The North Carolina Legislative Building (Photo: Clayton Henkel)
There have been many times in American history when so-called “lame duck” legislative sessions—meetings that take place after elections but prior to the session of the new Congress or legislature—have been successfully used by elected leaders to build bipartisanship to find. common ground and getting things done.
Sometimes, with the next election far away (or for those who are retiring or recently defeated, something that is no longer even a concern), lawmakers feel freed from the pull of partisanship and/or the threat of a primary challenger and respond instead to the pull of their own conscience.
Unfortunately, this has not been the case with the lame duck sessions in the North Carolina General Assembly in recent years.
Instead of using these sessions as opportunities to bridge divisions and highlight partisanship, Republican legislative leaders have generally gone the other way, using lame duck sessions as opportunities to push through legislation that: a) their own power increases, and b) they calculated that it may not come into effect in the new year.
One of the most infamous examples of this approach occurred in the weeks after the 2016 election, when Republican majorities rushed to strip the governor of the office in the wake of Roy Cooper’s defeat of Republican incumbent Pat McCrory — legislation that McCrory himself had cowardly translated into law. .
State lawmakers return to Raleigh this week for another lame duck session and while we have yet to hear publicly about plans to — as the political parlance goes — “kneecap” newly elected members of the Democratic Council of State, like Josh Stein and Rachel Hunt , Jeff Jackson and Mo Green with new cuts to their powers and/or funding, it’s a distinct possibility we should keep an eye on.
And now that it seems increasingly likely that Democrats have ended (or at least weakened) the Republican Party’s veto-proof majority in the state House, the holiday season could also be a time for new and controversial proposals to be championed by the political right and which may be more difficult to achieve. pass in 2025. Stay tuned.
Regardless of whether any of these unsavory things actually happen, however, it seems pretty certain that this week’s reconvened legislative session will fall short of what it could and should be.
That’s because the predominant policy issue in our state right now is the enormous economic and environmental disaster caused by Hurricane Helene. Estimates put the total damage at around an astonishing $53 billion. If there was ever a crisis that deserved almost all available resources and funding streams, it is this one.
Unfortunately, as Governor Roy Cooper – who shares this view of the situation – noted in a press release issued on November 15, Republican lawmakers apparently disagree. Their plan instead is to use the session to override his veto of House Bill 10 — a conservative “Christmas tree” bill passed late in the summer that, among other problematic and unrelated provisions, provides a massive expansion of the state’s private school voucher program. .
This is from Cooper’s release:
“Helene was the most devastating storm our state has ever seen and Western North Carolina faces a long and expensive road to recovery,” said Governor Cooper. “Next week, lawmakers should invest billions of dollars in Western North Carolina’s recovery, instead of committing billions to private school vouchers.”
As lawmakers plan to spend $463 million in taxpayer money on unexplained vouchers for private schools, Western North Carolina faces major funding needs to continue the rebuilding process in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
Expanding private school vouchers would disproportionately impact rural counties, including many in Western North Carolina, where access to private education is limited and public schools are the backbone of communities. Twenty-eight provinces have only one or no private schools participating in the voucher program, eight of which have been declared disasters.
It is difficult to imagine that the Republican plan will gain traction in the West.
As Brandon Kingdollar of NC Newsline recently reported, numerous businesses in the areas damaged by Helene, if still alive, are on life support. Many – especially restaurants and hotels – spend thousands of dollars a week shipping drinking water. And while recent progress on this front will help Asheville, it will not repair the economic damage already done. The need for large amounts of direct subsidies – both to bail out businesses and to help rebuild the region’s devastated housing stock – is enormous and urgent.
Unfortunately, that turns out not to be the plan. While lawmakers are expected to provide additional relief, the legislation will likely follow the relatively modest efforts of earlier sessions this fall.
And as a result, at a time when hundreds of businesses and thousands of workers and their families are in desperate need of emergency relief, the General Assembly will vote to take funds that could be used for that critical public purpose and transfer them instead to millionaires to subsidize their children’s private school tuition.
‘Lame’ is a completely appropriate name for such a session.
