is that accurate?

- Well, temporary.

- We have temporary rules.

We have temporary rules.

So typically for as long as I can remember, and I asked the clerk about this, I think for as long as the House, at least in recent memory, we have temporary rules that typically adopt the previous sessions rules until we have negotiations, and we work out how do we want to operate as a body.

That didn't happen this time.

Now we have temporary rules, but the temporary rules are the new proposed rules.

So, yes, we will go back.

I will reach out to Chairman Hall, and we will have, and Leader Reeves, we'll talk with Speaker Moore, and we'll talk through the issues and see if we can find some common ground.

The hope is that we get better transparency in our system, not just for our benefit, for the people we represent.

- All right, moving on to our next topic.

In 2022, legislative Republicans seem to warm up to the idea of Medicaid expansion in our state.

The House and Senate approved separate Medicaid expansion legislation, but never reached a deal on.

- Final compromise, GOP leaders said late last year, it's too late in the year to conduct such complex business, if you will, that it should be tackled in a long session.

So the ideas are alive.

And to check my civics lesson, bills that don't pass in a new session, you have to redraft legislation.

So old ideas, new legislation will be required, Representative Lofton.

Medicaid expansion's been an interesting one.

It's always been on the Democratic menu, and now, Republicans seem very warm.

Where are we realistically?

- Yeah, I'm encouraged and excited.

I think we've come closer obviously than we have been.

It's obviously been a top priority for us ever since I've been elected in 2018.

It's was the source of our standoff in 2019 over the budget.

So I'm hopeful now that we can get the hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians who are in the coverage gap, we can get them to healthcare that they need.

I think we're one of 12, maybe it's now it's 11 maybe states that have refused to expand Medicaid.

I think it's long past time.

And if we are this close, I'm hopeful we can actually cross that finish line.

- Donna, what happened last year that it was now a, in some ways a conservative cause to accept Medicaid, except the federal support form.

- Yeah, absolutely.

We are one of 11 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Republicans for a long time really held the line.

They were vehemently opposed to it in the last session.

One of the arguments is this, well first, Medicaid expansion would add six, 700,000 able-bodied, working-age people to the Medicaid entitlement program.

Now of course, the federal government is weighing in to pay a large portion of that.

There's now an incentive from the Biden Administration, kind of a carrot to get those last remaining states to do it.

That's something I think may have turned the tide particularly for the Senate.

But attached to that bill that did pass the Senate, did not pass the House, that bill that to pass the Senate had in it things like certificate of need reforms, some of the things that cut through red tape to improve access.

'Cause even if you have that Medicaid card doesn't mean you're necessarily gonna be able to get an appointment.

And that's one of the thing that Republicans really want to address is access.

- Dawn, you will be chasing this issue.

There is no question about it.

Your take on it, what was left behind in 2022?

How easy will it be to pick this issue up in '23?

- There's a very brief moment last summer where, so they had these like standing, just one-day, no-vote sessions for the second half of the year without officially adjourning.

And Berger and Moore kept talking about maybe there'll be a compromise.

And obviously, Governor Cooper was hopeful for that too.

But again, it came down to what we talked about before about House versus Senate.

And that Senate leader Berger wants certificate of need issues, everything else in this bill.

And Moore says, no, "I just want the money," and him saying on behalf of his caucus too.

And that we want just a clean bill.

And they're dug in.

So it's all about what's in the actual bill.

And once they work that out, then I think it'll pass fairly quickly.

But we've thought they were gonna work it out for months and they haven't.

So I'm not gonna hold my breath that it's gonna happen in February or March or April.

I think they would all prefer it not be part of the budget process, but we might end up seeing that - Representative, I know liberal and conservatives in my private life, and they're older and they love their Medicare, and that's socialized medicine.

But that love didn't translate down to Medicaid expansion 10 years ago.

Why not, in your opinion, what's made this a tough sled in our state?

- I'm not sure, I tried to figure that out myself.

I've heard, I've had conversations with people about their opposition to Medicaid expansion.

And I've heard worries that maybe future federal appropriations won't honor the commitment to pay for a portion, and that will leave the state with more burden.

But I think enough states, the vast majority of states have already done it so that we can feel some assurance that that's a minimal risk.

But in the meantime, we have people who need help.

And the fact that we now have the House and the Senate on record with passing some version of Medicaid expansion, we should hopefully be able to get it done.

- Donna, did the Republicans all these years, they have a good point to think that the federal government might pull the funding out from under Medicaid expansion if states adopted it, and then locked in the mandate to supply medical?

- Sure, well, I think one of the concerns that I've heard from Republicans is that this is only promised for so many years, and at that point, it could be renegotiated.

The future general assemblies could be charged with making people whole.

And how do you kick off 700,000 people from the Medicaid roles if you can't pay for it?

I think the benefit of having waited as we get a chance to see what has happened in other states.

There's a new study out that says it does not change or improve mortality rates.

That's something they have to think about.

And now the Biden Administration is rejecting work requirement waivers.

So some states initially expanded with work requirements.

North Carolina's Senate bill did too, but now, they're not able to get those waivers.

- I have a question for the audience out there.

How's the economy going for you?

Well, take the answer to that question.

Multiply it by those 10 million North Carolinians we're told live here now.

And you'll see the challenges facing our state budget writers as they tackle the next budget bill.

Let's go high level, Dawn.

Inflation is down some, we still have inflation.

Wages are growing, so is the prices of the grocery bills and everything else.

Many business owners say they can't find workers, and then they also so say people don't want to work.

So it depends on, I guess, how you lean politically, whether we're in a recession or not.

It does seem that way.

But feelings aside, this is a business-minded state.

What kind of shape are we in?

- I think economist-wise, they're looking at maybe a sort of a slow-rolling recession.

Not the one that everyone was worried about last year 'cause it seemed like it was going to come, and that that remains to be seen.

North Carolina is a wonderful place.

We all live here for a reason.

All the people moving here are coming for a reason.

Everybody likes it.

So the economy on, there's various reasons for that.

Depending, I guess on people's political persuasion, and what they think is the draw or that keeps people here.

So the economy in North Carolina is a little bit different than the rest of the country.

Inflation is slightly better.

I asked Speaker Moore more the other day.

I like asking questions about the budget all the time.

I said, "Are the raises for our teachers and state employees gonna keep the pace with inflation?"

And he said he doesn't think anything's gonna keep the pace with inflation.

- Well there you have it, Brandon.

You brought up you're concerned about teacher shortages.

If the budget's solid on budget, no recession, there's plenty of money you would think to fund, or at least on the level of this past year.

However, if we go into a recession, it's less money.

It becomes a rhetoric battle of sound bites, tweets, and Facebook posts.

In a nod to you on this education front, how does the economy affect education funding in this state?

- Well, I think one thing, so you often hear it reported about how North Carolina's.

- Number one state for business, an attractive place for businesses to come.

When I talk to and I go to ribbon cuttings and we have new companies moving to Charlotte, the first thing they mention is our workforce.

The first thing they talk about is that we have an educated workforce here in North Carolina.

So while we, it's important to have attractive incentives and tax structure, we have to also make sure we're investing in our children and investing in our workforce.

Right now we have teacher shortages all across our state and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, where my kids attend, on the first day of school, there were 390 openings.

My son last year had to learn Spanish without a Spanish teacher.

My son, apparently, my younger son, this year in second semester will have a math class without a math teacher.

I met a young lady who had three of her five classes, for three of five classes she did not have a teacher.

This is a problem that we need to address.

We have the ability to address it in our budget and we didn't make it a priority.

- Why are so many teachers leaving, Donna?

Is it on a school?

Is it a operational cultural issue at these local district levels?

Is there not enough state funding and federal funding to support public education?

- Right, well a big chunk of the funding for it does come from the local school board, what they call supplement.

But I think in general, the culture of teaching right now, teachers are feeling demoralized, overworked.

They're asked to do things with students that perhaps should be more in the in the realm of what a parent would do.

They're having to take on much more than just teaching you know, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

And I think that that's challenging.

But this trend has also been happening for much longer than the last, say, five, six, seven years.

This started in the seventies.

So in 1974 or so, we had 180 almost 200,000 graduates in education.

This past year we had about 76,000 graduates nationally in education.

So we really need to think more about how we attract and retain talented help.

Make these school systems more competitive, compete with each other by providing a better work environment, by rewarding performance and putting in all of these metrics that make sure that parents have a buy-in that they are participating in the process.

This can't be done without parents.

It's not fair to put it all on teachers.

Parents have to be engaged in the classroom.

They have to be continuing those lessons at home and providing that support when their children need it.

And we have to empower them to do so.

- [Brandon] So.

- Yes.

- I would just agree and add, so my kids went to, they're in high school now.

When they were elementary school they had a reception for all the parents who volunteered more than 100 hours.

It filled the gymnasium.

Right?

So we have a very active parent community in my district and for a number of the schools in my district.

Yet, it's not enough to overcome that absence of teachers in the room.

We need to end...

It's pay, it's work environment, it's the complete package.

And so we have to do the minimum of at least trying to bring teacher pay up to where it needs to be.

And we also need to make sure that we protect the professionalism of teachers.

My mom's a retired teacher.

My sister-in-law is a principal right now, mother-in-law and father-in-law, both retired principals.

And so I think we are in a situation where they're dealing with pay that hasn't kept up to be where it needs to be.

We're losing teachers to South Carolina in Charlotte.

And also we are seeing the increasing politicization of our classrooms trying to make teachers put lesson plans online, require school boards to hold public hearings if anyone in the public has an objection to what's happening in the classroom.

These are things that make it an unfavorable work environment in addition to the pay.

- I think a lot of it is like, do you like your job?

Do you wanna stay your job?

Do you wanna become a teacher?

So it's multiple things.

Obviously you pay people well they're gonna look at wanting to stay.

If they get raises, they will wanna stay, they're not gonna go try to leave somewhere else.

If they feel supported, if they feel respected by everyone, then they're more likely to stay, and that they'll get the education to become a teacher.

So it's every level, I think.

- And thinking in a new way about how we recruit and who's in there.

We have this amazingly educated workforce, retired math mission mathematicians and engineering and writers and all these things changing and rethinking about who can be at the front of the classroom, giving them training to do it.

But tapping into that workforce that we have in other areas would be tremendously helpful.

- But help me with families out there.

Republicans are gonna say, Brandon, we're we're funding education.

And that gets them votes and you can say they're not doing enough for education and that gets them to consider the Democrats as a vote.

What's the middle ground here?

As a state leader what do you think's the state responsibility?

And then when do you go back home and say, local school board, you can do this to make a better environment for your teacher or better funding situation?

- Well, I think our constitution is clear it's the state's responsibility to fund public education in North Carolina.

It is true that local governments provide supplements, because what the state pays is not going to, frankly, it's just not enough period.

But especially in higher cost of living areas, it's necessary for Mecklenburg County to provide extra supplement.

But we're now in a situation where increasingly, as the state fails to provide the adequate level of funding, it shifts more of that burden down to the local levels.

And then you'll see an increase in our urban/rural divide.

So counties like where I grew up in Onslow County, can't provide nearly the same kind of supplement as where my kids are growing up now.

That's the danger of where we're heading if we don't have the state step in to provide adequate funding.

- And the school boards have to ask the county commissioners for the money.

- Yes.

- And then the county is looking at property taxes and how are you gonna pay for everything in that balance too, if it's at the local level.

- Well, we've eaten every bit of time out of this first show of "State Lines."

Donna, thank you.

Dawn, thank you.

Brandon, thank you.

And thank you for watching "State Lines."

I'm Kelly McCullen.

I'll see you next time.

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