- [Host] Governor Roy Cooper outlines a plan for Medicaid expansion.

And legislative leaders turn attention to redistricting.

This is "State Lines."

- [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.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Hello again, and welcome to "State Lines", I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me for this show is editor in chief of the "Carolina Journal," Donna King, managing editor of "Cardinal and Pine," Billy Ball, and "North State Journal's" editor in chief, Matt Mercer.

Editors, thank you for being here.

- Of course, happy to.

- In our first post state budget week episode.

[Donna laughs] The test is on because everything's pivoting towards two big topics this week.

We'll start with Medicaid expansion.

Redistricting is huge.

- Sure.

- But Roy Cooper, the governor, is not signing the 2023 budget bill that passed the general assembly last week, but he didn't veto the bill either.

So in North Carolina, a bill that becomes law or a bill that has passed becomes law in 10 calendar days if a governor won't sign it after it passes.

The governor says he didn't want to veto the bill because it could potentially hold up or even kill the budget, which would kill Medicaid expansion, Donna.

Early next week, this new budget becomes law so all the pay raise, everything kicks in.

The governor says Medicaid expansion should be ready to launch on December 1st.

Donna, very interestingly, the DHHS secretary, Kody Kinsley, he's in the room, but the governor says December 1st, not the secretary.

- Sure, sure.

- Anything into that?

- Well, I, you know, I'm not sure how that takes, this is a big ship to move and I think what we're seeing is on December 1st, what it really means is that those who, in North Carolina, who make 138% of the poverty line would qualify for Medicaid expansion.

That means a single, about, you know, 55,000 would, or 35,000, and then a family, would need to make up to 55,000, to then be covered for Medicaid expansion.

So 300,000 people will get on the rolls early, it'll expand about 600,000 after a little bit of time.

But the big, the elephant in the room is what is this gonna do to healthcare costs?

Because it's dependent mostly on a private hospital tax.

And what will it do to access because they really didn't do much about certificate of need laws, which would expand the number of providers who could care for this 600,000 new people.

- Billy, that's a legitimate issue.

If you have restrained acts, facilities and you open up another half million people, nurses, doctors could be working harder.

Is that something you should worry about or we should worry about is North Carolinian's?

Capacity?

- I think there's a lot we should be worried about in our healthcare system, that's a long, long list.

But I think as far as Medicaid expansion goes and that posing a problem, or making our healthcare system worse, I can't see that being a major concern for North Carolinians.

I think we've seen one state after another hop on to Medicaid expansion over the years, including a lot of Republican states in there and we're just gonna be the latest to add in there.

But, you know, we're talking about more than a half a million people who are sitting out there, who've been waiting on more affordable healthcare options for a long time that the state has been bypassing.

At one point, it was a hundred percent fully funded by the federal government, it's now at a 90%.

But it's still, it's a significant thing that people have been waiting on for a long time in North Carolina and the legislature has passed it up for about a decade.

We've been covering this year after year saying is this the year?

Is this the year?

Is this the year?

We're finally there.

It kind of feels surreal to say that aloud honestly.

- Are working families really out there at the kitchen table begging, I can't wait to get on Medicaid.

I just can't wait to get, as if it were Blue Cross Blue Shield or a private insurer or is this something where, one day they'll get a mail and they'll say, hey, you can have health insurance, they don't care what it is, it's an option.

- I think, for people who are sitting out there saying that I can't go to a doctor unless it's a terrible emergency, they're gonna greet this with open arms.

- All right, Matt?

- Yeah, I was actually on this show back several months ago when I said that, you know, Republicans have kind of decided that, you know, government's the answer not the free market.

And so we'll see, kind of how it goes when it's implemented.

It's gonna be a lot of extra work on your county level administrators, on the state level because you're bringing a lot of people into a system that I think Republicans, to an extent, will argue, okay, it's better than it was a couple years ago with the changes they've made, with going to the managed perspective versus fee for service.

I'm really not sure, kind of what's next.

I think we're gonna find out a lot along the way, but I would be very concerned especially with the current federal government, you know, we're $33 trillion in debt now and where does the money come from?

So there's some cognitive dissonance there that I see.

But, you know, I think for people that benefit from it, will be an advantage, but I think also the cost for everyone else, I think it's still something we'll have to really watch closely.

- If the free market comes into play here you would probably write many rural hospitals off the map, which wouldn't play well with Republican voters of Republican legislators.

How do you balance a free market approach, Matt, with the idea that there's some things society's gonna have that didn't make a profit at all?

- Yeah, and that's true, and I think that's where you've seen people like Dale Folwell talk about the hospital cartel in a lot of ways.

You know, they're being constricted, but then they're also doing things that benefit themselves when they're supposed to be acting as nonprofits, but they're raking in millions of dollars a year, they're keeping for themselves or using in other places.

So I think if you truly were to embrace that, I think there would absolutely be a shift in how resources are allocated.

But to get to that point, you know, who's to say that in another universe that it doesn't happen that way?

And you actually see there's rural, there's rural areas get things get they need or statewide systems come in.

- Donna, looking ahead to December 1st, will there be a huge bubble of new people trying to get into the hospital, or will they be crowding you out of your doctor's office?

Is that an expectation or a fear?

Is it founded or unfounded?

- Well, I mean, I think certainly, it is a concern that we'll have because there will be 300,000 people suddenly on the rolls that weren't, you know, on there before.

And in many cases they have deferred healthcare maintenance because they haven't had access.

You know, these are working age, able-bodied adults who don't have children or disabled children at home.

So you've got a group of folks who probably have been putting off some healthcare for a while, suddenly they'll have access to it.

And one of the things, lots of other states have joined into Medicaid expansion, but a lot of them did it under work requirement waivers that were given during the Obama administration and the Trump administration.

Well, those don't happen anymore.

So one of the good things about having waited a little bit was North Carolina got a chance to see what this really was gonna look like, and then the federal government put in $1.8 billion in a sweetener to get them to do it.

Still taxpayer money, but that's a lot of the reason why it's happening right now.

- And Billy, let's set aside partisanship on this, the issue, the philosophy behind socialized medicine if you will, it's here.

So whose job is it to let North Carolinians know they might qualify for Medicaid under the expanded model?

Is it gonna be the state, is it gonna be private enterprise hospitals or the media?

- I think it's gonna be the state and the media needs to get that message out?

It's a big message and it's one that people, I think we shouldn't underestimate people's interest in talking about it.

Year after year, we come up to election time and I think the media wants to talk about a lot of different narratives and we end up finding that people are going to the polls and they're voting thinking about healthcare in the economy.

So I think that people are paying attention to this out there and yes, it will take, it will take a big effort from the state agency and I think the press will have its job as well.

But I think that people who've been sitting out there waiting on this legislature to move on Medicaid expansion for a decade, I don't think they're gonna need too many reminders.

- All right, well North Carolina legislators are taking a small breather this week, just a small one.

But they'll have begun tackling in fact a fresh round of legislative and congressional redistricting.

Back in April of this year, the State Supreme Court ruled that the former Democratic majority Supreme Court was wrong to declare districts as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders.

That ruling will allow Republicans to draw new boundaries in time for the upcoming 2024 elections.

That means all US house districts get reviewed, quite possibly redrawn.

And that could shift the current seven seven congressional balance to a strong Republican majority.

Billy will have to see about the State house and the state senate districts.

'Cause in our house and Senate, North Carolina, it's anything but dear.

A majority for either party.

It's a super majority Republican.

Where should people with limited time, focus their attention on this redistricting?

- I think, we've talked about this in newsrooms, in editor's rooms.

We say, how do we get people interested in redistricting?

Because on the surface it seems like a boring idea.

You're gonna go into a room and draw some maps.

But it has a tremendous impact on an individual's ability to have their political views represented in their government.

And North Carolina's been gerrymandered over and over again through the years.

It was Democrats at one point, it's been Republicans for a long time now.

I think people are just tired of it.

People, you go out on the street and ask them do you want things to be fair or or are you cool with cheating?

In general, people say we don't like cheating.

And there's no two ways about it.

Partisan gerrymandering is cheating.

And it's been happening for a long time.

And as I said, it happened on both sides.

But it needs to be cleaned up.

- Is it cheating if it's the way it is and the way it always has been.

It's cheating when you're in the minority party and can't get over the hump.

- It's redistricting if you are in control of it, right?

- Well, if you are allowing yourself as a party to strengthen your hand, to entrench your power down the line, as parties have done in this state as they've done in many states for years and years and years, just 'cause it's the way it's been, doesn't mean that's the way it has to be.

And I think that Americans have seen gerrymandering in so many states and I think there's a new generation of people coming up looking at government and saying, how do we do this better?

- 'Cause this isn't it.

- Matt, what about that new generation?

There's certainly a new generation of Republicans coming online that are far different at least socially.

So now we're redistricting us here.

In 10 more years we'll have more and more Republicans and if they draw these districts, Republicans will still be in power.

What happens?

- Yeah, I think what you're seeing and you can go back through the years and say that's what's happened at this point, Republicans and Democrats both accused of it.

But I think the other thing to consider is, the population has really sorted itself to an extent where you've concentrated democratic voters in certain areas and Republican voters have either fled where they were in in urban areas and it's just kind of the way it is.

We've kind of taken to the point where, first of all, I would say that we we're all in the wrong line of work if we had taken up constitutional law.

I think we'd be getting paid a lot more in the last 10 years.

But I think that when you're seeing that come up North Carolina likely will add another congressional seat in eight years or so.

So I think it's interesting to see kind of how that process is sorted.

You've got retirees on the coast, you've got more people from other states moving into areas like Durham and Charlotte.

And so how that changes, I think, to a extent is really how creative that Mapmakers get for who's in power.

- Donna, how does redistricting, if they draw, when they draw strong Republican majorities, how does that affect the quality and the engagement of Republican candidates seeking office?

- Well, I think the important thing is that on both sides of the aisle, the parties are fairly good at clearing the field to make sure that they have a candidate in mind when they, when they go through this primary process.

But I think one of the important points is one that Matt made is that North Carolina may seem purple when you look at the total numbers, but it's very red and very blue.

Our urban areas and our rural areas are very different.

So when they go to draw these maps, Democrats actually instituted, not splitting counties.

And it's important not to split counties, not to split communities.

'Cause that gives them that voice.

And that is part of the reason why we end up with these deep red and deep blue areas.

And you know, part of the issue that we're gonna see is we saw it in three sets of redistricting hearings this week is that the overwhelming majority of speakers were in opposition of the process.

And in many cases you saw on Twitter why are we even having these, why are we speaking?

And the response was, from some of these organizations was, well, we're doing this because we need to have these comments on the record for future litigation.

This is a litigious process and that's one of the reasons we're doing it again in 2023.

The US Supreme Court ruled in Moore V Harper that the courts can come in and review but they can't have carte blanche to go in and redo it for them, which is what happened in 2022.

So if I were going to guess I think we're gonna see a bit of 2021 maps coming back.

- Billy to the point about we're we're putting our comments out there for the future lawsuit.

It already predicts what's going to happen.

What do lawsuits do, whether you're on the losing end or winning end when it comes to redistricting.

Do people lose faith in the courts and does it make the Supreme Court at our North Carolina level just a predictable court depending on who wins the election?

- I think that that's absolutely true.

I think based on who wins the election, it does make it in some cases predictable.

I think if you had a judge up here, they would say, they would push against that really hard and say that just because of how the election went doesn't mean they're gonna vote a certain way for a certain party.

- That has happened.

That's what's happened.

- Absolutely.

- But if you're sitting out there in the public looking at it, you go, yeah, I mean this is a different state Supreme Court than we had.

before in a lot of ways.

So I think the purpose of litigation is to, in these cases, is people see an injustice in the way that the maps have been drawn.

You know, when I think back to 2013, after the Supreme Court removed that pre-clearance requirement on state, the old Jim Crow states.

And North Carolina waited a few days, really we're talking days, before they started moving on, changing the way that we vote.

And as we saw in those court cases, which were very important to raise the issue, and to clear the air about what was an injustice, we saw that legislative leadership was researching the way Black people voted.

And then going out to make it harder for them to vote.

That was what we saw in those court cases.

So I think that these court cases, yes, they're expensive, and maybe they frustrate people.

But when you get it out there and you ask the courts to say, we think there's an abusive legislative branch in this case, I mean, that's what, as Americans, we've asked the courts to do for generations.

- I would just add to that.

If you wanna talk about faith in courts, two of the current Supreme Court justices here in North Carolina were plaintiffs in redistricting lawsuits in the last decade.

So I don't think their position is exactly one that, you know, will be hard to determine where they stand on it.

- Well, the North Carolina budget bill does contain some policy provisions that will allow legislators to determine whether their own legislative emails and correspondences can be withheld from public records request.

Critics say this new protection for legislative communication will certainly be used to keep redistricting discussions out of public view.

As it is, draft redistricting maps will not be subject to public release and will be exempt from records requests.

Republican leaders have countered critics by saying there's been standing confusion for a long period of time about which documents, Donna, are actually subject to open records requests.

It's an interesting topic.

- Sure.

- They put in the budget the fact that any lawmaker can withdraw all their emails from you looking at them if you wanted to.

- Well, I mean, you know, first of all our public record laws were terrible to begin with.

I've gotten hundreds of outstanding public records requests dating back years, maybe even a decade close to.

And I think most journalists have the exact same situation.

This, I think, makes it worse.

What this really means is that individual lawmakers are the custodians of their own records, and they can decide what's public record and what's not.

And they can do what they want with that, which is not, which could be destroy it, archive it, sell it, move it, whatever they're gonna do with it.

The interesting thing to me about it, which I think is damaging to media's role as a watchdog, but also the people's right to know what's happening with their tax dollars and their state government, is really impacted by this.

But the interesting thing about it is there's on the one hand you have the Committee of Government Operations, I believe, that can now subpoena records in the budget.

But on the other hand, lawmakers can decide, you know, what's public record and what isn't.

And I think that absolutely the government operations, community government operations has a right to know what's happening with the tax dollars that they allocate and that they budget.

And the people have a right to know through their representatives what's happening.

So that transparency is important for that committee.

I would like to see the same happen in individual lawmaker's offices.

- So for clarity, there's two different provisions here.

The legislators created this committee that can basically, anybody who takes a state fund or grant... - Absolutely.

- They can go into your office, they can go into your house and go through your filing cabinet.

No, I think that's pretty much settled.

But they exempt themselves from you going through their filing cabinets.

That may be simplified.

I may get called on explaining it that way.

But is that how it is in your opinion, Billy?

Or is it, or am I misinterpreting?

- That's absolutely how I see it as well.

I couldn't agree with Donna more on this.

I think journalists hate this.

I think the public should too.

This is what every politician dreams of, is the idea that they will be the ones who make the decision about which of their conversations are public records.

And Donna's absolutely right.

The public records law hasn't been great for years.

You put in public records requests and I think people will be shocked at the things that legislative branch members can say, no, no, no, you can't see that.

- And executive, executive branch.

- And can just say, just say, no, no, no, that's not for you, that's not for you.

The number of times every journalist has been told that over the years while chasing a story, it's deeply frustrating, and the public would be angry to know about it.

I think this is just another example.

And I hope that people push back against this strongly, and say, you can't have a better, remember that old phrase about the fox in the hen house thing?

I don't think you can have like a better metaphor than this.

They're gonna be the ones deciding what we can see of their records?

It should be troubling - Matt.

- Yeah, not the first time you've seen some of this evaded.

I think we've learned that Roy Cooper, you know, apparently never uses email.

Is that really true?

I kind of doubt it.

But you know, nothing official on that side anyway.

So, I would just say that the way to get a journalist, or a reporter to dig harder, and look harder, is to say, no, you can't see this.

'Cause then they're just gonna say, oh, okay, well maybe there's something here.

So it's kind of a penny wise pound foolish discussion, I think, in that respect.

- Do we get back to an era where leaks are the king and queen of investigative journalism again?

- Yeah, I think you've kind of seen, everything gets pushed to the Nth degree now.

So, you know, is this something where, okay, well, we'll hang out outside your trash bins, and go to your shred days, and kind of all this stuff.

Whereas the lines are becoming blurry, and I think having some real transparency on that benefits everyone.

- Donna, just from my personal and professional opinion, in the last eight years, since the Obama transitioned to Trump, I have noticed that politicians now seem to have the upper hand in this debate between who should you be skeptical of.

You got a candidate, he did a great job pointing at reporters like you guys, and going, don't trust them, trust the politicians.

Are voters now trusting politicians more than they're trusting the media that's covering the politicians?

- Oh, I think we're both way down on the list of trust.

- Not way down.

- Yeah, bottom.

- Have some reporters moved beneath being less trustworthy than a politician, which has been a whipping post for centuries.

- Sure, well, I mean, I think a core American value is skepticism of leadership.

Whether it's the person at the other end of the newspaper or the television show, or it's the person who is in the governor's mansion or the legislature.

I think that that's a healthy skepticism.

I think the problem though is that people really are, now, they don't trust anyone.

They don't trust what's happening in their state government.

And this is feeding that mistrust that's been building over the last, you know, five, six, even eight years.

North Carolina, just, you know, a decade ago was nationally known for having 7% income tax and furloughing teachers.

I think over the last decade there's been a real concerted effort to restore fiscal responsibility, public policy.

And I think this is one of those things that will erode public trust again.

- Billy, are, are we better as a society when new outlets, new digital outlets such as yourself, North State, come in, tell the story, not, I wouldn't say with bias, but you have a lane that's pretty predictable depending on the brand, and we seek it out.

Are we better having people who say, "Hey, this is where we come from, "but we're gonna tell you fairly."

Versus someone coming in and saying, "I work for general media, I'm perfectly balanced."

- I think transparency is, this has been said before, transparency is everything.

And it's the new lack of bias or objectivity.

Transparency is a new objectivity.

I think if you tell people where you're coming from and tell them that regularly, it can't be hidden away.

Like everything that I do, I let people know, I've spoken from a progressive background for years, before that, I was a reporter for years.

And so I think telling people that, they trust you regardless of whether they agree with you, agree or think you're too left or right.

And when you talk about like a lack of trust I think Donna's right that I think what's happening is that people just aren't trusting anybody.

But if they are, I think they are trusting local journalists.

I think there's a difference between a local journalist and like a 24 hour cable news program.

I think a lot of skepticism for those outlets, but they still will follow a local journalist and the ones they know and recognize.

- Matt, how do you make your readers, or in this case viewers, feel safe that they can go and they know you're gonna write something they're gonna like to read, but how do you convince them?

Or do you try to say, you know what, try Billy's article out.

You may disagree with it, but you know, it's a little pepper to the salt.

- Yeah, I would say, at least in my case, you know, North State Journal is a business.

It's not, you know, funded by, by grants and foundation.

It's a business that people can choose to subscribe to, can choose to read.

And our news gathering is fact-based.

And we back things up with facts now.

And I've told this to several people, like, do we have an opinion page that's different than other papers in the state?

Absolutely, but we try to drive what we do on the news gathering perspective is everything leads with facts.

- Yeah.

I really wish people who watched this show could understand how the green room is here and how even for prior shows, there's such a great collegiality in spite of partisanship.

- Absolutely.

- And it doesn't transcend to any TV or radio or podcast or article.

- I don't think there is non-bias.

I think that, you know, from the minute you choose what you're going to cover and regardless of how you cover it, there is a biased choice.

So Carolina Journal, we're free market liberty perspective and we put that on our label.

You know what's in your protein shake and you know what's in your medicine and you need to know what's in what you consume in news.

- Yeah, well I've got two and a half minutes but I do wanna touch on the Meredith College Poll out of Raleigh, shows Mark Robinson with a large lead in the Republican primary.

However, it was what, 350 voters were sampled in this for Professor McClellan.

I don't know what was actually the top choice among those 350 polled Republicans.

David McClellan, the professor at Meredith, says that if 44% of voters are saying they don't know who they'll vote for just yet, it means Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, in spite of his big lead, Matt, could see that chipped away should Treasurer Folwell, Representative Walker, Mr. Thomas finds some traction in there.

Talk to us about this.

So many voters this close out, not really sure and really not really sure about Josh Stein and Supreme Court Justice, Mike Morgan, on the Democratic side.

- Yeah, I wouldn't sleep on the Democratic race if I were Josh Stein or his campaign.

I think that will be interesting to follow.

But if you're talking about Republicans, it's going to take some sort of outside money effort to elevate someone, whether that's Dale Folwell or Mark Walker, to the level where Mark Robinson is.

And it's because of the work Robinson's done in his first term and the notoriety he's gotten, both from a state and national level.

That's what it's going to take for someone to challenge him in the primary.

- Billy, money talk?

- Absolutely, money does talk.

We've seen that year after year.

I think I would love to ask those people who said, I don't know, whether it's, I don't know who the candidates are, or I don't know who I'm going to pick, is what I would want to know.

I think that Robinson is clearly the front runner.

It's hard for me to imagine anyone surpassing him.

But that said, I do think he has a history of saying very volatile comments that is going to make some people sort of blanche and say, you know, that's not where I come from.

Especially Republicans who didn't love the Trump style of politics.

They're gonna say, eh, that's not what I'm looking for.

- We got about a minute left on.

Well, 80% knew Governor Cooper, 43% could recognize Mark Robinson.

Everyone else has more work to do.

- Sure, sure, absolutely, but you know, we are all sitting in the room all the time, so we know who these people are.

A primary is good for every party because it brings people out, brings 'em to the polls.

But I'm really gonna be watching where those unaffiliated voters are falling.

It's the largest group block of North Carolina voters right now.

So getting that name recognition up for everybody involved in both primaries is really important.

- Well, I'd love to have you folks on and others on reporters talking about the race as it heats up, as we start paying attention, and as we start getting bombarded with ads.

Thank you Donna, Billy, Matt, for being on the show this week.

And thank you for watching State Lines again.

It's our pleasure serving you.

Email us your thoughts and opinions.

I received quite a few mixed opinions last week.

I answer everyone, our email address, statelines@pbsc.org.

We will read every email, I promise you.

I'm Kelly McMullen.

Thanks for watching State lines and we'll see you next time.

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