- [Kelly] The North Carolina Legislature concludes what appears to be its last week in Raleigh.

So we examined the budget that didn't pass, veto overrides that did pass, and constitutional amendment referenda that might pass.

This is "State Lines".

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

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Great crew with me at the round table today.

Cardinal & Pine's Billy Ball is right here in my right seat one.

Hey, Billy.

- How are ya?

- Senator Mary Wills Bode of Granville and Wake Counties.

Senator Amy Galey of Alamance and Randolph Counties joins us.

- Thank you.

- Hello to you.

And WUNC Radio's Colin Campbell, our good friend, and the other journalist on the set, but last but not least.

Are you ready, Colin?

You get the first kickoff question.

I wanna let talk about - I'm all ready, let's do it.

- this last week of the House and Senate where they close out the 24/25 year it seems by wrapping up core legislative business.

The business year ends on June 30th in this state, which is the traditional date North Carolina lawmakers always hope they can conclude business and adjourn and leave Raleigh.

No official full budget adjustment bill was approved by the State, House and Senate, leaving last year's two year budget law in effect.

Constitutional referenda were on the agenda.

Only one appears to have made it to appear on the 2024 ballot.

And it does appear lawmakers, Colin, are planning to come back in the fall at some point and I'll leave the rest to you.

So much happens in the last 24 hours.

It makes me uneasy to assume I know anything that happened in Raleigh.

- Yeah, exactly, a lot changes.

A lot of last minute sessions, last minute bills that come up in these situations.

I think sort of the big takeaway from this sort of adjournment is that the Republicans didn't get done a lot of the things they really wanted to do.

They wanted to pass a budget for the second year of the fiscal year that starts next week.

They wanted to pass private school vouchers, expanded funding for that so that everyone on the waiting list gets through on that.

They wanted to pass this sheriff's cooperating with ICE, the immigration authorities bill.

A lot of those just got bogged down in negotiations between the House and Senate and they never got done, and now we're taking a summer break that could last well into the fall before anything else happens.

So, not as productive as we thought they were probably going to be when the session started a couple months ago.

- Senator Galey, what does it do psychologically?

I mean, 'cause you're a senator.

You're also a person who wants a summer like the rest of us and now you didn't finish the business and now you gotta come back at some point quite possibly.

Now does this linger out there?

You also gotta campaign.

- Right, it is a little disappointing.

I think that the Senate has been disciplined throughout the session.

We've had regular committee meetings, regular session.

Even if we only did a small number of bills, we still did it.

And we sent a lot of good legislation over to have it sit in the House Rules Committee.

So yeah, it's a little disappointing to work hard and not feel like you crossed that finish line with an issue that you know is really important to people.

But we did get some good things done and sometimes you have to take those wins.

And you know, wait for the next time.

So, that's fine.

- Is it an outdated concept?

I heard this way back probably 10-15 years ago that this state is growing and now it really is a large state, the top 10.

Is it time to think about the state expanding the legislative calendar beyond a what's called a short session and a long session and become, if not full time, three quarter time, which is what you seem to be now?

- Right, actually there's a lot of discussion about the legislative schedule with my colleagues.

Last night, I was talking to Senator Corbin and he was sharing that, her understanding is the short session started in the 1970s when Holshouser was elected and then the General Assembly then decided to start having a short session.

They only had one session every other year before that.

I thought that was interesting.

It would be nice to be able to have more pay that is more commensurate with your duties and the time away from home.

There's no doubt about that.

- Well, Senator Bode, you've almost made it.

You're not seeking reelection, at least you could take a break.

But now, hey, July is gonna come and business isn't done.

That's okay.

I mean that's just the way it goes.

We'll have more fun this fall.

Your take on the session?

A lot did get done through the Republican agenda, but by the Republicans not cutting on certain deals, Democrats did get some wins through inaction, right?

- Sure, certainly.

So I think to Colin's point, if I was asked to describe this legislative session in a word, that word would be unproductive.

And I think that that is a very natural byproduct of what happens when high concentrations of power is not accountable.

When we have unaccountable power, it starts serving itself and it fails to serve the people.

And what we've seen over the last two years in this legislature is really an attempt to blunt those tools of accountability, whether that's drawing legislative districts that favors one party over another or taking away the people of North Carolina and the press's ability for transparency.

We can no longer hold our legislators accountable through Freedom of Information Act request.

Or most recently, we have seen that the Republican super majority wants to open the flood gates for dark money to flow into our state.

And so, when the people can no longer know who is donating to these campaigns, it's just a huge red flag for democracy.

And I think that we should all be very concerned about the lack of accountability for our power in North Carolina.

- What I hear is that you're painting the Republican caucus in the House and Senate with the same brush.

There are dozens of house elected members who would've loved to have cut a deal on every piece of legislation and gone home just like you would, right?

Or, when you're saying concentrated power?

Are you saying it's all of them, or just those at the top, or certain select elected leaders?

- Well, you know, every single Republican in the legislature voted for all three of those things that I just talked about.

They all voted to make sure that the press and the people no longer have access to the documentation and communication.

They all voted for the partisan gerrymandered districts, and they all voted for the levies to be broken on dark money flowing into the state.

And I think that to my point, when the people no longer have the feedback mechanism to hold power accountable, is short circuited, we see this dysfunction happen, and this chaos happen.

- Senator Galey, she's talking about the family, the GOP family there, and I heard you sigh over there.

Go for it.

- So those districts pass constitutional muster.

Partisanship has allowed under the Stevenson guidelines.

The districts, the Senate, and house districts are fair.

They're faithful to the Stevenson criteria they're legally drawn, they're proper districts which are less gerrymandered than they were in the years when the Democrats held power.

So that's one big thing.

There's things that in the budget, that different people disagree with the, what she's referring to with the legislative scrutiny, or the transparency, that was in the budget.

I have a personal policy where I try to accommodate journalists and others, when they email me with a request if it looks like it's coming from a partisan group that's just trying to use my emails to plumb for nuggets that they can use in an election.

We have limited resources.

My LA only has so much time, so I try to accommodate those myself.

- Billy is, this is one of those weeks, where when things don't happen, you fall back into philosophical debates about transparency, and as such, and now Senator Bode very succinct with the soundbite as she's leaving office.

That's a whole different matter.

What do you take of the, what do you take of this?

There's been a lot to talk about, a lot to cover.

If you're a Republican voter, you could be happy while also wishing more was done.

If you're a Democrat, you say what?

- Well, I think that I am happy to hear that the philosophical discussion turns to districts, because I think that gerrymandering, and of course education is right up there.

But when I list the things that I think are the two most issues in the state of North Carolina, I think gerrymandering is really up there.

And I think to be blunt about, I think the argument that is being made from the legislature, and the Republican leadership and the legislature, is that the law and the courts allow us to create districts that are not fair.

The law allows us to do that so we're going to do that.

The senator's absolutely correct.

Democrats gerrymandered as well.

I don't know how we can say that Republicans have gerrymandered less, but the, but I think that the setup of the districts is such a way that, that it is nearly impossible for the Republicans to lose.

- Bring that back around to this session with the bills that did pass, the budget that didn't pass.

- Mm-hmm.

- How do you link that together when you have that?

There's power in one party, and they can get a deal done if they so desire.

- I think people sometimes oversimplify the fact that Republican domination in the House, Republican domination in the Senate.

Republicans don't all see eye to eye.

I think they're very good at keeping that, any internal discord from getting out, and to the point where we're all talking about it all the time, but they don't always see the eye to eye.

And we see this right now in the House and the Senate.

But I think that, you know, there are things that they clearly disagree about.

You see, the medical marijuana bill is a big example, where the House and the Senate are not on the same page at all on this.

And I think the budget is a clear example of this as well.

I was, I think one thing that's really important for North Carolinians to know, is that the Stop Gapp funding that came up for childcare, that was a really important thing before legislators left.

Because I think that we are, we are looking at a very serious childcare crisis, and I don't think that's a Republican or a Democratic thing.

Last time I checked, they all have kids.

And you have to take care of it.

- Well anything bipartisan on this program, we've discussed it.

So the money that came in, there's money now for childcare to help at least partially solve the childcare cliff for a period of time.

- It's kind of a temporary solution, but this is a long term problem.

And I hope, I hope that everyone can see that as that, that if we don't set up a system in which parents can get care for their children, then those parents come out of the workforce.

It affects people in so many ways, and it affects our economy.

And I'm glad to see that this is on the ta on the table at the legislature right now.

- Colin, the childcare cliff, the millions that was approved, that has been approved by the General Assembly carries us into in the long sessions of 2025.

- At least through most of the rest of this year, I think it's sort of a six month fix.

And lawmakers have basically said they'll come back at some point and revisit if they need more money for the rest of that.

But I did hear some talk from Senate Leader Phil Berger, and House Speaker Tim Moore, there is a need for a longer term solution, rather than just throwing money to make up for this federal money that's going away to figure out how do you solve this from a bigger picture.

But I think if you're a childcare center operator, there's a little uncertainty around the sort of short-term nature of what was approved in this session that you don't necessarily have the certainty for the full year.

- Hey, and teacher pay too.

Teachers got the pay raise, or at least the little bump that was on top of last year.

- Yeah, they were able, so the legislation they had to pass this week to make sure the raises enacted for teachers last year would go into effect on July 1.

So they managed to do that, but then the House had wanted additional teacher raises on top of that.

The Senate did not include that in their budget plan.

And so that didn't end up happening.

So state employees and teachers, they'll get what was already scheduled to happen, but they won't get anything above that.

- Senator Galey talking about, not reaching an agreement, there were a handful of Constitutional amendment referendum.

- [Senator Galey] Right.

- Proposed only one gets across the finish line.

And that is to clarify in Republican eyes that only US citizens 18 years and older can vote in North Carolina elections.

So let's go back to the politics of this.

There were a litany of options that would've been popular on the ballot, but only one made it.

What makes it so tough to get a referenda approved?

- I think the part of it was just the timing.

There's only so many hours and the Constitutional amendments came in really on the last day or the last week going through a committee.

And I think that those were really good proposals that just the way that the session played out, were not able to cross the finish line.

Now, this is, my personal opinion is that it's not great to have a long list of stuff for the voter to read on their ballot.

That we have people who come in, they just wanna vote for the president at the top of the ballot.

I think both parties want people to finish their ballot for different reasons and different races.

And if you have, in my opinion, three or four Constitutional amendments for people to stand there and read through, they're like, wait, I didn't know this was gonna be here.

What is this?

I don't know.

And then they just leave it and walk out.

It can be confusing, there's detail.

They don't know the history behind why the thing's on there.

So I think that for this election, it is good strategy to isolate it to, we're gonna focus on the making sure that citizens vote and non-citizens are not voting in North Carolina.

- What does the amendment clarify that isn't already either in law or in the State Constitution as it exists for US citizens voting in North Carolina elections?

- My understanding is, and I've read the Constitution, that the Constitution says that all citizens can vote.

It doesn't say that only citizens can vote.

And so it leaves open the possibility that a court could, on a challenge, could say, under an equal protection.

I don't know if somebody's sued saying, I can't vote.

I'm not a citizen, that deprives me of a right.

That a later court could say, under our North Carolina Constitution, you're right.

It doesn't say you can't vote.

It says that if you're a citizen you can.

So it just kind of closes the door on that.

And we've seen that starting to bubble up around the country where people are being allowed to vote when they're not US citizens.

And I just, I fundamentally disagree with that.

- Senator Bode, I checked the House vote.

It was like 99, 98 to 12.

So easily a bipartisan bill, no matter what you may read from the opposition.

In the Senate, was it a bipartisan effort on this particular amendment?

What's your analysis from the Democratic side?

- Sure, it certainly was.

I mean, I think, the vast majority of Democrats, or I think all Democrats understand that only citizens can and should vote.

I think some people felt like, and I don't mean to speak on behalf of my colleagues, but I think there is an argument out there that this isn't really an issue.

That the Constitution is very clear.

The North Carolina State Constitution is clear and the Federal Constitution is clear, which of course the Federal Constitution supersedes the State Constitution.

Is very clear that only citizens in North Carolina can vote.

And so I think that some of my Democratic colleagues did not want to endorse this idea that there are non-citizens out there voting and fan those flames and amplify the Fox News megaphone that is telling people that non-citizens are voting left and right all over the country, because that's just not true.

And so, I was very clear, I voted for it.

I think we could have been spending our time doing other things, more productive things.

I certainly would've loved to have seen the repeal of the literacy test in the State Constitution be taken out.

That's something that the House voted on, I think is long overdue.

But unfortunately that was not taken up by the Senate.

But I think that would've been a really good thing if we were gonna change our Constitution, that we make it very clear that we no longer have a literacy test in our State Constitution.

- Billy, for transparency purposes, what do you think of as a journalist and as a citizen, as a good timeline?

If lawmakers wanna do anything with our State Constitution and ask you to vote on it, how long do we need to fully inform ourselves or to be informed as a citizenry when they say, hey, add this amendment, or at least determine it?

It's harder to reach people with information.

I think that we think there's so many sources of information right now.

- [Kelly] There are though.

- Why would it be harder?

But I think it's harder to reach people with good information.

I think that, months at least for that information to get to the voters, and for them to make an educated decision.

I agree with the senator that I can imagine going to the polling place, and looking at your ballot and go, that's a lot of stuff on the ballot.

But, I will say that I think that this conversation about this constitutional amendment is important because we're talking about what is on the ballot, but it's also worth talking about what isn't on the ballot.

And I bring this up often.

We are in a state that hasn't had a statewide school bond in decades.

And we have schools across the state that have been asking for a referendum to take up a bond so that we can do something about aging schools.

And this is a huge problem in rural areas.

- There've been local bond referenda, right?

- It's true, it is true that there have been local, but if you get to those rural districts where the tax base is really thin, it's not the same thing.

They don't have the tax base to support this.

It's impacting rural schools much more than it is urban schools, and the studies show that if you go to a school that's failing structurally, it does impact your education.

So I think that it's worth talking about what's not on the ballot.

That's a thing that schools have been asking for for decades, and billions of dollars in unmet construction needs in this state.

And instead we're talking about something that, as the Senator said, it's very clear that non-citizens can't vote.

- Hey, 2026 for you, general assembly, Billy Ball, what do you think?

- Not ever.

- Colin, there's a lot, if you make a long ballot, a stressful ballot, let's face it already longer with constitutional referendum options and I've seen those ballots and they can be pretty hard.

You can vote aye for something to remove something and your yes vote's a no and your no vote's a yes.

Is it cool that the Republicans said, "Hold on, let's stick with what we can get across."

- Yeah, and to be fair, either chamber between the two, they probably voted on five different constitutional amendments yesterday, but only one made it across the finish line with both chambers because it is a really hard threshold in the state to get something on the ballot.

It takes a three fifths majority in both chambers.

There's no citizen-initiated petition process in North Carolina.

So you have to have a pretty large amount of support to get on the ballot to start with.

But then yeah, if you'd passed all five or six and there's still talk that they could bring these back up in July or August when they come back, that's a lot of questions for voters to consider.

And the language on the ballot usually is very small.

It's maybe a sentence or two explaining it.

So if you're standing there at the polling place trying to figure out what this does and you didn't research it in advance, you might be out of luck.

- Senator Galey, when it came to the referenda and these bills coming in the last week, is that a leadership decision to cram all that?

Or did someone go rogue and go, "I'm filing this, I wanna talk about it right now at the last second" and then leadership goes, "Oh wait a minute, stop."

Or how does that work?

Because everyone's saying we need a little bit of time to read.

- Well, to be honest with you, I don't know, I'm not in the room when those decisions are being made.

I think that Senator Overcash filed his constitutional amendment really early at the beginning of the session.

There's just been an ebb and flow of bills at the general assembly.

The Senate has passed a lot of good bills that have sat in House rules for a long time and things seem to get held up as part of a trade over budget provisions.

I don't really know, but I would like to go back to one thing that a friend Billy said about the school capital is that we have lottery funds are designated for school capital now.

They go into a special designated school capital fund.

And the legislature I believe has set aside grant funds that are channeled through DPI for school building.

So it's not that the legislature is just ignored those or the Republicans have ignored those issues because you're right.

I was a former county commissioner in Alamance County, and school construction continues to be, and maintenance and so forth continues to be an issue.

But I know that Alamance County has received hundreds of thousands of dollars for maintenance and construction through the lottery fund and through other things.

And also the constitutional amendments have to go by a three fifths vote of the body, not just to the members present.

So I think it's even harder than overwriting a veto.

I think of veto is three fifths of voters-- - And you had a lot of members absent in the House this week.

So without bipartisan support like you had with the non-citizen voting amendment, it was hard to get any of those across the finish line.

- That's a key point to bring up at the end of this segment.

Senator Bode, let's talk about the overrides of Governor Roy Cooper's vetoes.

I wanna focus on a couple of them.

One would ban public mask wearing while committing any crime in our state.

You can't block traffic as a form of political protest, that's been overridden.

But to your point about you brought up campaign finance, the mask ban relaxes campaign finance laws so state Republicans can collect more money from outside.

They say "You Democrats are doing the same thing."

It's just has they have not been allowed to do it in the GOP.

That's what I have heard from leadership.

And also the override would rewrite juvenile justice law so minors charged with certain serious crimes can immediately be pushed into the adult system without going to juvenile court where they would be pushed into the adult system.

Your take on the, we can talk about philosophy of.

- Veto overrides, or we could talk about a mass ban that contains campaign finance reforms, your choice.

- Sure, wow!

Thanks, I appreciate that, love choices.

- [Kelly McCullen] Got a whole menu of options here.

- Yeah, lots of options.

So I just wanna be very clear, I unequivocally believe that campaign finance reform is not a democratic issue, or a Republican issue.

I think, I know Billy mentioned, he thinks that gerrymandering is one of the biggest threats to democracy here in North Carolina.

I wholeheartedly agree, but I think part and parcel with that, I think, campaign finance has gotten entirely out of control.

Ted Budd's campaign raised, I think in total around, or his campaign rather cost about $88 million in 2022.

82% of that money did not come from his campaign committee.

So $72 million came from other groups, not his campaign.

And that money is unaccountable.

We don't know where that money is coming from.

And I think that it is so poisonous to democracy when we have these massive amounts of money flowing into our state and we don't know where it's coming from.

And I say that as someone, who ran in one of the most expensive state senate races, this state has ever seen, I think enough is enough.

It has gotten wildly out of control.

And I really wish, if we wanted to talk about leveling the playing field, I think we really need to talk about getting very serious about campaign finance reform.

- Senator Galey?

- I would love to have some campaign finance reform.

I think that the Democrats have been pouring money in from out of state for years.

I remember when Ricky Hurtado ran against Steve Ross in the House District in Alamance County in 2022, I think it was.

I've been looking at Ricky Hurtado's campaign finance report, he had a thousand dollars from Nancy Pelosi from California had come into him.

I mean, the money that pours in from out of state for the Democrats is crazy.

And I'm out there, scrambling around a hundred bucks at a time, trying to cobble it together through my district and it's tough.

So yes, if the Democrats want to have a initiative where we restrict or find some way to turn off the ActBlue faucet or fire hydrant, then I think that would be great.

- Yeah and again, like I don't think this is a Democrat or Republican issue.

I think this is a really serious issue for democracy.

So, I mean, I will say, like I had to raise a lot of money for my campaign too and I totally get that.

But I think it's less about Republican and Democrat and it's more about this just tidal wave of cash that's flowing into our state.

- Billy, about 30 seconds, this show is almost over.

Well, it's only dark, evil money when it's being used to attack you.

[everyone laughing] It's great money if it's supporting you.

However, Billy, your thoughts on- - I think- - These overrides.

- I think one thing that I always try to do, is cut through what politicians are saying to get what they're doing.

And I think in this case, what this bill is about is making up a shortfall for Mark Robinson's fundraising against Josh Stein.

It's changing the rules to help Mark Robinson raise some more money to compete in this election.

I would love it if, I think Republicans and Democrats both say, they're comfortable with campaign finance decline or reform.

But I think that we need to actually see it happen and not just talk.

- Yeah, Colin last word, money does talk in these campaigns.

And if you're a candidate, you have to want that money coming in.

- You have to want that.

And sometimes, people who wanna give it to you wanna be anonymous.

And that's why it's really hard as a reporter to track down this.

It's almost like detective work.

- How hard is it, by the way?

'Cause I mean, ordinary citizens can do it, but you're paid to do it.

- Yeah and even though, then I'm having to sort through different database, different disclosure forms at the state and federal level to try to track down where is this money coming from.

And sometimes I get an answer, sometimes I don't.

- There you go.

Well, hope you guys have a great weekend.

Happy 4th of July as we look a week ahead or a weekend ahead.

Billy, thank you, senator, senator and Colin, thank you very much.

More importantly, thank you for watching this program "State Lines".

Email your thoughts and opinions to our email address.

Easy to remember, easy to type, statelines@pbsnc.org.

We'll read every email.

Happy 4th of July to you as we head into a long week.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thank you for watching and we'll see you next time.

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