- Hello, I'm David Crabtree.

Coming up next on State Lines, we talk with Governor Josh Stein.

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[upbeat music] ♪ - Thank you for joining us.

We're here with the Governor Josh Stein.

Governor, thanks for having us into the people's home.

- Yes, David, wonderful to have you.

- Okay, you're wrapping up your first year.

It's a question that is predictable, but I think people would like to know, how has this first year been?

Major surprises, and what are you looking forward to in 2026?

- Yeah, that's it.

It has been a fantastic year.

I'm just so honored to be able to have this opportunity to serve as governor.

We've actually accomplished a lot this year.

We had the best year of job announcements in the history of North Carolina.

34,000 jobs, $23 billion of capital invested.

We were named the number one state for business in the country.

So we have a lot to be proud of, but we cannot rest on our laurels.

We have to keep working.

We have to make sure that the economy works for everybody in every corner of the state.

We had good success in that the jobs really are distributed around the state, but there are a lot of folks out there who are struggling with the cost of living, paying their rent, paying their healthcare bills, buying groceries, and there are things that we can do to make this economy work even better for the people of North Carolina.

I believe that the promise of North Carolina is that where you come from should never limit how far you can go in life, and delivering on that promise is what's driving me as governor.

- What's been the biggest surprise?

- Things do not move as fast as we would like them to.

I'm an impatient person by nature, and the work, like a big project, they're complicated and they take time.

Hurricane Helene relief is probably the clearest example of that, but it's also fixing the DMV.

We've made a lot of progress on the DMV.

Just today I was in Rocky Mount at a graduation of 149 new examiners, people who are gonna be in the offices, behind the workstation, helping people who come in the door, and we're driving down wait times.

I want this to be an experience that people do not dread, but rather when they go to the DMV, they can get served, take care of their business, get their license, get it renewed, whatever they're there for, and then go on with their daily life, and that's what those folks want too, but it's not gonna happen overnight.

It's gonna take time.

Hurricane Helene was the most devastating storm to ever hit North Carolina.

108 people lost their lives, 108 families, don't have somebody around their holiday table this year.

$60 billion in damage, which is just a massive amount of damage, more than three times greater than any storm that's ever hit North Carolina in terms of economic impact, so we've got incredible amount of work to do to help that region get back on its feet and recover, and you can't do that in one year.

Sadly, we're not gonna be able to do it in two years.

It's gonna take three or four years, but we are going to remain focused on it, and that's actually part of your question about what are we gonna be doing in 2026.

A lot of it is just execution.

You don't necessarily change the work that you're focused on, whether that is making the economy work for more people, or it's making sure that Hurricane Helene relief is done effectively, efficiently, with urgency, or making the DMV work better for people.

- With urgency.

If you live in that part of North Carolina, it's still urgent for you.

The rest of the state moves on with life, and so you have to keep this front and center with your cabinet and your staff and yourself all the time.

- Every day I have a call with my senior team, and the first item on the agenda of every daily call is what's the update on Hurricane Helene relief.

We wanna make sure that we are matching the grit, the effort, the determination of the people of Western North Carolina in their own recovery.

The state should be working just as hard.

I've been out there dozens and dozens of times this year, David, and when I go talk with somebody, whether it's a business owner like Matt Banz, Michelle Banz, they have a place in Chimney Rock, a restaurant, they got a grant from the state, a program we had created, to help them get through the tough times so that now they've reopened their business and are welcoming customers.

Sherry Logan, a homeowner in Mill Spring, she was the first recipient of a new house following the storm.

Her home was totally destroyed by the flood.

We worked with her, got a manufactured home installed earlier this year, and to be able to hand the key to her was an incredible feeling.

And I was really proud not only of that moment, but North Carolina was the first state to get our federally supported housing program up and running of any state impacted by Hurricane Helene, faster than any state after a major hurricane in over a decade.

We were the first state to get our environmental grants to local governments and water systems to do resilience work on their water systems.

We just did announce that last week, $280 million, faster than any other state that was impacted by Helene.

And so when I'm out West and I see how hard people are working to get their businesses opened or to get a job or get their home rebuilt, I want us to be working just as hard and with as much urgency and drive as they are.

- Go back to the DMV for a moment, if you would.

I have sat with many governors in my career and they've talked about the same problems.

Maybe those problems manifest differently than they do today, but they're there.

Why does it take so long to fix something, granted that is massive, but one would think, and I'm sure maybe you've thought from time to time, just fix it, right?

It's a little more complicated though.

- It is.

The root of the problem is we're a growing state.

We're the third fastest growing state in the country by population.

So we were at 7 million people and we had a certain number of DMV examiners.

We're now at 11 million people.

We had the same number of DMV examiners.

Now there are things that we can do to speed up processes and move more work online so you can achieve efficiencies and productivity of each examiner.

But at a certain point, there has to be enough people serving behind the desk to meet the flow of people coming through the line.

I wanna thank the General Assembly.

They've been a very good partner with the state in our addressing the DMV.

They gave us those 64 new examiners, 64 of whom were at that graduation ceremony I was at earlier today.

They gave us the authority to move the second renewal of a driver's license to an online renewal rather than having to come into the office.

And in the first two months since they gave us that authority, 80,000 North Carolinians have taken advantage of that, which is fantastic for them because they can just renew their license online.

They don't have to go into the office and wait in line.

But it's also great for everybody else who did have to go into the office because now they're not having to wait behind 80,000 people in line till it's their turn.

So being creative, working in a bipartisan fashion, developing new innovations on training to get people from the day they're hired to the office behind the desk faster.

There are just so many little steps along the way we can take to speed this up.

But there was such a backlog in demand, it is going to take months and months and months till our capacity to meet the daily demand meets the natural flow of what the daily demand is 'cause there's so many other people who are waiting because they've been wanting to get served for so long.

- You're thanking the General Assembly.

You talked about a bipartisan effort.

You knew when you were elected on election night or maybe the next day, what the status of the General Assembly was going to be, what you're going to be up against.

Already some fierce battles happening and a lot of work getting done on a daily basis as well.

What's the toughest battle right now?

Is it Medicaid?

- I would say it's the budget generally.

North Carolina's legislature is the only General Assembly legislature in the entire country that has not passed a budget.

49 other states have a budget and we don't.

Now we're able to keep operating unlike the federal government because state law says that every agency can operate under the previous year's budget, but we're making no new investments in teachers.

Teachers today are earning less on a real basis for the same work that they did last year when we are already among the lowest paid teachers in the country.

That is just absolutely unacceptable.

We need to be paying our teachers.

We need to pay our state law enforcement.

They are low paid.

Our correctional officers, they are low paid.

All of our public servants.

We need, to your point, to fully fund Medicaid.

We have not done so, which creates a real risk at the end of the year that if you look at what the spend rate is, just natural spend rate, compared to how much we have in the account, we're going to run out of money in April or May.

That would be an incredible disaster.

Obviously our General Assembly must pass a budget.

I am ready.

I'm at the table to sit with them and work through these issues whenever they're ready.

And I continue to call on them to do this work.

Not only in this interview today, but I called them back into session in November and they refused to come.

They were supposed to be in session this week and they didn't show up.

And so I want them to know, I want the state to know, I am ready to get to work.

They just need to come join me.

- Do you have executive power to go ahead and move this forward?

- I don't have budgetary authority to just move things around however I think is best.

I think that the state should give the governor more ability to respond to emergencies, but the legislature does not see fit to make that happen.

- As of this taping today, just yesterday, Senator Berger was in our studios talking about progress that has been made and also where it stalled.

And from his perspective, one of the things he talked about was saying, I saw the potential of where we are today 10 years ago when I said, we're not ready to do this.

And he said, I was right.

How does that fall on you?

- In terms of expanding Medicaid?

- Yes.

- Well, I disagree with him.

I think that we should have expanded Medicaid when we had the first opportunity back in 2011 or 2012, whenever that first became available.

And the failure to do so caused a lot of human suffering because there are people who did not have health insurance and could not go see a doctor who got sick.

Some of them died, whereas if they'd had health insurance, which by the way is paid 90%, it used to be paid 100% by the federal government.

Now it's 90%.

We'd be a much healthier state.

I understand that he wanted to try to get cost and the control and he went to manage Medicaid.

And if that's what it took to get him to the point where he was prepared to say, yes, I'm grateful that he did.

I appreciate Governor Cooper's effort.

I appreciate Senator Berger, our former speaker Moore.

Finally, they got it done two years ago.

And because they got it done and finally expanded Medicaid here in North Carolina, 700,000 of our neighbors, that's a lot of people.

They have health insurance today when they didn't two years ago.

So when they do get sick, instead of just trying to deal with it themselves, home remedy or the internet, they can go to a doctor and have a diagnosis or get a treatment.

It may be something very serious.

They are healthier, they're living longer and rural hospitals are much stronger in North Carolina because of the decision they made to expand Medicaid.

We've had more rural hospital closures than almost any other state in the country over the last 15 years, because we had not expanded Medicaid.

More people in rural areas disproportionately, they don't have health insurance.

So the Medicaid expansion has disproportionately helped our rural areas, which means that those rural hospitals, which are struggling are much more fiscally strong.

- You appear confident that a compromise can be worked out here, but let's say for a moment it's not.

And we hit that time in the spring where that money is gone, what happens?

- It would be a disaster.

If they don't fully fund Medicaid, it would be a disaster.

It would mean that providers wouldn't be paid for services they had provided.

Many of them would be forced out of business to shut their doors.

- So they would stop providing basically.

- To the extent that a provider has a discretion which patient mix to cover, they would just stop covering Medicaid patients, which means those folks no longer have access.

Or if they were really dependent on Medicaid as a payer, then they would just close their doors.

And here's the thing is that obviously hurts people who are on Medicaid, because they don't get access to care any longer, but it also hurts somebody in a rural community who has a private payer, private insurance, because you may have a way to pay for your care, but if the doctor that you go to has closed their door because they can't afford to stay open, you don't have anywhere to go either.

- Here's a question you and I haven't talked about, and we've known each other a number of years, but we haven't talked about it because of the timing.

You spent eight years as Attorney General dealing with criminal justice issues, law enforcement issues, and overnight you have to become prepared to take on Medicaid expansion, Hurricane Helene relief, the DMV, any number of issues that are outside that purview of just criminal justice.

How did you make the transition so quickly?

- One thing that really helps to prepare for this position is to be Attorney General, because as Attorney General, I was the lawyer for the entire state.

So I had working experience with the Department of Corrections, with the Department of Health and Human Services, with the Department of Commerce.

And so I had visibility into the full of state government, but to your fundamental question, it is a different job.

And your view, your visibility gets so much broader when you're in the position of governor.

One way you do it is you bring a damn good team with you.

And I've got a great team, both in my office supporting me, but also in our cabinets.

We have 13 cabinets, all 11 of the ones that are required for legislative confirmation got through.

And I wanna thank the Senate for that.

And they're talented people.

They are really good at their jobs.

And so when you have good people, David, you know this with you, your place of work, good people can make a whole organization shine.

- No question about that.

Okay, let's shift for a moment, talk about education.

You mentioned teachers earlier.

Education for a workforce, we know is essential and fundamental in what happens in this state.

And yet, there's always a struggle around education.

There's never enough money for education.

And I remember asking some of your predecessors this question, is there a magic number where if we were spending per pupil that we know we've crossed a threshold to say we're really making progress and the future is bright?

- I don't have a specific answer for you, but what I can tell you is being 48th in the country and per pupil investment is not a recipe for long-term success.

There's been woeful underfunding in public education, K through 12.

Our teachers are among the lowest paid.

I just saw a statistic said we're 48th in the country in teacher pay.

Starting teacher pay, we're the second lowest in the entire Southeast.

It used to be in the '70s, '80s, '90s, we were at the top in the Southeast.

We are no longer.

Good friend of ours, son, graduated from Appalachian State a year or two ago, wants to be a teacher, is a teacher.

Wanted to teach in North Carolina, is now in South Carolina.

Earning more money in South Carolina as a teacher than in North Carolina.

It's honestly an embarrassment.

We should be the top of the Southeast.

And I proposed a budget to the General Assembly that would make North Carolina number one in starting teacher pay within two years.

So it's not a matter of there's not enough money.

It's a matter of what are your priorities?

Where are you allocating the funds that are available?

And unfortunately, the General Assembly's priorities have been wrong on this issue.

- And why is it a struggle though?

Why does it appear to be such a struggle?

Administration after administration, no matter who's in charge on Jones Street.

- I think that if we had a General Assembly that prioritized investing in our people, making sure that our K-12 schools were the best, that we had even better community colleges, greater universities, then they would be deciding to allocate the amount of revenues that are available differently.

We have the lowest corporate income tax in the entire country of states with a corporate income tax, 42 states.

We have a personal income tax that is low and declining.

There are these pre-programmed tax cuts that are in the budget that will put North Carolina at a $2.3 billion shortfall in two years.

This fiscal cliff means that take where we are today, where we're 48th in teacher pay, we're at the bottom in highway trooper pay, we're at the bottom in correctional office pay.

All these things we're already under-investing.

They will want us to have $2.3 billion out of the budget just to keep up with inflation and population growth.

That is a disaster, and it's totally unnecessary.

Let's just keep the tax rates where they are today, particularly with the uncertainty coming from the federal government, which is pushing more of traditional federal expenses, whether it's on Medicaid.

They're cutting a trillion dollars out of Medicaid, the feds are, or SNAP benefits.

They're cutting hundreds of millions of dollars out of these food benefits that serve 1.4 million North Carolinians who don't get enough food to eat.

Emergency relief, disaster recovery money.

There's less money coming from the feds than there used to.

The idea that we're going to just continue to cut our revenues when we don't have enough money as it is, is fiscally irresponsible.

It is imprudent, and I urge the General Assembly to reconsider that.

- Let's take a look at urban North Carolina versus, not versus, but compared with rural North Carolina.

I was at a dinner last night talking with several people from Eastern North Carolina, and we talked about how the struggles are different from region to region in the state.

I know there's always an attempt to close the gap.

- That's right.

- Can it be closed?

- I believe that wherever you live in the state, you should be able to build your future.

You should be able to raise your family.

You should be able to get a good job, or if you want to start a small business, to be able to start a small business.

What I don't want is for people to have to leave the place they want to call home to go somewhere else because the grass is greener there.

So there are things we can do.

We can have good healthcare in rural North Carolina.

It's very hard to recruit a business to a community that doesn't have a hospital.

That's one reason why Medicaid expansion was so important is because it stabilized healthcare delivery in rural North Carolina.

We can have strong public schools to show that we have the best workforce available.

We do have the largest manufacturing workforce in the entire Southeast, and we have to make sure that our young people are prepared for changes in the economy.

There's a great new facility in Wilson for Johnson & Johnson.

They're gonna be doing lifesaving medication there.

That's a new industrial sector for Eastern North Carolina.

We usually think of biotech and life sciences for the Research Triangle Park, but we're now starting to see more and more of this happening in other parts of the state.

But they have to have, these companies have to have confidence that the kids coming through our schools have the skills to be able to do this work because it's complex manufacturing.

- I know we're only wrapping up the first year of a four-year term, but have you begun to think, or do you and your staff and cabinet think of, what will success look like as we go from year to year on these issues, particularly of trying to close that gap?

- Yeah, we're always trying to figure out what can we do in the next six months, the next 12 months, to increase more economic opportunity for folks.

We had the best job year in the history of the state, 34,000 jobs announced.

And if you look at where those jobs were, they were in every corner.

We had 1,400 in Eastern North Carolina.

We had over 1,000 in the mountains.

Of course, there was some great concentration in the triad because we had Jet Zero, this incredible, innovative aerospace company that's gonna build a blended body-wing airplane in Greensboro.

That was the biggest win we've ever had as a state.

Also, the Toyota plant is in the triad as well in Rockingham County.

That's up and running, over 2,000, 2,200 jobs on their path to over 5,000 jobs.

So we're doing good things.

We just need to keep at it and make sure that more people have an opportunity.

- I'm curious of how you, when you look for people in those key positions in your cabinet and your staff, how do you convey your expectations to them?

- I make it clear what my motivation is.

It's about delivering opportunity to people and more people.

- And it's never enough.

- It's never enough, but you don't, you strive for perfection, but you achieve excellence.

And what I want is for people to be ambitious in their goal.

I want, I always look, when I'm considering who I want to hire, is what's driving them.

Is it in their heart?

Because the people who work, they could often make more money in the private sector, but that's not what's driving them.

What's driving them is this notion of serving other people, helping people to have a shot at a better life.

So find out what their motivation is.

They gotta be hardworking, they have to be smart, and they have to be able to just get it done.

And if you have those skills and talents and motivations, there's a place for you.

- You're obviously enjoying what you're doing in this role.

You're one of 50 in this country in a very important position.

Your family has been dedicated to public service and ideas to push people forward as long as I've known you.

How do you find that place within your well to keep going when you're up against incredible odds of time?

- It's just, it's who I am.

It's how I was raised.

My parents raised my brother, sister, and me to find where you can make a difference and then go do it.

Every person has different interests, skills, talents.

So there's not one path for everybody, but find what is your path, but make sure when you choose your path, it's about other people.

And that is just how I was raised.

It's core to my faith.

In my faith, trying to find a way to make a difference in the community around you, it's core to who we are.

And to me, it's like nobody asks the fish why they swim in water because they just swim in water.

To me, it's not anything I choose to do.

It's just, it's who I am because it's how I was raised.

- Governor Josh Stein, we thank you for taking time out of a very busy schedule to talk with us.

The best in 2026.

- May it be a wonderful year for us all.

Thank you, David.

- Thank you.

And thank you.

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