- [Narrator 1] Senate Republican leaders say a budget deal is in peril.

As the house GOP is not supporting casino legalization, and the Democrats have a new candidate in the gubernatorial primary.

This is State Lines.

- [Narrator 2] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Yeah.

Welcome to State Lines.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, Mitch Kokai of the John Locke Foundation, a representative, Zack Hawkins of Durham County debuts on State Lines.

Welcome, sir.

- Thank you for having me.

- Thanks for trusting this exalted panel with your presence.

- Oh you're incredible people.

- Well, we got a lot to talk about.

On the end, Lucille Sherman of Axios Raleigh, a good friend to PBS North Carolina, and she does a mighty fine job with her daily newsletter.

Welcome, Lucille.

We ready to talk about the budget?

A lot of fun.

- Yeah.

- House of Budget Senate negotiation, wait, House of Senate Budget negotiations are at an impasse, happened this week.

House speaker Tim Moore is telling reporters he does not have enough Republican votes to support a budget bill that would also legalize casinos.

Over in the Senate, President Pro Tem, Phil Berger, says House leaders should, quote, "Keep their word on casinos and pass the budget bill."

That does include casino legalization.

Governor Cooper has stepped in to recommend removing casinos from the budget bill so a spending plan can pass.

The new budget year, by the way, was supposed to start on July 1st.

Mitch, okay, one month delay, everything stays contained, two months after, everything stays contained, September and Labor Day hits and it's getting feisty in the House and in the Senate.

- And I think part of that is because a lot of us had an expectation that there would be a final deal this week.

Things had been going on and on and on, but people had pretty much settled on, "Okay, this particular week.

That week of September 11th, they're gonna have a budget, it's gonna be voted on, everyone had planned to come back to Raleigh to deal with that."

And then another stag, and you alluded to it, the fact that at the highest levels in the House and Senate, the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate have this dispute about whether you're gonna have casinos in the budget or not, and disagreement about what their agreement had been.

Senator Berger saying that House speaker Tim Moore had said that he would put casinos in the budget if he could get a majority of Republicans to go along with it.

And then it came out later that Speaker Moore says, "No, I actually want to have 61 of the 72 house Republicans support it to put the casinos in."

When that news got back to Berger, he said that wasn't just moving the goalpost, it was moving it to a different stadium.

And so now- - What?

Well, was it?

Was it the equivalent of that?

And rhetorically.

- If that was the promise that had been made.

That, "Hey, if we get 37 of our 72 Republicans to go along with it, we'll put it in the budget."

And then he changed it, then that is moving the goalpost in a substantial way.

But really what you're seeing is that both sides are just angry about not being able to get the other side to come to their view on this.

And we saw that play out in another way too, beyond Moore and Berger having their dispute.

Then we saw a number of the House Republicans decide, "Hey, we're not even gonna show up.

We're just gonna stay home and protest in that way."

And I think that was basically from the ones who would be in favor of the casinos, mad at the ones who were in the numbers of maybe 30, who don't want casinos in the budget.

And meanwhile, I'm guessing that although they're concerned that there's no budget, representative Hawkins, and his colleagues are probably sitting back having some popcorn, watching and having some fun.

- [laughs] And that's the only thing that we actually can do at this point is, is watch the show.

We showed up on Tuesday thinking that we were gonna vote on a budget, or at least veto overrides.

And we were told that we were done for the week.

And so I could've used that time a lot differently.

But it's good to see my colleagues.

One of the things that I will say about the casinos is it showed up sort of last minute.

It didn't seem like this was something before June 30th that was really on the table.

And then just as time has ticked on, it really seemed like it became more important.

And I guess people want casinos, which is fine, but it shouldn't hold up the budget process.

And what I think is and what I hear in the district, and across North Carolina is that when you're thinking about not having a budget almost soon to be 90 days, there are people that are waiting on hiring, there are people who are waiting to expand Medicaid, and get access to healthcare.

And so you really, you have to think about, not to give them free advice, but for people like us and people like governor Cooper, let's see if we can take that out and move forward.

Let's think about the tax cuts.

I represent RTP and I don't know if many are asking for those and we hope that we can- - Corporate tax.

- Corporate income tax.

Yes.

Corporate income tax.

And so we're hoping that something will come, and this impasse will break.

- Lucille, you're there, you're, I mean, they're not talking to each other as much as, now they've gone to you in the Press Corps.

And- - My favorite part.

- We know what happens then.

From your perspective, is it exactly as messy now and it's gone public as readers would think it would be?

I mean, it's, "He said, he said."

- Yeah, it's pretty messy.

I was really surprised listening to Berger talk to reporters on Tuesday, just how upset he was.

I haven't heard him that upset.

I've been here covering the legislature for three and a half years, and I don't think I've ever heard him that upset.

I know that there have been plenty of disagreements between the House and Senate.

I think it happens way more than people realize, but I was really surprised at Berger's willingness to sort of call out the House for, yeah, not upholding it's commitments like he said.

One thing though that's really interesting to me is the fact that when you think about it, it's a minority of House Republicans that are holding up the budget.

So we're not talking about, the majority of House Republicans not wanting casinos in the budget, and so things have stalled between the House and Senate.

We're talking about a small group, or a smaller group of people in the House Republican Caucus.

And that's what's so interesting to me.

One representative said to me this week, "This is not how Democracy in America works that a minority of people can hold something up or make the decision."

And so that's just what's been I feel like really raising temperatures is that the minority is really deciding what's happening at this point.

- That's right.

- And one other interesting thing about this is that this exposes one of the problems that we've had with the budget process.

And this is something that isn't something that only Republicans have done.

Democrats have done it too in the past when they were in control.

But most people think of a budget and they think, "Okay, we're gonna spend a million dollars on this.

"We're gonna spend $500,000 on this."

You all agree on the numbers and it passes.

But the budget has so many things within it that aren't really just budget items.

Representative Hawkins just said, "We didn't really know anything about this casino proposal "until very late in the game."

And you would think that if this was a major policy change, it might be the type of thing that someone would file a bill about and people could see the bill and go, "Oh, casinos, I hadn't thought about that," and start to get your ideas about whether you think it's a good idea, bad idea, including some of the details.

You have the idea that perhaps three of these casinos are going to be run by the same company.

And why is it that way?

Why not have people competing and put it out to the market?

There's gonna be a casino perhaps that will be run by the Lumbee tribe.

Okay, why was that chosen?

How would that operate?

All of this is still not something that has been discussed publicly.

It's only been some leaked documents and then bits and pieces of the discussion coming out in public.

- At the retail level though, nobody in North Carolina is talking about casinos until Danville opens a casino and it's pretty awesome and all the license plates in the parking lot are from North Carolina.

It was overnight and then there was talk of a half million, all this money flowing out of North Carolina.

Why couldn't that make this a priority, Mitch?

It sounds like, you know, some people think it was something sneaky or something quiet, when it really was Danville, Virginia put this in North Carolina's lap.

- Well and I agree with that.

I'll jump in.

I think I've even had people in Durham that said, "I'm hitting the Danville to go gamble."

And so I agree with that.

But the only thing that I will disagree with is we should be bringing in the revenue.

If this is something that the majority of North Carolinians want or at least the members of the House and the Senate want, then let's do it like we did the sports betting bill, right?

I was a prime sponsor on that bill.

And it got debated for two sessions, very heavily.

And this is the equivalent with casinos as bringing the lottery to North Carolina.

And so it's just a major policy change.

And when you talk about the retail level, I think when people hear a budget, teachers think of, you know, teacher raises.

Like, we think of infrastructure.

We just think of the basics to keep state government moving.

People don't necessarily think about something like that.

But it is on the table for sure because of Danville.

And similar to the way that the lottery moved, we do not want revenue to leave North Carolina.

- And one thing we don't want is a repeat of the way that we passed the lottery 'cause those who remember that remember that there was the Senate went home for the year and were told were not coming back.

And then they came back.

Two Republicans weren't there.

That was enough that you got a split vote and Beverly Perdue could cast the tie-breaking vote.

It was kind of a silly situation.

- Representative, what is the problem with the Speaker just coming and crossing the aisle to honestly whip democratic votes for this budget?

There's a lot of this budget that are democratic priorities.

Would your caucus defeat a budget bill that has so much in it that you do support?

- Yeah, that's a good question, you know.

And I think it really boils down to because everybody loves Medicaid expansion.

I mean, all of us have, you know, campaigned on that and we're so glad to see our Republican colleagues sort of come to the table on that.

But when you talk about a voucher program that would decimate public education up to the tune of $500 million, like that's just a hard pill to swallow.

When you talk about corporate income taxes going to zero when they're already 2-1/2%, again, I represent RTP.

We are bringing in jobs and bringing in employers but let's stay that way.

We're number one in the country for doing business twice in a row.

So that means where we are is a really good place.

And I think the corporate entities that are coming to North Carolina want to do their part.

And so it feels kind of unnecessary.

And so I think that, you know, along with a few other things that are on that budget, of course you also have the VLT and casino revenue.

That's potentially a billion dollars pooled together in its maturity.

We could solve a lot of priority problems in North Carolina with that kind of money.

We have no idea where that VLT and that casino resource will go.

It shouldn't just go into the the general fund.

- Yeah, Lucille, tie a ribbon on this topic.

Democrats seem conflicted.

I mean, I heard the representative.

But there's a lot that we don't like but so much we do.

- Well, one thing I really wanna drive home is that we're talking about sort of all these theoretical things that are in the budget.

- That's right.

- But we haven't seen the budget.

- We haven't seen it.

- The three of us.

We haven't seen it.

- And most of the members haven't.

- Most of the members haven't.

The House definitely.

Even House Republicans haven't seen it.

We actually don't know for sure what's in the budget.

And it's really wild that there's sort of this debate going on about it and the general public doesn't really even know what's in it.

But yeah, I'm really interested to see what Democrats do in the House on the budget because I think that's gonna be one thing to keep an eye out for in the coming days.

- Is that one chance the House caucus won't?

They won't take a chance on relying on Democratic votes for any budget.

- My guess is, given where things stand, no.

Especially now that Governor Cooper has signaled that he might veto it, they will need all of the Republican votes they can get.

- There you go.

Well, let's switch gears.

Former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Mike Morgan says he's running for governor.

He made that announcement this week.

In doing so, he'll be squaring off against State Attorney General Josh Stein in the 2024 Democratic Primary.

Former Justice Morgan has a 34-year career on the bench.

He's entering a primary where Josh Stein's campaign is sitting reportedly on just over $8 million in campaign funds, Lucille.

Mr. Morgan, in his press release, said he's running against the status quo and against a trend where a few folks in power are trying to select the people's leaders.

So he's definitely going against, at least as a brand, against the Democratic establishment.

- Yeah, I think that's really interesting.

I was surprised that sort of that was the position he was taking.

One thing I'm really interested in that primary is how will Josh Stein do with Black voters?

And I think this sort of Mike Morgan entering the race sort of presents that question to me.

I don't know that Stein has done as well as Cooper has with Black voters.

And so, that's one thing that I think we'll be talking about a lot in the coming months as the Primary approaches.

- All right, Representative Hawkins, I don't know if you've endorsed, a lot of our 150 state leaders have endorsed Attorney General Stein.

- That's right, that's right.

- So, we have Josh Stein, Law and Order-type Attorney General and a judge.

Sounds a lot like the same type of profile.

- Yeah, sure.

- [Interviewer] What does Mike Morgan bring to this race?

- You know, as you mentioned, 34 years on the bench, he's a popular Associate Justice.

He is someone that continues not only to do good work on the bench, but also to remain, you know, involved in the community.

And you know, and he has the right to run just like anyone else in the Democratic Party to share their views and their values.

You know, and I think the thing for me with it is, it's not so much that, you know, about it's not about the money, it's about the time.

You know, if you look at filing, we file in December, and we have a Primary in March.

Last time I checked, we had 10.5 million people in 100 counties.

And so, it's just, it's a lot to overcome with the timing and with Josh having started so early.

And so, you know, I think it will be an interesting race.

I think he will bring a ton, especially, with his background in being from rural North Carolina.

But I just think that the time and the ability to build infrastructure are just gonna be a challenge.

- Democratic voters in Durham County, literally probably a million of them or hundreds of thousands of them,- - Yes.

- but Mike Morgan enters the race as an African-American candidate with a great political pedigree.

Should Democrats watch how he polls in urban areas and go, hold on a second, let's assess this race?

- Yes, I mean there have to be undecided voters, right?

I mean, and of course, Mike has done probably done the work to find undecided voters and people who haven't made a choice yet.

But you know, and people in Durham are willing to listen, you know, but I think at the end of the day it's, you know, definitely about making sure that, you know, he can't just focus on Durham, right?

You have to look at the other 99.

And I think that, that from an infrastructure perspective it's just gonna present challenges.

But yes, absolutely Durham voters are always open to hear what people are bringing to the table, and especially, how they're trying to move the state forward.

And so, we look forward to hearing from 'em.

- All right, Mitch.

- I think the biggest winner in this decision is the Democratic Party, because it's always helpful to have more than one candidate competing for your nomination, because all of the things that would come out in a general election against the Primary candidate can come out in a Primary.

Republicans are dealing with that same issue now where Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson seems to be the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

And some of the other Republican candidates are now attacking the things that are in his record and what he said.

If there's anything in Josh Stein's past that needs to be exposed, we know that Michael Morgan will have that opportunity to do that.

Stein will have to get his message honed for a general election, while he's waging this Primary campaign.

So, I think it's good news for the Democrats to have a contested Primary.

- Lucille, it's always risky to ask a reporter about their opinion on something, but Mike Morgan entering this race and Josh Stein saying, "Look at the list of 100 legislators."

And legislators proudly saying they support Josh Stein.

How much weight do state legislators carry outside of Raleigh back home in their actual districts?

Are they celebrities at home or are they more famous in Raleigh?

- I think they're more famous in Raleigh.

Not to say that their opinions don't carry any weight, but I do think it's sort of at least an indicator that Stein does definitely have a leg up in terms of infrastructure.

He's been in the race since January.

He has a ton of people behind him and also he's already sort of messaging for the general election.

He's been honing his message for the general election since the day he launched.

So, in addition to sort of having all this time to become more popular and more well known, he's also been Attorney General.

He has a little bit of a leg up on Mike Morgan and you know, having more state legislators can only help.

- All right, let's talk about Governor Roy Cooper's appointment of Appellate Court Judge Allison Riggs.

She will replace, or has replaced Mike Morgan, on the North Carolina Supreme Court.

Justice Riggs is a Democrat.

So, the Supreme Court's Conservative majority is not affected by the appointment.

The Justice says she'll run for election to her new seat in 2024.

As an attorney, Justice Riggs was involved in fighting Republican redistricting and voter identification laws, but she says her prior work will not interfere with future judicial rulings.

Mitch.

- I don't think it will interfere with her judicial rulings.

It will impact the way that she approaches the Constitution, because any lawyer who's ever had to deal with the court will tell you that whatever the law says there are different interpretations of it.

And that's certainly true at the highest level of our State Supreme Court.

To me, there are a couple of interesting things about this.

So, now there are two Democratic members of the State Supreme Court who are old colleagues who used to work together at a leftist center group called the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

Allison Riggs has been described at some places as the protege of Anita Earls, who she's now joining.

And the other interesting thing is, since she moved from the Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court, basically, she had to kind of, I wouldn't say rush, but have to get together her outstanding Appeals Court cases and finish them to join the Supreme Court.

And there were a couple of biggies.

One, she wrote the main opinion in a two one split on the Court of Appeals that said this Safe Child Act that allows the victims of child sex abuse years after the statute of limitations to come back and file lawsuits.

After a trial court had thrown that law out the Appeals Court in a decision written by Allison Riggs says, "No, this law can stand."

It's probably now gonna go back to the State Supreme Court.

And she can't rule on it then, 'cause she's already ruled on it.

But then the other big thing for people interested in accountability and public records, she wrote the unanimous decision that came out this week that said, "Charlotte couldn't hide public records with a third party contractor."

That a TV station WBTV should have gotten those records as soon as they requested them.

And now, Charlotte's gonna have to pay their lawyers fees.

So, on her way outta the Court of Appeals, Allison Riggs made some big decisions.

- Representative, the governor has made his appointment.

- Sure.

- Not everyone is pleased with that appointment on the Democratic side should this have been a permanent appointment for a person that wants the seat permanently, or should have been a placeholder, or some other middle ground to say, leave this open for the voters in 2024.

- Sure, and you know, we always battle with that, even when state legislators move on to do something else.

And I think what he saw is exactly what you outlined, right?

Is, you know, she was someone who's trusted to join the court of appeals and someone who had the pedigree and the ability to serve well.

Now whether she decides to run, which we know she will, to keep the seat, you know, that's not his job, his job is to make sure that for the time, for the remainder of that term, that you have someone who can fill the seat.

And so I think, and then of course everyone then has the right to run if they want to do that.

One of the things I'll say about, you know with Allison being appointed and serving is when she was working on "Gerrymandering", it's the difference between right and wrong.

And I think one of the things that's also being missed is that 50 chief justices across the United States and the Supreme Court of the United States almost sided with some of the work that she did related to racial gerrymandering, right?

And so they threw out cases in Alabama and Louisiana.

And so her work is aligned with right versus wrong.

And the last thing I'll say, and I'm, this is a pipe dream for a seasoned legislator, is that I hope at one point in North Carolina we don't know the partisanship of our Supreme Court justices.

- I think one thing that's been really notable to me that I sort of keep thinking about with Allison Riggs is she's gonna be the youngest person on the state Supreme Court.

So one, I thought that was really notable and I don't really think we've been talking about that a lot.

- For sure.

- And I think that's really interesting.

And then two, it's just a really interesting time to be a democratic woman on the court.

I think we're gonna see a lot of interesting decisions coming up in the coming months and I'll be really interested to watch sort of the dynamics of how that plays out.

- Yeah, one other thing that's interesting, since you brought up the age, one reason perhaps that Michael Morgan decided to go off the Supreme Court and make this run for governor is there is a mandatory retirement age for North Carolina judges, it's 72.

- That's right.

- He could have served his full term, but if he had wanted to run for another term, could have only served about three years before he'd have to retire.

So the fact that Michael Morgan was getting closer and closer to the mandatory retirement age probably made it easier for Allison Riggs now to become a new Justice.

- Zach, Allison Riggs has never won in a race for the appellate court for she's a double appointee.

- [Zach] That's right.

- As a candidate though, already declaring she would seek that seat.

What is the difference in the feel and approach to voters and to the public when you're a candidate versus a preferred Justice under the Cooper administration?

- You know, I think for her, again, anyone who was appointed by the governor it comes with its own cachet, right?

Like that he trusts that this person can do the job.

And if you work and if you take that message out into the community on top of, you know, fairness, and equality, and justice for all, I think that that makes you an at attractive candidate no matter who you are.

- There you go.

Let's talk, do our good deed of the day, Mitch, Voter ID, the law is coming into effect for municipal races activating with city primaries being held across North Carolina this month.

Fayetteville and Charlotte are among major cities holding primaries for your mayor, city council seats.

Wake County elections officials say they're issuing free ID cards to voters.

You can get yours at any county elections office in any of the 100 North Carolina counties.

And if you can't show one of those IDs, and there's a hundred of them, Mitch, that qualify, you can cast a provisional ballot and complete an ID exception form.

There's my statement, it's a law whether you like it or not.

How's the rollout going?

What's the tone out there among the electorate?

- So far it seems to be going well.

I saw that there was a report fairly early on right after Sanford had started its elections.

There was a major media report that said, "This is a win for Conservatives and Republicans and a loss for progressives and civil rights advocates".

And then they talked to some of the voters who said, "Yeah, I don't really care.

I've got an id."

And I think that's gonna be the situation that we'll see for most people, this really will be a good test case of how well it works.

If there are a number of people who wanna vote in elections who aren't able to even with all those caveats that you mentioned, we're gonna hear about it.

We should also note that though Voter ID is legal now, there is a federal lawsuit that's continuing to challenge that and that's something that's going to be cooking out there in the in the months to come.

- Lucille, I've got literally like 20 seconds for you, Voter Id.

- Yeah I think what Mitch said is exactly right.

You know, I think people have IDs and I think we're gonna see very quickly how many problems we have in the coming months.

And the past couple elections have been a great test case.

- 20 seconds for you representative, final word.

- You know, to me there should be no barrier to getting to the ballot box.

And you know, with it, we have tried to improve the work by extending that every state employee and every college ID potentially can be used as a voting instrument.

I was involved in that, but I hope that it does go well and I can't wait to see what's happening with the federal lawsuit.

- Perfect timing, great debut representative.

Thank you, Mitch.

Thank you Lucille, thanks to our panelist.

Again, email your thoughts and opinions to statelines@pbsnc.org, I'll read the emails.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thank you for watching State Lines, we hope to see you next time, bye-bye.

[bright upbeat 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.