Photo: Tim Barnwell
Legislative News by Nelda Holder –
The North Carolina General Assembly will have convened at noon on January 11 in its legislative home at 16 West Jones Street in Raleigh to take care of primary session tasks (election of chamber clerks and leaders, hopefully none of which will take 15 ballots—if you watched the national model at the beginning of January).
The legislators are then required to spend an organizational period back home, so they won’t get down to official, issue-oriented business until a couple of weeks later. For the new session, here’s a guide to keeping up with Jones Street.
First—and fortunately—we can access a very functional NC General Assembly website (www.ncleg.gov), as we have referenced in the past, where you can study the NC Constitution, find the phone number, mailing address, and email address of your House and Senate representatives, follow Calendars to keep up with the session’s business, catch a virtual tour of the elegant building in which our state laws are crafted, tune in for audio coverage of legislative action/committee meetings, study bills and laws, and a great deal more.
This session sees an increase in Republican representation following the 2022 elections—in keeping with our “purple state” reputation. Indeed, with a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, finishing the last two years of his two-term limit, Republican power in the Statehouse has put the “balance” of Cooper’s veto power almost out of working order.
In the last election, Republicans assumed a supermajority position in the NC Senate and fell only one seat short in the House. That means Cooper’s veto threat has been drastically weakened, and political speculators predict an increase in “culture war” legislation (think abortion and LGBT rights).
Closer to home: what counties want
It’s easy to predict we’ll also see tussles over school and teacher funding, Medicaid expansion, agricultural industry…
Read the full article here
