- [Announcer] There's no North Carolina budget deal in sight, but what parts of the budget could still pass this summer?

And US Senator Thom Tilis weighs in on the Israeli-Iranian conflict.

This is "State Lines."

[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.

[bright music continues] ♪ - Welcome back to "State Lines," I'm Kelly McCullen.

We have a great show today, thank you for joining us.

Dawn Vaughan is here with The News & Observer, Senator Brad Overcash represents Gaston County, he's in seat two.

We have a rookie senator, Representative Phil Rubin of Wake County.

Hello, welcome to "State Lines."

You're on with some savvy veterans this week.

- Yeah, thanks, Kelly, glad to be on here.

I really appreciate it.

- Glad to have you on.

Thanks for accepting our invitation.

Jeff Moore of the John Locke Foundation joins us in seat four.

You've been here a time or two, always great to see you.

- Great to be here.

- Well, there's a lot of talk about, but we'll start with what isn't happening, which is a state budget bill being, I guess, approved.

The House and Senate budget negotiations appear to be out of stalemate, so if you follow state politics in North Carolina, lack of a budget deal, no big surprise.

The current budget year will end on June 30th, but state law keeps the current budget in effect, so there's no government shutdown, don't worry about that.

And Dawn, other legislative business continues as we wait for a budget, but let's talk about the budget.

- Yeah.

- The big, beautiful budget, not apparently going anywhere.

Now, we're hearing they may break it up into bite-sized pieces.

- Yes.

Yes, so here we are again.

You know, at the beginning of every long session, there's hope of, you know, things happening in a timely fashion, and then eventually it doesn't.

And of course, you know, the state law, You don't have to pass a budget by the end of the fiscal year if raises come later, if there is a budget deal as late as almost Thanksgiving.

A couple years ago, or not at all in 2019, raises would be retroactive, so that's kind of, like, the big concern of the state employees and the teachers whose base pay is set by the state, is money.

So they will get their money eventually, only if there's a deal, and raises have kind of been a big factor in past negotiations between the House and Senate.

It's taxes this time, but not only taxes, so Senate Leader, Phil Berger, said that there's more to it.

There's things like the children's hospital funding, what to do with lowering the job vacancy rate, eliminating some state jobs, that sort of thing.

So there's a lot of things to work out, and we're not even talking really about a lot of earmarks yet.

So they're gonna push through the rest of the policy they can before the end of this coming week, and then take a break.

They haven't, as of Thursday, they had Berger and Speaker Hall had not set a date yet to when everyone would come back in July as talks continue.

- Senator Overcash, I remember a day not so long ago, June 30th, you guys would sit up all night long, and by July 1st, that building would be empty for the next nine months till the short session.

This is the new era.

So from the Senate perspective, why is it better sometimes not to make that deal with the house, keep fiscal policy right where it's at?

- Well, I think, you know, Republicans had the foresight several years ago to put laws into place that all the recurring funding that's going on right now in state government, that's gonna continue, as Dawn said, until we get a new budget.

So we don't have quite those pressures that you see in Washington.

We're not facing any type of shutdown.

Folks will continue to get paid, and government will continue to function.

I do believe that next week, we will likely see.

A funding package on some of those critical things that may be expiring.

So the two chambers are working that out now.

I think you'll see that.

I also think you'll see something on Hurricane Helene relief soon.

I've heard that is promised.

It's the next segment up.

But Representative Rubin, to your point on the budget negotiations the other House Democrats jumped on.

Most of you jumped on the side of the House budget and said, we'll see what happens if the bill's reached.

What do you think about the budget situation?

Is the state gonna be just fine if we don't pass a new bill soon?

- I actually, I don't think that because there's a couple of reasons.

I like that we have the bill in place that, or the law in place that continues funding, but there are actually costs that we face when we don't get a budget.

So sure those pay raises would be retroactive, but people don't know if they're getting them.

And so imagine teachers.

Right now, we're worst in the region for starting teacher pay.

We might, if the house gets its way, jump up to first.

But if you're a new teacher deciding where you're gonna live and work, you don't know the answer to that yet, and now's the time you might just move to Virginia or South Carolina.

State agencies don't know how they're going to be funded, what positions they're going to have.

And there are some fundamental changes in both the House and Senate budgets on how agencies will work with like vacant positions.

And so that uncertainty does actually carry a cost, and we really need to get to a place where we have answers.

- Has your caucus leadership had any input with the budget process on the House side or did House Republicans go in with their bill and just happen to come out with something that you could figure out a way politically to halfway support?

- I think it's kind of in the middle.

I think that there have been instances where folks in the Democratic caucus and leadership have had input on it.

I don't think it's as much as I would like to see in this body a collaboration between.

We mainly, we got to actually see the budget right before it was voted on, the actual final piece.

And I would like for it not to work that way.

But that said, I wouldn't, I'd be lying if I said, oh, there was no collaboration whatsoever.

And there's, you know, like you mentioned, there's some things that we like in the House budget in particular, - Well, time honored tradition is you don't see the budget until it comes out.

Jeff, there's been many, many cycles, and Democrats have led this.

They didn't release the budget either.

- Yeah.

- So, you know, it's always a surprise, and well, people in North Carolina, their families are just outta school.

It's beach time, it's mountain time.

Go back to the mountains and tours.

- Yeah.

- And state budget stalemate, and how many people are paying attention you think out there and when will they start paying attention to the lack of the state budget?

- Yeah, I think maybe when they actually come back from any expected break and actually get, start cobbling those pieces together to really get 'em across the finish line.

This is not a surprise, as you mentioned.

This, I think of the Charlie Brown, Lucy pulling the football out right before he's about to kick it every year.

And so we have some young reporters at Carolina Journal as part of the John Locke Foundation that I told them when they first came on, when they were thinking about the fiscal year deadline and when we'll have a budget, I said, just wait.

Even if there are promises that we should have this done by Independence Day or by the end of June, in the last 10 years, this is a rare occurrence that it actually, actually happens.

- So another thing to note when there is a deal is that the budget in North Carolina at least is not just about money.

There's gonna be policy in there, some policy that has money tied to it, but a lot of times it, whatever doesn't get through the end of session will be some sort of deal that is in the final budget.

And Senator Berger said the other day that they're talking about budget pressures that they're, you know, pressure points between the House and Senate.

And that includes things like policy that aren't just raises and taxes and the typical, you know, funding fights.

- Yeah, which will draw people's attention back in after they return from their summer vacations.

Everything, we start haggling those things out.

The policy that impacts those families, they'll start paying attention.

- Representative Rubin, this next topic's to you.

Where state democratic leaders have raised a point this week.

The future Hurricane Helene recovery may stall in the absence of a new state budget.

Of course, Senator Overcash just spoke to that.

House Republicans have always proposed a separate Helene Recovery Bill from the state budget bill.

Senate Republicans baked it in as part of their just combined budget bill, just one big bill.

I hate to use that term.

more than once in one show, Senate Republican leader, Phil Berger's promising Helene recovery will be addressed before legislators, "Go home from the legislative session," and Senate Democratic leader, Sydney Batch has floated the idea of using parliamentary procedure to force a floor vote on, at least on the House bill, I believe is how it would work.

So we get it.

It popped up on the radar.

Republicans immediately jumped in to say, "Don't worry about that."

Is that good enough?

- Well, it'll be good enough when we vote and when they vote on it, or we get a bill back from the Senate.

But I'm heartened by that.

That's certainly good because you know that bill, the bill the House passed, it's $565 million and all the things we were just talking about where we have continuing resolutions essentially in place.

None of that applies to our friends in Western North Carolina.

The funding that they need is not automatic.

If we don't take action, they don't get that funding.

And one of the things I would emphasize, in that bill, and it's a great bill, it was unanimous in the House, Republicans and Democrats, $60 million to help small businesses that have lost substantial profits due to the disaster.

And if a small business goes outta business, it doesn't come back.

So if we take an extra month or two to get this done, that's a lot of businesses that will finally go under.

And the character of Western North Carolina is small business.

So we need to get this done.

I hope we're gonna get it done next week.

That would be great.

- Senator Overcash.

- So we've already appropriated nearly $1.5 billion to Hurricane Helene relief.

We have been very quick in getting that out.

There are still significant funds from those appropriations that have not been able to be spent yet.

You're also on top of that, we are going to release and vote on and pass another Helene package next week.

And yes, the Senate, we certainly put it in our proposed budget.

But you can put things in more than one place if you wanna make sure it passes and that it's important.

So we're gonna have, we have that in the budget, but we're also gonna release a separate bill and vote that out next week.

- I think it's important to note that that was actually part of the, that's one thing with the budget debate that has resulted in something like a final before the end of the month, that the Senate wanted the Helene funding within the budget and the House didn't, and they've agreed to just run the separate bill.

- Jeff, the politics of this, you've worked in party politics.

It's just two different ways of doing the same thing.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So the Senate breaks it apart.

I mean, it doesn't seem to be very controversial.

It's just something the state will have to do.

- Yeah, it's something.

And then obviously once you pass these pieces of legislation, that is not the end to point.

It's not like the money is automatically in the places where it needs to go.

Like Senator Overcash said, it takes some time to actually get those funds out to where they need to be.

And you still got a lot of funds to deliver.

So the difference in it being passed when the budget gets passed or if it gets passed in a separate bill, may not have a real functional effect down the line as it's kind of takes its time to filter through.

- How much do you think government funding of recovery can offset the lack of tourism and private dollars and people traveling west this summer and fall?

- I think it can be a small help, but really it's gonna be the awareness campaign that Western North Carolina is open for business again and pushing that idea all summer long and maybe switching some of these beach trips to a mountain trip or maybe doubling up and going both to the beach and the mountains and enjoying in all parts of this state.

But this is something they definitely need.

- Representative Rubin, how should future state revenues, this big debate about the fiscal cliff that the state may run out of, I guess run out of over-collections or surplus?

Do you think that could affect Hurricane Helene recovery?

Should it?

- Well, I think it could in the sense that we're seeing this progression of divesting from the state.

As more people are moving in, we're not growing revenue with it and more people, it costs more to have a state with more people in it in terms of government services.

What that means for Hurricane Helene recovery is if we don't continue to have the revenue to build roads, to build infrastructure, that's gonna put pressure on the western part of the state where we need extra money.

I think the total recovery that we're behind there is like $30 billion.

And obviously we're hoping that a lot of that is going to be federal money that's going to come, but that isn't secured yet, and so.

- At the end of the day, I think we need to start from a position of funding the recovery fully through federal and state money, and funding our infrastructure in the state fully, and then talk about how revenue gets us there.

- The idea that revenue in North Carolina has not grown as our population has grown is just fundamentally false.

We have had increasing revenue, increasing amounts in our budgets for 10 years plus, all driven both through growth, but also through our corporate and personal income tax cuts.

Every time we've done that, revenues have continued to increase.

It is a time-honored and proven tradition in North Carolina, and our revenues are continuing to go up.

- Yeah, it's certainly true that revenues have gone up, and that wasn't what I was saying.

I'm more saying that the revenue is not growing with the population.

And anybody who's waited in the line at the DMV, which hasn't really grown since three million people moved in, has seen that.

But the state budget director, you know, noted that we're headed towards a $3.5 billion deficit if the tax cuts continue at the rate they are.

That was actually before the May revision that actually makes that picture worse.

And so ultimately, if you balance the budget, you're going to have to cut that money from the budget.

And 10% cuts in a state that's $15 billion behind on road construction is something that I think people are paying costs of.

It's ringing as a tax cut, but what people are hearing is, "I'm spending more on healthcare, I'm spending more on education, I'm spending more on roads, on time on the road."

So people are paying the cost, they're just paying it in a different way.

- Roy Cooper appointed the former Democrat Party chairman as the DMV commissioner and he wrecked the system.

That is not a revenue problem, that is a gross mismanagement of a state agency.

- And it should be noted as well that the consensus forecast here has a history of embellishing the trouble that we may be in going forward.

So I think it's to the tune of $7 or $8 billion that they've kind of undersold what the revenues are gonna be.

So you should take a little grain of salt with that as well.

- It is a forecast, right?

- Yeah.

- And I think that is, you know, the Senate Republican position with Berger, the disagreement between Berger and Speaker Hall now.

And you know, Hall got all the Democratic support, which really is like the biggest budget story of the year, I think, with even the Democratic leader voting for the House budget written by Republican budget writers.

But this divide, I think, is what's gonna make the budget battle drag out this summer with these future tax cuts and what the trigger should be.

- All right, North Carolina's US Senator Thom Tillis offered some comments about the Israel-Iran conflict this week.

He spoke to CNN on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

President Trump has said he'll give diplomacy two weeks before deciding whether he'll authorize US military involvement.

Here's Senator Tillis on deferring to that presidential leadership.

- The only thing that's gonna fix Iran is regime change.

The mullahs are murderers.

It is time for regime change.

And I believe that this president should be given a fair amount of leeway to affect that.

- Jeff, I don't normally bring federal issues into this state, but Thom Tillis is out there, he loves a microphone these days, and he's saying regime change.

That's big rhetoric when it's Israel and Iran.

- Yeah, yeah, and the writing may be on the wall already for him to be reading.

Whether or not we're specifically pushing regime change in Iran, that seems to be something that's going to come.

They're in a very, very weak position as far as the IRGC and the ayatollah's leadership there in Iran, do not have a lot of great support at home.

And with this conflict going on between Israel and Iran, and all the pain that they're feeling, it's gonna be moving in that direction.

So Tillis may be kind of jumping on something that's already moving here, but also backing up President Trump, which sometimes he's at odds with.

So you kind of see him jump back on that train when it is in the more traditional kind of view of making sure that we can get some friendlier administrations over in the Middle East.

- Senator Overcash, I wanna ask you about North Carolina, being a huge military state, probably, what, number two behind Texas or California?

I've lost the statistic in my mind here on the fly, but anytime there's a foreign involvement, it's going to involve Fort Bragg and maybe not Lejeune in this case, but Lejeune in this case.

So how can North Carolina's economy and its leadership be prepared for an involvement that's so many miles away and likely we will not see Iranian troops in North Carolina?

- Well, you know, North Carolina, the world's most military friendly state, and our, our folks will be ready, whether they're coming from North Carolina or coming from elsewhere, if called upon.

But, you know, I don't believe it will, I don't believe it will escalate to that point.

And, you know, certainly continuing to pray and support Israel.

You know, you have these two, these two countries at war now, and you see Israel bombing military targets and assets, nuclear weapons facilities, and then you see the other side, which I can categorize as, as only as pure evil firing missiles into civilian populations.

I've been to Tel Aviv.

It is, it is a, is a large city center.

They recently, Iran recently shot a missile into a hospital.

I mean, this is, this is just such a ridiculous situation.

- Messaging though in DC all eyes are on the Middle East again, and we still got trouble back here at home.

We need recovery efforts as per the last segment.

How do we, how do we keep our voice out there in DC that North Carolinians need help before we maybe go to war?

I don't know how, how should I articulate this?

- I think, I think this is an area where we can do many things at once and, you know, we'll, absolutely.

I really hope we don't end up at war.

The regime in Iran is brutal, it's repressive.

I won't be sad to see it go, but I don't think our success rate at regime change is very high.

And so, and I don't think Americans want to be in a war with Iran, but we also can't have a nuclear Iran.

So I think we're gonna have to pay attention to that.

But I actually don't think that even takes away the attention from things like disaster recovery in North Carolina.

We have the money to do that, we can do that.

I do hope we'll continue pressuring the federal government to make those funds available quickly for us.

It really impacts folks.

And you know, as you said earlier, getting the money out where it's needed is, that's a logistical challenge.

It's hard, it takes time.

The sooner we get it, the sooner we can get relief for folks.

But again, we can do two things at once.

- I could not agree with my colleague any more.

- Dawn, Senator Tillis' profile elevating, he's on national, international television a lot these days and just saying something like that gets our attention at home, but surely it's across America.

- Yeah, I think Senator Tillis is just a really interesting politician from North Carolina.

He, you don't always know what you're going to get from him for what he says.

I think he speaks his, his mind a lot more than maybe some other politicians, although of course he has the pressures of both his home state and, and the, and the party and Trump to, to work out.

But I think talking about any war, you know, lately our involvement in wars isn't very short.

And there's, I mean, if you think about what the long range impact is on, of course, the globe at the United States and the people from Fort Bragg and elsewhere that are actually gonna be involved in it, and especially this region of the country, it's not gonna be for a few months and then we're done.

It's gonna be many years.

- Do conservative voters want us in another foreign war right now?

That's splitting the Republican party just a bit.

- I don't think there's any appetite for, for ground troops, you know, full scale war now.

I think the question really is gonna become, you know, do we utilize some of those more sophisticated, heavy duty bunker busting bombs, for lack of a better term, on some of the more difficult to get to nuclear facilities?

I think that's probably what's on the table more than some sort of large scale war.

- Senator, stay right there.

The state senate has passed a hemp regulation bill aimed at setting age limits on purchases and banning synthetic cannabis products.

Only adults 21 and older could purchase hemp products.

And many products that you find right now in smoke shops and gas stations would be outright banned from the shelves unless those products underwent rigorous testing and meet new standards.

House and Senate differ very slightly on some bill terms, but you have Attorney General Jeff Jackson on board, Senator Josh Stein support the new regulations.

This is bipartisan senator Overcash, so what's wrong with letting the weed be out there, the cannabis products be out there on the retail shelves?

- Yeah, so right now North Carolina is the wild west for these types of products.

There is no regulation on them.

There's packaging that is clearly geared toward children.

Even products that are labeled a certain thing, there's no guarantee that what's in there is what's labeled, many products unlabeled.

I mean, it really is the wild, wild West.

It's a dangerous situation in North Carolina.

And I'm so thankful for this bipartisan push to just ban these synthetic cannabinoids and things like Kratom and some of these other products.

But the non-synthetic cannabinoids certainly getting a hold of that, don't market 'em to children, don't, you know, allow it to be sold anywhere at any time with no labeling and no testing.

I think this just very important.

It's high time and I'm thankful for the bipartisan push on it.

- Representative, is it really the Wild West, or is it just the market meeting the demand of the public?

'Cause they always say that even marijuana of any legalization status in a state runs about 60, 70% support.

What's the difference in that, and what you see in the store right now?

- I think it's the Wild West and it's my turn now to agree with my colleague completely.

You know, there's a couple issues.

You know, there's overdoses for kids and that have skyrocketed in North Carolina and across the country because these products are, like, gummies are a thing that kids want to have.

They look like candy.

They're available for sale for kids.

So I'm not against, you know, what we're doing here is actually I think a really nice balance because we're not eliminating these products entirely.

We're just saying that there's an appropriate way to regulate them so that they don't get in the hands of kids.

I remember WRL did a study a couple years ago and where they tested products that they had bought at a gas station like half a mile from a school, and almost all of them were adulterated with other chemicals they weren't supposed to have or 10 times the limit they were supposed to have.

That's a really serious risk for everybody.

- This bill gonna go through, Jeff?

- Yeah, it seems like it has some strong bipartisan support and we've got like water finding the lowest point.

Some of the more crafty entrepreneurs are gonna find those gray areas where the regulation just isn't there and they're gonna jump into it and you're gonna get a lot of market serving and you're gonna get a lot of messy things that don't really suit communities.

And so I think you need to clean those up and a standard regulation that applies to the whole state and allows everybody to operate around that and having safety first in mind and keeping it in adults' hands and out of children's hands is probably a smart approach.

- And it's the government's job to regulate things and put safeguards in place.

And this seems to be what, you know, there is agreement on this is twice now in one show that, you know, lawmakers different sides of the aisle, we agree on things.

- Kumbaya.

- And don't forget, there's also medical marijuana out there, which is senate rules Chair Bill Raven's big issue.

And I don't know if we'll see that this year or next year, but that's out there too.

- A three judge panel is hearing a federal case aimed at how North Carolina's legislative and congressional districts are drawn.

The redistricting lawsuit targets lines drawn back in October, 2023 that give North Carolina Republicans a 10:4 majority in Congress.

And all the majority you see currently in the State House and Senate, the plaintiffs say minority voters were dispersed into white majority districts to dilute their voting strength, which generally would seem to be democratic votes.

Jeff Republicans say race didn't play a factor into redistricting this time.

Yes, partisanship did.

And yes, partisanship is absolutely constitutional.

- Yeah, it's deja vu all over again, as Yogi Bear said, and it like, you might wonder what year it is if we're talking about redistricting or other issues like voter ID and the courts and stuff like that.

So this is a reiteration of the same suit that they've been bringing for years.

Kind of charging the racial bias and discrimination note.

The Republicans on that side saying, we're actually just Looking at political data, and they've established some things in the courts already because of the previous lawsuits and say that they're operating within those parameters, but the lawsuits come all the same, which makes sense as well, because the payoff for those interested groups, the plaintiffs here, the Marc Elias's, the NAACP has been good politically.

The messaging to tar and feather Republican map drawers as gerrymandering with a racial bias has been successful in the political consideration.

So it's not a surprise that they brought it again.

What would be surprising is if we get all the way to 2030 without a court saying that you have to redraw some maps.

- Representative Rubin, Democrats wrote, drew their districts very favorably before the ball got dropped in 2010, Republicans took over.

So what's the difference today from what Democrats just did 20, 25 to 100 years ago?

- Well, my view on this is really simple.

Political, partisan gerrymandering, racial gerrymandering, it's all wrong.

It shouldn't happen.

It's not right when Democrats do it.

It's not right when Republicans do it.

It's not right when it's done in Maryland.

It's not right when it's done here.

And you know, and I know folks at the Locke Foundation have written about this in a really principled way about getting to fair maps.

It undermines democratic legitimacy and it also undermines accountability, which is the hallmark of democracy.

If people can't hold their representatives accountable for the decisions they make, the whole system breaks down.

And like, think about the North Carolina House where I think Republicans got 47%, 47, 48% of the vote statewide and have 59% of the seats, like, accountability really breaks down.

So Democrats may have done it in the past.

They're doing it in other places in the country now, but you will never hear from me a position that says it's okay for anyone to do it, period.

- Senator, when does, you win, you have the political power.

How does that balance against the minority party's vision of fairness?

- You know, look, I cannot think of a more appropriate body to draw lines than a democratically elected legislature.

I mean, we've been elected from Murphy to Manteo, and that is exactly the instrument of the people's will.

And some idea that you can't hold that accountable, I would harken back to 2010, those were Democrat-drawn maps, Republicans swept into power.

- All right, that's the last word for this show.

Thank you so much for being on "State Lines."

Very fast moving.

Welcome to the show.

Hope you'll come back, Representative.

- My pleasure.

- Hope you'll come back too, Senator.

- Absolutely.

Thank you.

- We'll see you too soon enough.

Thank you for watching.

Most importantly, email your thoughts and opinions to statelines@pbsnc.org.

Appreciate you watching.

I'm Kelly McCullen, and we'll see you next time.

[energetic dramatic music] - [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.