March 17, 2023

- [Donna] This week, the North Carolina Supreme Court hears two cases that could impact the 2024 elections.

Medicaid expansion advances in the state legislature and the Governor creates a new executive office to address violent crime.

This is "State Lines."

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[dramatic music] ♪ - Hi, I'm Donna King, welcome to "State Lines."

Joining me today is political strategist, Morgan Jackson.

Colin Campbell of WUNC Radio and freelance political reporter, Brian Anderson.

Thanks for coming.

I'm glad you're all here.

We got a lot to get into today.

Let's start with, this week the North Carolina legislature Advanced House Bill 76 to expand the Federal Medicaid Entitlement program in the state, to likely more than 600,000 people.

A final vote is expected this coming week in the North Carolina House.

If it's passed, it would go to Governor Cooper.

Medicaid expansion has been a priority for the governor since taking office.

Let's get into the details of the bill as it came back from the Senate over to the House.

There have been some changes.

Colin, fill me in a little bit on where we are.

- Yeah, so we're now waiting, I think the final vote in the House will be coming up sometime next week and that'll send this to the Governor's desk.

Obviously Cooper has been pushing for this for many, many years, so he's expected to sign it.

This past week it went through the Senate and it really felt almost anti-climactic.

The debates were very short.

There was only, I think two Republicans in the Senate who voted against expanding Medicaid in North Carolina.

This was kind of a surprise for all the partisan debates we've held over over this for, I guess, over a decade at this point.

To just sort of quietly push it through the legislative process is kind of bizarre.

- Sure, sure.

So do you think that all those things were hashed out off the floor and out of committee?

- Yeah, I mean this was an issue where the various healthcare entities, the insurance companies, the hospitals, the medical profession had to figure out their disagreements over some of the regulatory elements of this.

And once that got dealt with behind closed doors and everyone was singing from the same hymn book then the House and Senate could go ahead with it.

And you know, you don't hear nearly as much division as you have in the past.

- Sure, sure.

Brian, what do you think?

Do you think that the issues on access and you know CON reform, certificate-of-need reform, all of those things were resolved for members?

- I mean, it wasn't resolved for the Senate, 'cause they didn't get everything they wanted.

They got a few carve outs for certificate-of-need laws.

They didn't get advanced care nurses to have the freedoms, - [Donna] The SAVE act, sure - that they would like to have had.

But this is ultimately certainly a win for Governor Cooper.

He's happy that Medicaid expansion is gonna pass.

He would obviously like to have a standalone, straight clean bill.

This bill is contingent on the passage and enactment of a state budget and it's also contingent on staying around as long as the federal funding level is a 90% contribution.

- Okay.

So do you think that they'll be able to, as time goes on, what if that happens?

What if the federal government scales back what they're contributing?

- Well, then there's a process for Medicaid expansion to no longer be in North Carolina.

Sort of gets, sort of phased out, if you will.

But basically the federal government has to maintain that 90% contribution.

Certainly under this Joe Biden Administration we don't expect any changes to that.

- Sure, sure.

So Morgan, of course this has to be a huge victory for the Governor.

- Listen, it's a big deal for North Carolina.

Obviously the Governor's made this a top priority for the entire time he's been governor, but this is a huge deal for North Carolina.

We're not there yet.

We're still at the five yard line.

This is as Joe Biden would say, this is a BFD this week.

But I would tell you that, you know you're talking about 600,000 North Carolinians who are working, that now will have access to healthcare when this goes through.

And the big celebration will come the day that we enroll the first person.

I think one of the challenges with this bill, not only we talked about CON reform and things like that, but the hospital stabilization grants that coming from the federal government to help boost rural hospitals, help boost hospitals across all areas.

Because this is tied to the budget, North Carolina's actually gonna lose out on $1.8 billion from this fiscal year.

That if we can get somebody enrolled in Medicaid before June 30, North Carolina gets, these hospitals, especially these struggling hospitals, get 1.8 billion, which is a lot of money.

And they won't get it.

They won't get this calendar year.

They have access to it otherwise.

But again, really big deal for North Carolina.

It's a huge thing for rural hospitals.

It's injecting billions of dollars this Medicaid expansion will, in local economies around the state.

It's a really big deal.

- Sure.

Let's get back to this HASP fund.

That's what we were just talking about, that 1.8, wasn't that kind of the deciding factor that pulled over a lot of Republicans to this issue?

- It absolutely was and obviously they will receive HASP money in the out years.

But the way it's structured with the federal government if we would expand Medicaid and someone could be enrolled and it takes two to three months to get the process of somebody enrolled, you could access all of 2023 fiscal year, meaning going back to July 1, 2022.

And again, that's $1.8 billion that we won't get unless something changes and we can get this passed and somebody enrolled before the budget's passed.

- Sure, sure.

Tell me, we were talking about access was a huge part of this.

You know talking about making sure that card is worth more than the paper it's printed on.

You can actually get an appointment.

Doesn't impact people who are currently on the system getting care.

How are we gonna work through that process as we, you know expand Medicaid and get the system up and running?

- Well I think one of the things we talk about with Medicaid expansion has been so important over the years, is especially in rural North Carolina where you're losing access, hospitals are closing down and struggling.

You see primary care physicians, people having to drive an hour and a half to do that.

And part of that is because there's not enough money in these areas for doctors' practices to locate.

With Medicaid expansion, it boosts and gives people access to care in their own community.

And you're not having to drive 45 miles just to go see a primary care physician.

That's gonna create major differences and improvements in health outcomes for patients.

- All right, we'll be talking a lot about this, I'm sure, for the weeks to come.

Next up, Governor Roy Cooper signed an executive order this week at a press conference creating the Office of Violence Prevention within the Department of Public Safety.

Now, Cooper characterized it as sort of a clearinghouse to coordinate groups and policies to tackle growing violence in North Carolina communities.

He's also calling for red flag laws and universal background checks as gun control measures.

Now, you know the details of this, of course.

Share with us, tell us what this office is going to do.

- So this is a really important office and just as you mentioned in the lead up, it was something that is responding to the rise in violent crime, in gun violence.

And ultimately to try to create safer communities altogether.

This office will be able to take federal, state, and local resources and combine them and coordinate so that you have access to the best community violence prevention programs that are happening.

You can draw down federal money, which help fund a lot of these programs.

What we're seeing Donna is alarming out there.

Is that in North Carolina right now over the last several years due that increase in homicides and suicides among children, that gun violence is the leading cause of death for our children in North Carolina more so than automobile accidents which is what has been since people were driving cars.

And one of the things this is gonna do is to really focus on how we prevent that.

And that's everything from promoting gun safety, you know, the number of child deaths that could be prevented in North Carolina if we had proper gun safety for gun owners who are doing everything the right way but they need to secure these guns from their children.

You talked about red flag laws.

One of the things the governor is really pushing, we've gotta keep guns outta the hands of children, we gotta keep the guns outta hands of criminals, and those that propose a danger to themselves or to other people.

And I think a lot of states have passed red flag laws that say, "Hey if you have a relative who says something is not okay, there's threats of violence."

You can petition a judge and take that gun away from somebody who is in a bad situation.

And I think that's something we need to do in North Carolina.

- Yeah, Colin, tell me those red flag laws, they really are a red flag for a lot of conservatives who say that's a constitutional issue.

- Yeah, and I think we've heard from legislative leaders that they're not super interested in taking up those particular issues.

There may be some bipartisan compromise around safe gun storage type legislation that may pass this session.

But I think a large reason for the governor in doing this in the form of an executive order was to try to tackle this issue but recognizing that the preferred policy solutions that would have a more larger impact on the availability of of guns in the state and things like that really aren't gonna pass with the current political dynamics in the legislature.

And so this is a way to sort of move the needle on this issue without necessarily getting into a knockdown drag out fight with the lawmakers that the governor just doesn't have the power to win at this point.

- Sure, so like an executive order and an office set up by an executive or makes recommendations, not laws.

- Yeah, and they can sort of facilitate programs.

I mean, the benefit of this particular thing is it's going to bring the Department of Public Safety, and the Department of Health and Human Services together to work on some gun safety initiatives, recognizing it's both a public health issue and a law enforcement issue.

And the more those folks can work together, the more successful programs you may see.

- Sure, Brian, one of the things that I noticed in this that there's been a tremendous amount of public frustration about growing crime.

Do you think that this is about policy?

Is it about safety?

What are your thoughts?

- Well, I mean this issue of gun violence has long been a priority for Governor Cooper.

And like Colin said, this is about making recommendations, not about getting laws because you just have the harsh reality that if you're a Democratic governor, you've got a super majority of Republicans in the Senate, and you've got one seat shy of a super majority in the House.

So for Cooper, this is also about messaging but it's also about, like Morgan said, this is about making sure that people feel safer, that there's less access to guns for people who shouldn't have them in the first place.

So I'd say this has a policy aimed to it, but in all likelihood, you're gonna see this maybe have more messaging effect than policy impact.

- Sure, so this crime prevention and public frustration with the crime, do you think we'll see anything about stiffer penalties for certain crimes or anything like that?

Or do you think it's more about getting to the gun access and mental health and those things?

- Well we've seen lawmakers call for stiffer penalties for certain crimes, especially for violent protests, there's a bill at the governor's desk that would deal with imposing harsher penalties for people who commit violent crimes during protests or engage in rioting or looting.

That's one measure that Cooper has previously vetoed that lawmakers want to enact here.

- Sure, very interesting.

All right, we're gonna move on a little bit about the Supreme Court.

We are talking about everybody's already talking about 2024 elections.

I think we're working on it.

This week the North Carolina Supreme Court heard two really big cases, they both could impact our next elections.

Now one of them was to determine which election maps the legislature could redraw for 2024, the other case involving a legal challenge to North Carolina's 2018 voter ID law.

So did you get a chance to see some of the discussion there, Brian?

Tell me what your thoughts are.

- Yeah, so all of the redistricting case and just to go onto the process of this, so last year we had a four three liberal majority on the State Supreme Court.

After the election results happened it turned five to Republican majority on the state Supreme Court.

And within 49 days of a ruling from the Democratic Supreme Court, you had the now conservative state Supreme Court say, "Hey let's rehear this redistricting case."

And really this is about who gets to draw the voting lines for the next decade which will really shape how people can be able to vote who they can vote for.

And what we saw in the hearing seemed to, I was most looking at Republicans, Richard Deets and Trey Allen since they're the two new Republicans.

And what we saw from Richard Deets was seeming to defend the court's ability to rehear the case and really defending the process.

And what we saw from Trey Allen was maybe a little bit of aggressive questioning, asking sort of, well, are we now as a state Supreme Court tasked with overseeing 500 municipalities and local governments, where does this end for us as a state Supreme Court?

So it seemed those two important figures seem to side with the Republican argument, but we'll have to wait and see just how much lawmakers will be allowed to go back to the drawing board, or whether that'll be a court process.

- I'm glad that you brought that up because Chief Justice Paul Newby he said the exact same thing.

Let's hear from him.

- Should there be any city councils, county commissioners, county commissions, school boards, should any of these be made up of only one party?

Wouldn't it be suspect if any of 'em are made up of only one party particularly if you look at the aggregate votes in a county where that might be 45 to 47%.

- Yeah, it's an interesting point, Colin, tell me what you think about this case.

- You know it's interesting cause I think there's a big aspect of this of what's the value of judicial precedent?

Right?

I mean, is there a reason here for them to go back and essentially undo what the previous version of this court did?

And that's sort of been the argument from folks representing the democratic side of this is, "hey, you gotta stick with what the original decision was."

And I think Justice Anita Earls, one of the Democrats on the court brought that issue up, and so I think if you.

Have a ruling on this, then the question is, how many other cases could potentially be revisited if the losing side says, "Hey, you know, we think we've got better shot with a different partisan makeup of this court.

Can we go back and have a do-over?"

And that seems like perhaps some of what this is, and certainly there is an argument on the Republican side that they say that the Democratic court went too quickly in hearing this.

It skipped over the Court of Appeals.

It really did seem like there was an effort to get these cases dealt with prior to the end of the election season last year.

And so that does tend to be an issue in exactly whether they can do this or not.

- So a lot of what we heard, the word fair came up over and over.

Associate Justice Mike Morgan said this about the Constitution and fair maps.

- Are you saying that because fair does not appear in the Constitution that elections don't have to be fair?

That it's all right for them to have predetermined outcomes based upon where the legislature decides to draw the lines?

- All right, so tell me what you think.

I know you've been in deep on this one.

- I think this is an extraordinary thing and I think an extraordinary act to rehear a case that, as Colin said, is 49 days from a decision.

When cases have been reheard in the past, they are decades between them, when policy has changed, when human behavior, when technology has changed.

This is a case that is only being reheard, because the partisanship has changed of the Supreme Court.

And what I heard very clearly from the Republican justices in this case this week with the questions is that partisanship matters more than precedent.

And that should trouble every voter in North Carolina, regardless of which side of the aisle you're on, because at some point the pendulum will swing a different way.

I think the other thing that was really concerning to me was the discussion about fair elections.

And the answer to to Justice Morgan's question was, essentially, he went on to say, "In a 50/50 state, if you draw maps that have 75% for one party and 25% for the other, is that fair?"

And the response was, "If the legislature deems it's fair, it's fair."

And what is the role of the court here?

The majority of the court is acting like they don't have a say in this.

It's incredible they would abdicate their responsibility and just say, "Hey, if the legislature says it's constitutional, then we think it is."

That's their job.

- Sure, I wanna touch, before we move on, to this voter ID case that was also heard this week.

Is it possible that this court could overturn it, bring voter ID back?

The North Carolinians voted for it in 2018.

- Yeah, this one's a little bit complicated 'cause there's two cases.

There's the case that involves how the voter ID constitutional amendment would be implemented in terms of the actual rules.

A piece of legislation was passed.

And there's also some pending legal action over whether the constitutional amendment itself is valid.

And so I think it could be a little while before some of this stuff shakes out.

But odds are, even regardless of this court's action, lawmakers now can go back and try to put voter ID on the ballot again, maybe with similar or slightly different language, go through the courts again.

So I think eventually we're probably gonna have voter ID.

It's a question of exactly what it looks like and whether the court puts any parameters on what the law can allow, what it can't allow.

- Very interesting.

Okay, I'm gonna come right back to you.

Education bills, seems like there are a ton of them this go around.

And I remember a time when education bills kind of flew under the radar.

What are you watching in that?

- So there's a couple that are really interesting.

The house has a bill that's looking at what can be taught in the classroom with respect to sort of sensitive racial issues.

I mean, they didn't say it as much in the presentation of the bill last week in the House, but this is about Critical Race Theory.

This is the similar to a bill that the governor vetoed a couple years ago limiting what teachers can say surrounding topics kind of like Critical Race Theory, although the bill doesn't specifically mention that term by name.

And so that's something where I think you're gonna see another sort of partisan fight.

You may see another veto from the governor on that.

And then it's a question of whether it can be overridden.

But there are other education bills, things around school safety and other measures that may end up with some more bipartisan support and not nearly as contentious as the CRT bill.

- Sure, sure.

Brian, what are you watching in education?

- So a couple bills I'm watching, there's one that would allow for concealed handguns to be located on school property.

And there's been some concerns from Democrats that if you have a religious service on a Sunday, kids come back on a Monday, that you can have maybe someone forgot their firearm on school grounds and concerns for safety there.

To Colin's point, I think that's probably the biggest bill I'm watching personally.

We had a effort from Republicans that was similar back in the summer of 2021.

And Republican Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson was very forceful on this issue and had really propelled this bill.

Cooper vetoed it.

It's coming back now.

And the biggest problem that I see Democrats having with it is there's a portion of that bill that says there are 13 beliefs that cannot be promoted inside of classrooms.

And the fear is that it will stifle teachers willingness to introduce these concepts in the first place, because one of those 13 concepts is the view that one race or sex is superior to another or that America was sort of founded by one race or sex to oppress another race or sex.

And that is a view that gets dicey for Republicans, but it's also one that Democrats worry will prevent them from just discussing the history of racism in K to 12 schools.

- Sure.

So you mentioned the bill about handguns on campus.

That particular bill, if I'm understanding correctly, is the one that says, okay, if you have a church service on, if you have a school on, say, a church grounds, on Sunday when church is in service and schools are not and there's no extracurricular whatever, people can come, if they have the appropriate license, with their firearm, because it's church not school on that day.

Is that correct?

Am I understanding?

- Right, and it's concealed carry that's being allowed under certain circumstances, not during school operating hours.

But there is that concern that people can forget their guns or things like that.

And that's probably the biggest concern with the bill.

It's bundled into a larger gun package as well.

But that's just one of the provisions of that.

- Sure, would that person then face penalties for leaving it on campus?

- That, I would have to look into more.

- That's one of the questions, right?

That's one of the questions.

- That's an open question.

- Sure, I know you're watching a lot on education, particularly with the governor's proposed budget out this week.

- Yeah, you know, the things that, I'll talk about the budget just a second, the things that concern me about a lot of these education bills is we're spending a lot of time talking about can you have guns on campus when we just talked about rising gun violence and school shootings and things that are taking place, which is just absurd to be thinking about, you should be able to concealed carry on a campus that has children going to school.

And when it comes to, let's talk about local control of what can be taught and what should be taught in classes.

The legislature who is supposed to be all about local control, they're trying now to tell people what you can't teach.

They're trying to pass bills this week about mandating what universities must teach and make every kid read the Constitution in seven or eight other things.

It's a little bit like, which way is it?

You want teachers to be able to teach what they can.

Now you're trying to tell 'em what they can and they cannot teach, which is a little ridiculous.

On the governor's budget, what the governor's trying to actually talk about education this week is how do we strengthen our schools?

And first of all, how do we get more bus drivers?

How do we get more educators?

We've got 5,000 vacancies across the state right now.

And so what he's proposed is an aggressive budget to expand opportunity so that every school not only is fully funded as we see in like, the long-term Leandro lawsuit, to make sure every school district has the resources capable to give every child a sound basic education, but also, we've gotta pay teachers.

If we want to recruit and retain good teachers in classrooms, which is the best outcome for our students, period, the data shows that, you gotta pay 'em more and you gotta pay 'em a living wage.

And the governor's budget has laid out this week is to make North Carolina first in the southeast.

It is to also increase pay for bus drivers, for school support personnel, to add more nurses, more counselors, more personnel across the school to make schools work better and respond to the needs, the growing needs of children, which are different than they were 20 years ago.

And so he's having that conversation while a lot of the general assembly's having a conversation, can you have guns in schools.

It seems very different.

- Right now, that sounds really expensive.

Tell me about how, what would that cost?

- So the governor has laid out a budget that doesn't increase taxes on one single person.

It still has 7 billion in the rainy day fund.

We are at a unprecedented time when we have $3 billion surplus this year.

The governor makes an argument in his budget, it's time to invest in our state and our people.

We have a once in a lifetime opportunity, his budget is called First in Opportunity.

And you gotta remember at the end of the day, education funding is about creating the best opportunity for kids so that they can get an education and get a job.

And that's what's bringing the jobs here is our education environment.

- Okay, so I think we're gonna go on to like, what'd you notice this week?

One of the things I noticed this week, of course, is this budget.

You know, we've been talking a lot about all different kinds of bills and what's going on, but it's been a very, very busy week.

Brian, let's start with you.

What'd you notice this week?

You had a good story this week in the assembly.

- Yeah, so I had a story that was looking at the history of vetoes in North Carolina.

Basically there were efforts in 1925, 1933; fail, fail.

And then we get to the 1980s and Republicans, Jim Martin's the governor at the time, and he's really hammering home this point of we need vetoes in the state.

We're the last in the country, in the state.

Heck, even the governor of American Samoa has a veto and I don't?

Come on.

And Democrats had passed a bill but it didn't have the support needed to go to voters.

So then 1995 happens and we get a Republican controlled house, and then state Senator and now Governor, Roy Cooper, sees an opportunity 'cause he supported giving the governor a veto and was one of a handful of house Democrats at the time that did.

And so Cooper gets this veto power passed and he is now sort of the victim of some of that legislation.

Unlike most states, North Carolina doesn't have a two-thirds threshold, it's a three-fifth threshold, which means if you just have one house Democrat crossing party lines now, or if you have two house Democrats absent when a voting session takes place, he can now be overridden.

On one hand, Cooper has prevented 52 bills from becoming law, but on the other hand, we might see him struggling to sustain those vetoes going forward.

- We'll be watching that really closely.

Colin, what are you paying attention to?

- So I was interested this week to watch the Senate picket's latest slate of people for the UNC Board of Governors.

They've got some criticism for the lack of diversity.

The folks that they appointed, five of the six are white, all six are men, only one is a Democrat.

And so they got some flack from the Democrats on not having a little bit more diversity in who they're putting on this board.

You know, this is coming out as a backdrop of the governor has this commission that he appointed last year to look at the governance of the state's university system.

And that group is having public hearings all across the state and gathering input on what people would like to see and whether there's some changes needed to exactly how the board is appointed and who gets to appoint the board members.

So that's gonna be one to watch going forward.

- For sure, of course.

And Morgan, what are you watching this week?

- So I'm paying a lot of attention to Canton, North Carolina, as we know that the wood plant, I mean the paper mill out there has Evergreen the company has announced it was gonna close.

And it is a tragic blow to that community, a huge employer in that community.

They actually manage the water system for the town.

One of the things you're starting to see is really an effort to get the company to sell the plant which they don't wanna do.

But the governor and the attorney General Stein this week sent a letter to say, listen, you've got $12 million in state incentives.

We want 'em back because you've broken from that.

- Sure, we'll be watching that closely.

Thank you for joining us.

It's all the time we have for this week.

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