
January 10, 2025
1/10/2025 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
NC Supreme Court race heads to court, and NC legislature convenes. Plus, a new WNC recovery office.
NC’s Supreme Court race election results head to the NC Supreme Court; NC’s General Assembly begins a new session; Gov. Josh Stein announces a recovery office for western NC; and potential changes to the State Health Plan. Panelists: Dawn Vaughan (News & Observer), Brooke Medina (John Locke Foundation), PR consultant Pat Ryan and former State Senator Mike Woodard. Host: PBS NC’s Kelly McCullen.

January 10, 2025
1/10/2025 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
NC’s Supreme Court race election results head to the NC Supreme Court; NC’s General Assembly begins a new session; Gov. Josh Stein announces a recovery office for western NC; and potential changes to the State Health Plan. Panelists: Dawn Vaughan (News & Observer), Brooke Medina (John Locke Foundation), PR consultant Pat Ryan and former State Senator Mike Woodard. Host: PBS NC’s Kelly McCullen.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- [Narrator] North Carolina legislators convened the 2025 legislative session.
The Riggs Griffin State Supreme Court case appears headed to the State Supreme Court.
This is "State Lines."
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[gentle music] ♪ - Welcome back to "State Lines."
I'm Kelly McCullen.
Joining me today a great group.
Public relations consultant, Pat Ryan is sitting right next to me in the hot seat.
Don Vaughn of the News and Observer, and Brooke Medina of John Locke Foundation in seats two and three.
And on the end, former state senator, now civilian, Mike Woodard.
Mike, good to have you on in your new phase of your life.
Looking forward to your context with all this going on.
- I'll look relaxed and just at ease.
- Are you going to miss the Senate or was it time to go?
- Oh, I'll miss it a lot.
You know, checking in this week and just seeing what's going on.
- Well, welcome to our side of the ledger, sir.
Federal Judge says the North Carolina Supreme Court should be deciding the fate of those 60,000 challenge ballots in the Allison Riggs Jefferson Griffin State Supreme Court race.
Incumbent Supreme Court Justice Riggs holds a 730 some odd vote lead over the Republican Griffin.
You see them there.
But Griffin is suing over ballots as legal teams argument should be disqualified for not possessing required voter identification information like partial social security numbers.
Justice Riggs has declared victory, but the Supreme Court and a four two decision delayed certification, as it says, he wants to collect more information towards making a decision.
I guess that makes sense, Dawn.
It slows everything down when you go to court.
- That and it makes things last a long time.
Yeah, I think a lot of court reporters have talked about how this is between the state Supreme Court and maybe the Federal Appeals Court.
This could last months, years, be studied by law students for years to come.
It's gonna be a while.
- Brooke, about those 60,000 ballots, is it to throw out 60,000 or is it to review 60,000 ballots in your opinion as you analyze this rather complex issue?
- Yeah, it's to review them, not necessarily wholesale throw out.
I think that there are, it's important to note that within those 60,000 ballots, there are three different sort of categories within that, and one of them actually does have to do with voter.
Those that who have voted already, but are foreign nationals or live outside of the United States, and even have never designated that they intend to move to North Carolina at all.
So those are questionable ballots to be sure.
But the North Carolina Supreme Court and Justice Deitz dissent, he noted that even if we are going to address those ballot issues, what we really need to do is do that outside of the election framework itself, because that just politically charges it in a way that maybe it shouldn't be.
- And Deitz is a Republican, by the way, everyone wants to make this just a straight partisan issue.
But Mike, ballots, everyone wants every legal ballot counted.
I don't know of anyone, Republican or Democrat that said count illegal ballots.
So what's the deal here?
If these ballots are incomplete, if they don't comply with state law, what should be done?
- You know, I think back to paraphrase, the old Wendy's hamburger commercial, where's the fraud?
That seems to be the suggestion here is, have we heard or seen allegations of fraud?
Any evidence of fraud?
I just haven't seen it.
I just don't know what the issue is.
I mean, even the chairman of the Election Integrity Network rejected this argument when it was first brought up back in the summer and called it voter suppression and 100% certain to fail in court.
And Justice Deitz, I thought had a fairly stinging dissent, you know, he said it will lead to doubts about the finality of vote counts following election, encourage novel legal challenges, which this one certainly is, that greatly delay certification of results and fuel an already troubling decline in public faith in elections.
It's pretty strong language from a Republican in his dissent.
- If you're a local, you ran local races and state senate races, they're all regional.
If you were looking at this and you lost a close race and you think you could challenge a few ballots and swing 50, 75 votes in some counties, should you do it?
- I mean, we want the votes to be legal.
We want them to be right.
But in this argument, you're saying that, and there's some foreign nationals, but they're also challenging votes of citizens who have voted for decades.
Justice Riggs, his own parents, are in the mix.
Some elected officials who have registered and ran and were elected to office because they lived in that district.
Are they disqualified now?
- Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the bulk of the ballots that are under consideration here are being challenged or questioned because somebody didn't put in their last or their social security number on the registration form or part of their license ID number or something to that effect- - Or phone number changed.
- Right.
And I think that everybody acknowledges that those are actually things that are required to be included on your registration form.
The question I think for everybody here is, "Okay, but what's the remedy to that?"
And is it appropriate to disqualify those folks who probably through no fault of their own, just didn't add a couple of numbers to a registration form?
- Pat, you came off the Republican team and started your own business.
What do other Republicans think of this strategy of looking through the ballots to say, these aren't complete ballots yet is there a difference between making a mistake on a ballot and committing fraud with a ballot?
- Yeah, I think there's a separation between purely legal arguments and everything else, which includes the political fallout from those arguments, how this looks to the public, how it may, as Judge [indistinct] said, how it may impact trust and confidence in the court and in the electoral process.
On the pure legal front, again, I think everybody acknowledges that the law requires that information to be included on those ballots.
Right?
On the everything else front, how far is it appropriate for a court to go in remedying that problem up to and including throwing out the results of one election, which by the way, raises practical questions of, well, what about every other election that people whose votes may be tossed out?
Are they tossed out for every other election too?
Or how does this all sort of play out and what's fair?
- I mean, it's a long ballot, so that's a lot of other races at play too.
- So I've made a prediction on the show before and I've been wrong often, so I hesitate to do this again.
But I think there's, in my opinion, I wouldn't be surprised if in a few weeks from now, I know you mentioned this, may it drag out for months.
I wouldn't be surprised if in a few weeks from now, this is sort of all behind us and we are all moving on with life.
But I may be wrong.
- [indistinct] to God's ears.
- North Carolina's legislators came back to Raleigh to convene the 2025 session Wednesday.
They might have taken a shorter break than the high school and college kids, Mike.
Just a very brief break for the holidays.
Legislative business officially ramps up by the end of January, but the new lawmakers were sworn in, have moved into their offices for the most part.
Senate Republicans are led by Phil Berger.
Pat, correct me if I'm wrong, longest serving senate leader of that type in America, so country congrats on that, in the country, yes.
And Senate Democrats new leader is Wake County, Sidney Batch, who's on our show semi-regularly.
She's gonna be a lot busier now running that caucus.
Over in the House, Destin Hall's our new house speaker and representative Robert Reives, will continue as the House Democratic leader.
Dawn, back to you.
You know, a nice mix, experienced leadership in both chambers.
Both parties and new and new folks- - Yeah, it switches stuff up.
On opening day, I spent my time in the House and, you know, new Speaker, Dustin Hall, gave a speech kinda talking about what he wants and, you know, talking about himself, too.
Of course, former Speaker Moore was there, 'cause, you know, gotta have the state/federal crossover.
Senator Tillis, who was former speaker was there, former Speaker Brewbaker was there.
Something interesting is that the Senate, or not the Senate.
The House pro tem, the number two for Hall, is Mitch Setzer, who has actually been in the House, I wanna say more than 25 years.
So, sometimes it's the long game.
You're, you know, you're in there forever and then you move up to leadership where Hall is 37 years old.
So, his trajectory has been a little faster, faster than others.
But it's interesting the shift of people in there now, you know, thirties, forties, fifties and up, or I guess, Berger's in his sixties, I think, as far as leadership goes, so.
- You really wanna age someone on regional television?
- Okay, he's seventies now?
- I will say this, Brooke- - It's an interesting mix, I think.
It's good to switch stuff up.
- Mitchell Setzer's been there as long as I was covering the legislature.
He's the most entertaining House Speaker when they would hand him the gavel.
It was just a hoot to watch him preside because it seems like everyone does like Mitchell Setzer, and we'll see him in action as this two-year session unfolds.
But, Brooke, what do you make of balancing, you know, a retirement-age leader on one side with all that experience, the most in America right now, versus the 37-year-old rural lawyer who really has worked hard to earn that Speakership?
No doubt about it.
- Yeah, I think that that is a good combination in a lotta ways with the wisdom that comes from age, hopefully, as well as the sort of innovative approaches to different things that come from youth.
And I think it's interesting because in some ways it mirrors what we're seeing at the federal level with soon-to-be, or, yeah, soon-to-be inaugurated Trump and Vice President Vance.
- Hmm.
Mike, you're now are not in a caucus.
You can shoot straight with this.
Let's talk about Sidney Batch.
[sighs] She bumps Dan Blue out of the way and it's her turn now, and the caucus agreed with that.
What's the take on that when a leader, he didn't fall, he just got non-elected and didn't choose to run against her.
What happens in that dynamic?
Is it because you stay too long, or is it because there's frustration in the caucus ranks that they wanna change?
- You know, Senator Batch is absolutely one of the smartest colleagues I've worked with, knows the issues well, brings a breath of fresh air and some new energy to the job.
I think you'll see a shift in leadership all through the caucus.
Committee assignments came yesterday and it was interesting to see a shift in some committees.
You know, some of us older guys who've left have opened up leadership vacuums on some issues.
So it'll be a chance for younger legislators to step upfront and show what they've got, whether it's in the House with Speaker Hall and his leadership team, Senator Batch and her leadership team.
So, it's a breath of fresh air and some new ideas and some new energy.
- May I ask, is there a peak on someone serving in, I would put in the state Senate?
Is there a peak on how long, no matter what age you are, that you serve, at which point after that you get diminishing returns in terms of influence or results as a legislator?
- I don't know, let's ask Phil Berger.
I mean, you know, and before him, Marc Basnight.
I mean, you know, two pro tems who served the longest in state history and those guys were influential.
Senator Berger still is, and Senator Marc Basnight, when he was pro tem, influential to the day he left.
So, you know, the place runs on seniority, no question about that.
And, so, I look at the leadership now, Senator Berger's the OG, he's been there the longest.
He's kept status quo pretty much with his caucus.
And you can count on it being a very disciplined caucus as it has been for the last 14 years under his leadership, a little more open with these younger leaders in Batch and Hall.
- Yeah, and I mean, on the Republican side with women, Amy, Senator Amy Galey, who's been on the show before, she's whipped now, which is a different, a shift in leadership over there.
But Berger's younger than, than Blue, I think by maybe several years.
- Few years, yeah.
- And it's different than, I mean, like, Trump is elderly, Biden is elderly.
As far as, if you look at, like, that far end when you're like around 80 versus 70, you know, that decade is a big decade as far as like, you know, where people are career wise and everything.
And I feel like Berger's pretty versatile.
- Yeah.
Well, so I, I may be 80 before I see my favorite football team, The New York Giants, win the Super Bowl again, so I've jumped on the bandwagon of the Detroit Lions and they have two running backs that they call Thunder and lightning.
And in my opinion, that's a good metaphor for Senator Berger, who in my opinion is the Thunder, Right?
And then Destin Hall, who as we've said, brings a lot of sort of new energy and excitement into the other side of the chamber is the Lightning, right?
And I actually was struck by, I dunno if it was speaker Hall's opening remarks or what, but he spoke a lot about his roots.
I think he said he was the first in his family to go to college.
- And none of them were lawyers, he mentioned that too.
- Right, and he said, you know- - He's a lawyer, so I mean, that doesn't- - Right, but he didn't come from a family of college graduates and lawyers, he was raised by his grandmother, so.
- And he's the only one who sort of went back home after leaving to go to school.
And I think that's an interesting and really important sort of priority to be, when we talk about rural North Carolina.
- What's the best way to approach Phil Berger?
He's in his seventies, he's this leader, and here comes a 30-something house speaker full of energy, and youth, and inexperience, and you sit down with him, How do you handle Phil Berger to influence him?
- I don't think you should look at it from a position of automatically the House and the Senate are gonna be sort of adversarial.
And so how do you handle Phil Berger?
How do you get beyond, you know, the senate's priorities or the house's priorities?
I think both Senator Berger and Speaker Hall are fairly ideological and philosophical thinkers.
And I think, again, I don't know that, but I think they'll find quite a bit of common ground, and hopefully a common path forward for both chambers.
- Well think it'll be House versus Senate, it'll come up pretty soon, as soon as medical marijuana comes up again and soon as casinos come up.
- Well, there are gonna be some small policy issues that divide.
- And a budget, Pat, you know, the budget didn't come so easily.
- Spend number, the amount of raises.
- But I think that they'll have a great partnership.
- Don't forget that old adage.
The other partie's the opposition, the other chamber is the enemy.
So, and that always plays out.
- We won't beat up on you, Pat, but it is a good question, it's gonna be interesting to see.
I'm really looking forward to the 2025 session.
Well, moving to the executive branch, one of Governor Josh Stein's first moves is to create what's called a Recovery Office for Western North Carolina.
That current Office of Resilience and Recovery created by Governor Cooper will not be managing Hurricane Helene recovery.
They're being told they'll focus on serving Eastern North Carolina hurricane victims, you know, from those storms that happened back last decade, Mike.
- We have got to do this work right.
The people of West North Carolina have stepped up for each other in phenomenal ways.
the way they responded to the storm in the first couple of months, providing food, providing clothing, providing heating sources.
We as a state, we as a nation, have to be there for them the way that they have been there for each other.
- There you go, Josh Stein on national television.
So he splits this office up, didn't close it, but they don't have a role in the going forward.
- I think it's a smart move on Governor Stein's part, that Resiliency Office down east in core, as we call it, down on Jones Street.
Has not done the job for any number of reasons.
They've gotta finish the job down east.
A fresh start with the folks in western North Carolina I think was a very smart move, and it's gotten widespread support from legislators and residents up there.
I think Governor Stein made some very savvy appointments to lead this office.
Former Wake County Commissioner Matt Calabria, who's been in local government for 10 years, smart guy, tapping Holly Jones, longtime elected official in western North Carolina, Buncombe County, is joining this team.
Looks like a really good team, and we're gonna count on them to help lead the effort to get that $53 billion of repair underway and keep that going.
And let the Incor Group finish the job in eastern North Carolina.
- As a senator, I remember, we were covering a lot of issues for two years.
No one ever discussed this Office of Resiliency, not building any houses, not getting much done in eastern North Carolina, yet it pops up in November.
As a senator, were you hearing reports about how that office was running and handling funds or just not dispersing funds?
- Well, I don't know.
I mean, there were plenty of oversight hearings on this, and there were some legislative colleagues of mine who were very critical of that office openly in some of these hearings.
The last oversight hearing where Incor came to present, you had legislators looking the former inquiry director right in the eye and telling her to resign on the spot.
- [Kelly] And she did.
- And she did within a couple of days of that last hearing.
So yeah, there was, I've heard plenty of complaints about issues in that office.
And again, we can debate how they got there.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
But they've got a big job to do.
- Brooke, this is an easy one for John Locke.
They look at government operations, so don't beat up on Incor too badly.
Let's look forward with this new Office of Western Recovery.
What should be expected by taxpayers who aren't in western North Carolina?
What should be expected by people who live in western North Carolina who need help?
- Yeah, well, the cost of Helene alone is about $59 billion.
And so it's a massive undertaking for any department.
So it's not like it's going to be an easy job, but there does have to be accountability.
And I do think that this new department that Stein has set up can learn many, many things from the mistakes of Incor.
And I think that it certainly will.
I would imagine that they'll be self-aware enough to do that.
A lot of the recommendations that we made at the John Locke Foundation, Stein seems to have implemented there as he put together in NC GROW.
And so we're looking forward to this being a useful department that actually does help North Carolinians get back in their homes.
- Dawn, I will say, not to peep outta the Republicans for creating a new office.
So we do expand bureaucracy at least temporarily.
- Well, I think they need, it's funny how the acronym, nobody likes that other acronym and the job that they've done anymore.
So you gotta start fresh with something else.
And one thing I noted about new Speaker Dustin Hall, is that this is a big thing for him.
It was only a month ago when they were in session before.
But even talking to reporters after session on Wednesday about what, I mean, he's called it a disgrace, what's happened with eastern North Carolina and wanting absolutely to make sure that that does not happen in western North Carolina.
And I think that obviously, it's good for everybody, both parties, and of course, the people that live there, to get this right from immediately, now.
They have the federal money now, Hall said that like now that Congress allocated that money, but there's still lots to do.
And Hall said that he wants to use the phrase mini budget, if you remember that from 2019, budget fight, for wanting to put something out, not wait for the big summer budget battle, and get more money out to western North Carolina soon.
- Pat, we gotta have money to eastern North Carolina.
There's a lot of people live out there.
And it's one thing to say, don't treat eastern North Carolina, the western North Carolina, the way Eastern was treated, eastern still hasn't been treated.
- Yeah, I worked for three years inside one of these programs after Hurricane Sandy for the New York City Mayor's office.
I could talk to you all for hours about my thoughts on it.
I care a lot about it and I have spoken to people for hours about it before, I don't think they like that very much.
But my quick rundown on this, there is no office, whether it's called NCOR or NC Grow or what have you, there is no office that will meet any of our reasonable expectations of success because the federal process for the last 220 years has been broken, there's been this constant friction and tension between getting money out quickly versus making sure that there's no fraud in getting that money out.
The two are polar opposites.
They cannot coexist.
And if you go back and read congressional records from the 1830s, which I've done, they were arguing about the same exact tension point and it still has not been resolved.
And so there is no program that can be successful or fast under the current set of federal rules.
- Don't be so quick to throw rocks at state officials trying to offload federal money into the communities.
- Yes, I mean, it seems that NCOR was sort of, uniquely a failure among all other programs that will eventually be, in my opinion, failures.
So there's a spectrum there in how being super slow versus slow, but yes, to some degree, there is no state run program that's federally funded that can meet any reasonable measure of success, right now.
- Final topic tonight.
North Carolina Treasurer, Brad Briner, is focusing on the state health plan's physical health.
The state health plan is facing a $507 million debt for 2025, that could grow to nearly $1.4 billion by 2027.
Treasurer Briner says higher premiums are needed, not additional legislative funding, but he did express understanding for efforts by previous administrations to hold those monthly premiums flat for state employees.
But it's time to recognize inflation.
Pat, we're gonna send this to you.
You represent Aetna who manages the state health plan.
Does Aetna have a role in the policy decisions of whether Brad Briner says higher premiums versus ask the legislature for more funding?
- Yeah, great question, they do not.
So the third party administrator, which right now is Aetna, simply administers the plan.
They have their provider network.
They handle the claims that come in, et cetera.
All the premium and benefit decisions are made by the state health plan board of trustees.
I think this issue is larger than the state health plan.
I don't think it's talked about enough that North Carolina, according to Forbes, has the highest health costs of any other state in the entire country.
And of course, health insurance premiums for the state health plan or other large employers are just entirely a function of how much it costs for somebody to get a procedure done.
And so, you mentioned inflation.
I think it's much more than that.
I think until there is some sort of effort to keep health costs themselves in check, the state health plan will continue seeing these problems as will every other employer in the state that has a health insurance plan for their employees.
- Dawn, the teachers groups jumped out very quickly this week to say, hold up, you're not giving teachers pay raises.
State employees salaries aren't keeping up with inflation, but yet we're going to inflation track healthcare premiums.
What are the staller benefits of public service?
- Well, I mean, my company's open enrollment is in November.
I think that's as soon as they say, like, you know, if anything's higher, it's like, wait, what?
And you better gimme a raise.
So I think that's like a natural response to the idea of higher premiums.
It's interesting.
This is what Briner's coming out with first.
You know, like, I don't know if this will show how he will be treasurer versus former treasurer of Falwell, but, I don't know, like, nobody is gonna like it no matter what you do, I think it maybe comes down to like, why does Brier specifically and the plan in the office think this is what has to happen now if that's the only option of what you can do.
It's obviously gonna be brought up when it's budget raises time.
- Brooke, I interviewed both candidates, Democrat and Republican, I will say this, that's the one race for Council of State, where the two gentlemen from their points of view, were remarkably in sync inside of one, instead of one being a Republican and Democrat.
They both said the previous administration was way too conservative in all aspects of investing.
And now Briner comes out with the health plan, $500 million, should the state step in and bail that out?
It's not even a bailout.
Should they just keep their fund whole or stick it to the state employees?
That sounds so bad.
I'm a state employee and I know that sounds bad, but let employee premiums rise to meet inflation.
Let's do it a nice bureaucratic, put it that way.
- Well, I think if we're considering levering more costs on everyday North Carolinians, out the gate, the real problem is that it's Atrium Healthcare has, I think about 8,000 liens on homes of North Carolinians across the state.
Dale Falwell said that this is a healthcare cartel here in North Carolina.
There are a lot of problems.
There are some solutions at the legislature where they can actually help decrease costs by rolling back certificate of need, which is essentially a government permission slip that's required to be able to have an operating MRI machine in certain district.
It's a very archaic law, but it drives up the demand or it quells the supply while there's still large demand.
And so that means higher healthcare costs.
And so, I think there are some solutions that we can hopefully take.
It's still gonna be painful, but hopefully we can save state employees from having to pay significantly higher premiums.
- Got about a half minute, Mike.
Is deregulation the answer?
If high prices are really driving this, then how do we, that's the billion dollar question.
How do we do this?
- All of these have many different levers and there is some deregulation and I knew our friend from John Locke had to bring up CON so that will never escape me, I guess, as an issue.
But Pat's right.
I think we've gotta look at this holistically.
I just don't see how, it feels like that old song, second verse same as the first, but throwing this right all on state employees I think is a real hard pill to swallow.
I think that the men and women down on John Street have got to roll their sleeves and participate in this and it's gotta be a better approach to get cost of healthcare under control.
- Gotta run, Mike.
Thank you guys very much.
Email me your thoughts, statelines@pbsnc.org.
I'm Kelly McCullen.
Thank you for watching.
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