
Photograph by Jessica Simmons
The NC Senate passed the override earlier this month and so now the bill will become law. But it is likely to face legal challenges next year.
UPDATE: This story has been updated with additional details surrounding Wednesday’s veto override of SB 382.
The GOP-led North Carolina House on Wednesday voted to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of SB 382, a bill presented as a hurricane relief package that instead takes several powers and duties away from newly elected Democrats and gives them to Republicans.
North Carolina voters in November chose Democrats to serve as governor, attorney general, lieutenant governor, and superintendent of public schools, and also voted to end the Republican supermajority in the House.
The supermajority meant Republicans never had to worry about a governor’s veto, but without it next year, they’ll need at least one Democrat to vote with them to override a veto. So in the final session of the current legislature, Republicans voted to significantly restructure the executive branch.
The vote was 72-46.
The bill is now law, but will likely face legal challenges next year.
As they did when the original bill was passed last month, House Democrats accused Republicans of disingenuous concern for hurricane relief, like delivering an eviction notice in a Thank You card.
“This is called a disaster bill,” Rep. Robert Reives, the House Democratic Leader, said during the limited debate before the vote. “[But] when disasters hit, you recognize one thing, all that other stuff doesn’t matter any more. We need to help people get their lives back. That’s what we should have been doing today.”
“I would have loved for us to use this as an opportunity to put everything about our politics aside and maybe even show the country that the right thing to do is to worry about the people,” he said.
The bill strips power from the governor and attorney general
Senate Bill 382 will provide more than $220 million in Hurricane Helene aid eventually, but offers none immediately. What it does do is increase the power of a Republican legislature that is arguably the most powerful in the country.
The law:
- Takes away the governor’s power to appoint members of the bipartisan State Board of Elections (BOE) and gives it to the state auditor, one of the five statewide offices Republicans won last month.
- Requires the attorney general to defend state laws in court, even if they are unconstitutional.
- Removes the Lieutenant Governor, an office that will be held by Democrat Rachel Hunt, from some state committees.
- Limits the ability of the state superintendent of public instruction, an office won by Democrat Mo Green, to contest decisions made by the state board that monitors charter schools, removing a key check on its power.
- Takes several duties away from the superintendent and gives them to another agency.
- Eliminates the judicial position of a judge who voted against the legislature on gerrymandering.
- Creates new judgeships that the legislature will appoint, rather than voters.
Around 100 pro-democracy protesters filled the House gallery, bearing signs calling the bill a “power grab.”
“The Democrats, myself included, voted for Josh Stein and the attorney general and we won fair and square, and now the GOP is trying to roll that back,” one of the protesters, Norm Zimmer of Wake Forest, told Cardinal & Pine before the vote.
“It’s totally unfair,” he said. “They know it, we know it.”
Republicans introduced the bill late last month with little advance notice or debate, passing it soon after making it available for public review.
They passed the widely-criticized 12-week abortion ban the same way last year.
The secretive tactics are as bad as the content of the bill, another protester, Elizabeth Scisco, said.
“Trying to do this under the guise of night, just like they passed the abortion ban, is really, trying to … distract and disrupt voters’ knowledge … that they’re not really representing us,” she said.
Scisco, who now lives in Durham, but is from Boone, said Helene had a big impact on her family and friends, and she resents that Republicans hid these political barbs in an unrelated relief bill.
“A lot of [family] are really upset that this is being used as a cover up for this power grab,” she said.
“They could have passed this hurricane relief bill separately and we would have gotten the hurricane relief faster, but because they are combining it in this way, it’s actually preventing people in western North Carolina from getting the help they need.”
Republicans dismiss criticism
Rep. Destin Hall, a Republican who was elected to take over as House Speaker when Tim Moore moves to Congress next month, said on the House floor on Wednesday that critics and the news media misunderstood how the state has handled hurricane relief in the past.
He dismissed the complaints that SB 382 had no immediate aid by saying that the estimated $53 billion needed overall in western North Carolina is so much that the federal government has to carry the bulk of the aid efforts.
“It’s probably a $50 billion problem,” he said. “No state, no matter how fiscally well they handle things, can possibly meet that kind of burden.”
The legislature has also already passed separate Helene aid packages totalling about $1 billion, he said, but much of that money has not been spent.
“That’s because after a storm, as we’ve dealt with many times before, you can send all the money in the world to it immediately. You have to go out and figure out where the need lies. And the damage area is so great it takes time for folks to figure out ‘where does the money need to go?’”
But Democrats and many business owners in the affected parts of the state say no one is asking for all $53 billion tomorrow. Much smaller and targeted aid would make a huge difference, they say, and it’s no mystery where it’s needed.
The Helene portions of the bill offer little immediate aid
The day after the vote on the initial bill last month, Democrats and business owners in western NC held a press conference asking the legislature for smaller grants that could help them survive what amounted to a second storm — the lack of tourists in what was supposed to be among the most lucrative seasons.
“The reality of it is we lost the month of October, which is our biggest revenue month of the year in western North Carolina,” Rep. Eric Ager, a Democrat from Buncombe County, said at the November press conference.
“We know that relief is needed not next month or next year or whenever we figure it out. We need it now and we don’t need to study or vet the impact of this storm,” Ager said. “Without assistance, we’re going to lose a lot of businesses.”
That threat is no longer speculative, Democrats said on Wednesday.
Rep. Lindsey Prather, also of Buncombe Co., began her comments during the debate of the override with a list of just some of the businesses in Buncombe County that have closed.
“Diamond Brand, Bold Rock, Antique Tobacco Barn, Ruff Life Dog Training Services, Smartshop Self Storage, Walgreens, Discount Tire, Cheddars Scratch Kitchen, Hobby Town, Regeneration Station, Great Clips, Riverview station and the 60-plus artists that they house,” Prather said. “It is impossible to know how many businesses have actually closed. That’s part of the devastation of this all.”
“Some of them might have even thought they could initially survive, and then made the decision to permanently close based on the lack of any certainty coming from the legislature.”
Add to that the more than 103 people who died, the 74,000 homes damaged, and the 5,000 households in transitional shelters and have a region still in “response and recovery,” Prather added.
The bill offers very little immediate funding and moves $200 million into the Hurricane Relief account, but doesn’t spend it or even say how it will be spent. Those decisions will be made sometime in 2025.
Protesters forcibly removed
Immediately after the vote, demonstrators in the gallery started shouting.
Police escorted out some of the most vocal first, then cleared the entire gallery. Two officers grabbed a woman by the arm as she cursed, and dragged her forcibly out the doors.
As soon as the shouts began, audio on the House online video stream cut out and then the video went dark. When the video came back on, the demonstrators were still shouting, and House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican, looked up at them, smiling.
Then the feed cut out again.
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