- [Announcer] State Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs speaks following her swearing in.

The house holds open meetings as it crafts the State Budget Plan and the many ideas that might improve our DMV.

This is State Lines.

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[gentle music] ♪ - Hello, I'm Kelly McCullen.

Welcome back to State Lines.

Joining me today for this week's conversation, Skye David of New Frame Incorporated and Co-host of the Do Politics Better Podcast.

Senator Natalie Murdock of Chatham and Durham Counties, is joined by representative Allen Chesser of Nash County, representing the Legislature this weekend.

And Political Strategist of Capitol Communications, Paul Schumaker.

Hello everybody.

- Hey, how are you?

- Well, you know, I thought we would be talking house budget, but I guess one of the bigger issues of the state came out of the courts where Democratic Associate Supreme Court Justice for North Carolina, Allison Riggs was sworn in this week.

This week, she released a video to North Carolinians announcing she's back on the Bench.

Here's more.

- Hi, I'm Justice Allison Riggs.

I was just sworn in again as an associate justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court.

It is my great honor to continue serving the people of this state.

And my promise to you is this, I will fight for every North Carolinian regardless of who they voted for.

I will defend all North Carolinians regardless of political affiliation.

I will uphold the rule of law, the Constitution and follow my solemn oath without fear or favor, and I will stand up for your rights and freedoms.

- Directly to the, I guess, North Carolinians now, I wouldn't say voters, but a Supreme Court Justice is staying in the limelight.

She won and usually they fade back into the sunset and go to work.

Not this week.

- Yeah, I think I speak for all North Carolinians when saying, thank goodness this is over.

Moving on to a process where maybe we don't even remember her name, might be nice for her and all of us at this point.

- Hmm.

Senator Murdock and Allison Riggs back on it is over, but we're only, what?

A year and a half or so away from more action regarding the State Supreme Court.

- [Senator Murdock] Yes.

- You say that with such energy?

- Yes, because I mean, just six long months and I honestly don't wanna skip over for one, I don't know why.

Took six months when Justice Beasley lost who I love dearly.

She lost by 400 some of my votes and she, you know, said, "Hey, I didn't win.

I'm gonna move on."

And so the fact that there's this drag out for six months and my fear is the damage is already done of folks being fearful that their votes will be challenged.

I was actually with a group of 300 seniors just this week, a number of them, their names were listed on that Griffin list.

So the damage has been done, but I'm glad that Democracy won.

North Carolinians won and also have to thank the people.

They were loud, they were showing up at those appeals, going to all the court proceedings and they did not let it go.

And I'm glad that they didn't.

Had they been quiet and media, had they not continued to pay attention to this, who knows, we may not have seen this result, but I am glad that she is back on the Bench.

- Representative Chesser, how did this go from Riggs versus Griffin when Griffin was the one actually challenging the Board of Elections, not necessarily out Riggs directly?

- Yeah, so I think one, I'm glad to have finality as well as everybody else on the panel, I believe, but I would just slightly push back on this.

It's not necessarily the people who changed anything, it's the court process played out the way that it's designed.

to play out.

Law and order won at the end of the day.

So I think there is more finality, more security in our elections, and people should trust our elections process even more now because they got to watch it play out publicly.

Well we've never really seen something like this before.

So now you get to see the process, how it's designed, how it works.

And at the end of the day, both candidates agreed to the final result and moved on.

- Has anything been fixed with our state elections independent of a court saying, "This race is over," that just ends the race.

Does it answer the questions surrounding how the Board of Elections handles ballots?

- Well, I think it does.

I think that if you actually look at the court ruling, and I think colleague to my right here is gonna talk about that a little bit probably, the courts did recognize some deficiencies, but they said moving forward, these should be addressed, and essentially grandfathered in the previous election.

And that was the ultimate ruling of the court was we're not gonna punish voters looking back, but moving forward, we have some processes that need to be changed.

- Paul, you were tied in with the Griffin campaign a bit, right?

- Absolutely.

- So for Jefferson Griffin, he's now back on the Court of Appeals.

What happens for 2026, because I would think he'd have a fire in his belly to come back because it was a 700 vote race.

He was popular with millions of North Carolina voters.

Didn't win this one, but what's the future like?

- Well, I'm gonna take a little bit different path here because first of all, I don't see this as being over, I just see this as being the beginning, and we're gonna be looking into a new era.

And keep in mind, I've got a long footprint here on judicial races in North Carolina.

The 2024 cycle and what took place in the aftermath of that, you're absolutely right.

It was a challenge between the Griffin campaign and the State Board of Elections.

You made reference to the Griffin list.

It was the Griffin list because the State Board of Elections refused to comply and provide the data that they by law are supposed to apply.

That's why you had the court proceedings, you had these interferences that came forth on that.

Importantly is is that you saw the same thing play out in 2020 with State Board of Elections.

So one of the aftermaths here, there's winners and losers.

You no longer have a governor that has control of the State Board of Elections.

That has been moved, that has been shifted, that has been part of the writing of the process because of the underpinning of the actions of the State Board have undermined the confidence in the process.

So the judicial proceedings were part about reestablishing that process.

The online video or the message from Justice Griffin, Riggs.

It's interesting because in the aftermath, there were multiple complaints about the judicial code of conduct being violated.

You're gonna see a First Amendment challenge to that most likely coming from her because the statements made during that campaign.

You're gonna probably see her prevail in that in federal court when that constitutional challenge becomes, because it's taking place in other states.

And so the aftermath really what took place in 2024 is gonna have a profound impact on how these campaigns are executed in '26 and in '28 when the majority is going to be at stake.

And so what you're gonna see are judicial races that are gonna mirror more like a US Senate or a race for governor where candidates are gonna be stating the other candidates' implied position on cases.

You're gonna see the whole process thrown out.

So this has turned everything upside down.

And so to me, I see this as the beginning of a new day in North Carolina.

I don't see as the ending of anything, I see it as a new pathway, one with the way our elections are gonna be executed, the way our ballots are gonna be counted, the way voter ID is gonna be handled even with overseas absentee ballots, all that's gonna now be on the table.

You're not gonna have the trying to move the goal posts because of election when something comes up in advance, which is what the State Board did in 2020, they tried to do it again in 2024.

So that goalpost is going to be stationary.

That's what the court said to keep it stationary, number one.

Number two is you're gonna see a completely different mantra of political judicial races.

They are going to mirror more races like state legislator, and it's going to elevate actually, I think it's a good process because the voters are gonna have a more informed knowledge of who they're actually voting for when it comes to these judicial races.

- State House budget subcommittees were busy this week crafting their vision of next year's North Carolina.

It's a potential budget bill, the Senate's budget will be compared with a final House plan that will kick off budget negotiations in just a few weeks.

That's where the real action will be, folks.

It seems Senate Republicans were a bit more guarded with their budget process as they were writing their budget, but the House has been holding some live hearings weeks before releasing their final budget proposal.

Boy, Paul, there's a tale of two styles here.

Senators say, I didn't see a budget until it popped out.

And then in the House, I can watch the subcommittees.

How does that play with writing a budget?

When is transparency good?

When is it better to keep your cards close to your vest?

- Well, you got transparent, a little bit more transparency on the House side.

That's always good for the process.

I would always argue on the side of transparency.

At the same time you had the Senate doing the origination of that.

You have a governor that's made a budget that's not necessarily done through a transparent process.

That's not a slam on him.

That's the reality of executing and doing the job.

The Senate had a job they needed to do.

The House is doing a little bit more due diligence.

Reality is, at the end of the day, you're probably gonna find both chambers and we can have the representative here address that, but they're within 90% of where they need to be right now.

You're gonna see the House wanting to do more as it relates to teachers' pay and a few other items.

But the real factor here, and the real elephant in the room, so to speak, is gonna be these triggers.

And what's gonna take place when it comes to spending is tax cuts.

'Cause the Senate's gonna be very disciplined on wanting to see tax cuts implemented and executed.

And I think that's something that quite frankly, that House and Senate Republicans are gonna agree on at the end of the day, because our economy is turning over and over and over and creating new wealth and new jobs because of the tax cuts.

And the physical discipline of this Republican majority is executed in the legislature.

- Representative Chesser, he may be right.

90% of the House and Senate budget plans would be in agreement.

But if I drive my car across a bridge that's 90% complete, I still wound up in, if we don't wind up in the river.

So how big is that 10%?

- I think, well, I mean, that's where the magic happens.

And so we're gonna lock.

- [Kelly] Is it magic?

- Yeah, we're gonna lock our ourselves in the room for the next few weeks and with our Senate counterparts, we're gonna get to know them quite well.

And this is the part that I enjoy the most, which is where we get to sit down and negotiate with the other chamber and figure out what path we wanna pursue for the people of North Carolina.

And I think Monday there'll be some more details that come out about the House budget.

But I think the people will see that in that 10%, there are varying tracks of, I won't say priorities, but essentially what direction we're gonna be heading in.

And transparency is a big part of what the House is pushing right now.

What you won't find in the House budget is Helene recovery, because we're running that as a separate bill.

You will find some money that gets moved to help fund Helene recovery but we're not conflating the two issues.

We want one to be standing alone on its own.

And I think my Senate counterpart would say, 'cause sometimes you can put things in there that creates pressure for people to vote on things.

- [Natalie] Yes.

- And so we don't want Helene to be that whipping post.

We want that to be a standalone issue that people can pursue.

- So in other words, you don't want voters to look at something they like being cut outta the state budget because budget writers are saying, oh, it's because of Helene.

So you're blaming Helene for why you lose something that's popular with you.

- We within the House found a way that we think we found a sound fiscally conservative budget that still preserves some tax cuts and gets pay raises for state employees.

Like I said, the numbers will be out Monday, but I think we found a way to get our cake and eat it too, I think.

- Senator Murdock.

- Yes.

- Republicans can't give Democrats anything in a victory in a budget.

However, I know they're influential Democrats.

- [Natalie] Yeah.

- How are you feeling about how this is going, because can you get what you need for your constituents?

Even if at the press conference they don't credit Natalie Murdock with this great fiscal victory.

- Yes.

Yeah, actually just this week or was it?

Yeah, it was this week.

The week's run together this time of the session.

On our side of the aisle, we actually had a bill funeral because 707 bills proposed by Democrats in the House and the Senate died in committee.

As we know during crossover, you say a bill has died.

So we kind of took it a step further by having a bill funeral.

- All of them great bills, I'm presuming.

- Phenomenal ideas.

- Yeah, okay.

- But, with that, to your point, particularly in the Senate, and thank goodness I knew that before.

I've even joined the chamber from doing behind the scenes work for some years before becoming a senator, you can share your ideas with your colleagues in the majority, and they can end up in bills, they can end up in amendments, they can end up in the budget quietly every session, I have had the ability to do that.

And we'll share.

I'm thrilled representing Duke University.

That children's hospital is gonna receive some $300 million from the state proposal.

North Carolina Central University is gonna get a lot of the funding that it needs.

But in regards to transparency, we really can do much better.

You have other states that do hearings statewide in various areas.

I mean, we are talking 32 billion plus a year for the biennium.

So, we should have a more open, transparent process.

And that's just not members of the public, even members.

You know, all majority members are also not created equal, so they are not always included in that.

So, we work with who we work with that we know has a seat at the table.

They're majority members every session, work with them on specific issues, but more transparency definitely is needed.

But, I am encouraged by some of the changes I have seen in the House budget.

I know we're gonna talk about DMV later, but providing those 61 positions would be huge.

We've got to do better with teachers.

We're last in the Southeast when it comes to starting teacher pay, even West Virginia's doing better than us.

And we really need to look at those teacher raises as well.

- I love how they compare things.

- Just wait till Monday, you know.

Wait till Monday.

- Wait till Monday.

We'll see what's on Monday.

They compare, at least we're not West, but we are West Virginia.

- We are worse than West Virginia and Mississippi and Alabama for starting teacher pay.

- Alright, for those of us outside the budget writing room, I've heard rumors that that 10% that Alan and Paul say is that's all they got tor each, I'm hearing a budget could be at risk.

That there may not be a deal, that it could be that profound.

- I have heard that too.

And in both the House and the Senate budget, you didn't have any special projects, you know, your hometown park, or a dog park, or whatever you needed in your district.

And so those are the things that have not even come into play yet.

So, quite a lot still left to go.

- [Kelly] All right.

- And quickly on the tax cuts, support targeted tax cuts, everyone needs that tax relief.

But I'm hopeful that House colleagues will say if we just leave those cuts where they are, that will result in a lot of new revenue for the state.

Every time we reduce a personal income tax by half a percent, that is a minimum of $2 billion.

With the uncertainty in federal funding, particularly when it comes to Medicaid, DHHS at the state level receives over 70% of their budget from the federal government.

Medicaid expansion is supported by 90% from the federal government.

We would have a lot more wiggle room if we just left the tax cuts where they were to have more revenue for our state.

- Stay tuned with the Medicaid discussion.

I've got to save some topics for future shows.

That would be a tremendous show.

Could you imagine what this does with the budget if the Trump cuts go through?

- We can imagine.

$2.5 billion hole.

- Let's talk about the UNC Board of Governors.

Speaking of the Trump administration, those board of governors trying to handle campus efforts to comply with federal anti-DEI mandates to save their federal funding for all those campuses that Trump executive order canceled funding for universities that don't or won't comply with diversity, equity and inclusion elimination rules.

The UNC System issued a February ruling, saying that System students would no longer be required to take DEI courses.

But, some college classes could still run afoul of Trump mandates if their named just right, or if they link too closely to DEI concepts, unless granted a waiver.

This is a broad look.

There's no individual bill out there.

From your perspective, dealing with federal and state leaders, how has the UNC System handling the DEI issue to save millions of dollars for research?

- Yes, too.

Remind folks how we got here.

It really started with that Supreme Court case that struck down affirmative action and then with the Trump administration, they've been very heavy-handed in dismantling everything DEI with an Executive Order.

So, understandably, universities are concerned.

I do think it was strategic that the Trump administration and the Department of Education first called out private institutions, such as Harvard and Columbia, to signal to public institutions that, "If we will do this to a Harvard or a Columbia, imagine what they would do to a UNC-Chapel Hill," where I'm a proud alum, "Or NC State."

So, understandably, public institutions are very concerned.

So I do think there is a balance of working to comply with the Executive Order, that is not law, we are still fighting that in court.

So I do wanna remind folks we're not there quite yet.

There is a way for them to work with their legal counsel to minimize risk and to still champion diversity, particularly when it comes to economic backgrounds, UNC has done a lot of work to say, "What about scholarships for those that are first generation, who no one's gone to college before, that don't make a lot of money, if your household income is lower," I think maybe than 80,000 or so, they still wanna have programs to help them get in school.

So, universities will continue to get more and more creative because it's about education at the end of the day.

You are a better student and human being by hearing various perspectives from various folks, not only across the state, but from across the nation, and we'll continue to see them to do that, because it really is the student experience that you wanna preserve at the end of the day.

- Representative Chesser, one thing I've noticed, lawmakers haven't really stepped in on UNC Board of Governor actions.

They seem to be actually ahead of Republican majorities in the House and Senate with policy changes.

- Yeah, so I mean, one of the things that my colleague pointed out was that UNC systems are being proactive in this.

They're taking action really before they're required to, and, as she said, to limit their liability, but to be compliant with it, in case it does come down, and I think that's a positive step.

It's important to annotate here that this doesn't stop the ability for them to provide these courses, just mandate these courses.

And so, what you can really do here is free students up to choose which path they wanna take, and what voices they want to hear from, instead of mandating what voices they're going to hear during their education journey.

And I think this is a positive step in the right direction to provide that freedom to the student to choose what they want to hear.

And, obviously, there'll still be some required courses for required tracks, and there should be, but I think it is a step towards educational freedom.

- And in addition to the courses too, funding, they're just concerned about their funding.

Duke and UNC alone, annually draw down over a billion dollars in NIH funding.

- Yeah.

- And so, no one wants to be slapped on the hand and lose their funding at this critical time.

- Lawmakers clearly engaged on this issue, but Donald Trump promised, "We'd get rid of DEI if you elect me," and they elected him, America elected him easily.

So what do we make of this?

It's not a surprise, or at least I wouldn't think it would be.

- Well, a couple things there.

First of all, as a matter of fact, we did some focus groups earlier on this year, and a lot of the narrative coming out of the focus groups, we actually have a President who's doing what he said he was gonna do.

That's not unusual from that standpoint.

Let's talk about the UNC system and look at the DEI, all of that.

That sort of represent the ideological divide in American politics.

Republicans are very much united on that side of it, unaffiliates more aligned with Republicans on that.

It's problematic politics for Democrats, but you look at the UNC system, no one should be surprised at what the UNC system is doing.

You've got 14 years now where you had Republicans in the House and the Senate pointing two-thirds of that board.

So you actually got... You know, the legislature doesn't need to enact, this process is playing out.

The legislature's responsible for putting members on that board, those members have already said, "Okay, we're gonna deal with this in advance," they're doing it from a philosophical standpoint, just like the legislature would interject there, just like people on the other side of the aisle would interject from their perspective.

So they're actually being proactive here.

So, right here, one... - I look at North Carolina, I go back to what's taken place just on judicial races, I've looked at what's taken place in legislative process, looked at the budgetary process.

Actually North Carolina should be a model that all be upheld for the rest of the country in how our state government is now functioning and operating, even with Democrats controlling the Governor's Mansion.

We've actually got a good working bipartisan effort here in meeting the needs of the people, and that's moving forward.

The UNC system's doing the same thing.

- On this DEI issue in North Carolina, is there anything Republicans could do to overstep on this issue in the elimination of it from colleges, campuses, and state agencies, or is it a safe issue for them?

- Well, it's a pretty safe issue for 'em.

What Democrats are gonna try to do is state it as an overstep.

The best thing for the Republicans to do is go ahead and execute it, let Democrats go ahead and argue.

Right now, it's that Republicans are playing to two-thirds of the voters and Democrats are playing to one-third of voters, and I'd just as soon let them continue to play that path.

- Yeah, and I think there is the ability for Republicans to overstep because what we've already seen when it comes to funding, just this week, the state lost a digital equity grant of $22 million.

It was already appropriated to the state.

What has happened is, and even in the polling, how do you define DEI?

When you share with folks, these equity programs help the disabled, they help veterans, they help women, they help rural communities.

The $90 million that's at stake for education funding, that was for teachers to teach in rural communities.

DEI does not equate to rural to a lot of people, so it really is a matter of how you define it.

And these are dollars that we deserve to have.

There are federal taxpayer dollars that we want to come back to this state.

So voters are very concerned about us losing millions of dollars in funding as a result of this.

- Skye, a lot of emotional appeal there.

DEI in itself may be very, very unpopular with moderates and Republicans, and then you ask the individual story.

The rural grant is now gone because of this.

What's your sense of how people... Can they be persuaded to change their mind?

- I think people have their minds set on this.

However, to someone's point earlier, the UNC system had already done this last year, and did people know that the UNC system had already eliminated DEI?

Probably not.

So if you don't know that it's happening, can you be moved?

- Yeah, yeah, y'know, I think people are ready for some new issues too.

Kind of things sound...

I think they're gone, and then here comes a big deal and we have to revisit it.

So we'll see how this plays out.

Final topic tonight, some legislators and leaders have been promising that they're looking at Division of Motor Vehicles reforms.

The State Auditor says he's watching the DMV top to bottom.

There's been a few bills to lessen the burden for our drivers who must go sit outside the office, like allowing deployed military personnel to easily renew from remote locations.

This week an idea popped up that would allow a two-year break for expiring driver's license.

State budget writers for the House proposed hiring, I've seen 61, I've also seen 84, depending on the article that I read, additional driver's license examiners next year.

And then "News and Observer", Dawn Vaughn, our friend of this show, and her team report there hasn't been an increase in DMV examiners hired since 2003, and only three new driver's license offices has been opened in that time.

State's population grew by 2.6 million residents.

Should we quit hitting DMV over the head with a hammer when there's only been three offices and no hires and 2.5 million new residents joined the state?

- No, I think... We solved a problem when we've got new leadership now, and so we're on a new track now.

So we stopped hitting DMV over the head for that reason, not because of the failures that existed over the last 20 years don't exist anymore.

It's still a legitimate concern.

But we're working together in a bipartisan way to try to solve these issues.

I will tell you the real number is 61.

- 61?

- Yeah, we gaveled that out of the Transportation Committee, which I chair, yesterday.

And so the real number is 61.

We offered it to the Secretary.

He said he needed 61 new positions.

We've created the flexibility for him to do that over the next two years.

And in addition to that, we're adding additional flexibility for him to do the same thing in the call center for DMV as well.

- Is the secretary or asking for 61 hires because he thinks that's what he can get from a Republican budget, or what is really needed in this state?

- Oh, we asked him, he said 61, so that's what we gave him.

So I don't know what his motivation is.

That's what he said he needed, so that's what we gave him.

- Fair enough.

But I had to ask that question.

'Cause, you know, it's a budget game, Paul.

Republicans like a nice running DMV and if we're gonna be dodging everything, I mean, you think Republican conservatives would, think they'd approve of Republican budget writers, you know, goosing the DMV, get some more driver's license examiners in there?

I don't know.

- I got a 40 year history in in North Carolina politics, and 40 years ago we were talking about an ineffective DMV that was not getting the job done.

[everyone laughing] And quite frankly, it's more important for the governor to get DMV moving because his picture's the one that's on the wall when you walk in.

And DMV can be a symbol of government efficiency or a symbol of government inefficiency.

And right now it's inefficiency.

- [Allen] Inefficiency.

- And regardless of that, if the legislature policies fix it, Josh Stein's gonna take credit for it and he'll run on it.

And that's how DMV works.

But DMV is always at the forefront because of everybody.

- Well- - And has been for four years.

- When the governorship brag about the DMV.

And I'm under two minutes.

Skye, very quickly on DMV.

We're all the same when it comes to that.

- Yeah.

What's interesting is that House Bill that you talked about that pauses it for two years.

I listened to the House rules discussion on that and it was really interesting.

You wouldn't have to update your card, but let's say you went to another state, they pull you over- - You're getting pulled.

- And someone asked that question and they said, "What would you do?"

And they said, "You go to court and tell them that."

And you think, "Hmm, I don't know if that's the best solution."

- Save some extra money for an extra plane ticket back to Illinois.

Last word to you.

- Yeah, to jump in, 'cause we shouldn't skip over.

I'm glad you mentioned the court.

So I have been talking with a number of district attorneys about this, and they are seeing more and more cases of people being pulled over because their license has been expired.

So it really, really is an issue of folks that can end up in a lot of legal trouble when it's not their fault.

We actually propose another solution of allowing folks to automatically renew online two times back to back.

So I do think there are some other solutions that we can look at, but I am thankful that the House has provided more actual bodies to process these licenses.

- Excellent discussion, gang.

We are down to our final 10 seconds.

Thank you for being on.

Email me at statelines@pbsnc.org.

I appreciate you.

We'll see you next time.

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