- Next week, many former bills become North Carolina laws from Iryna's law and concealed carry of private schools to new powers for our state auditor.

This is "State Lines."

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(dramatic music) ♪ - Hello and welcome to "State Lines" on this Thanksgiving weekend.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, good friends, even better analysts, Dawn Vaughan, revered of the News and Observer.

Hello, Dawn.

- Thank you.

Glad to be here.

- Former state Senator Jim Perry, who's now with NC Capital Strategies.

Jim, good to have you on.

- Thank you.

- Kimberly Reynolds of Maven Strategies, always good to see you.

Kimberly.

- Thanks for having me back.

- And Mitch Kokai.

We've seen you a time or two over the years with the John Locke Foundation.

Ask him, he will know just about anything you wanna ask.

Happy Thanksgiving to you.

- Or I'll make it up.

(laughing) Happy Thanksgiving to you and everyone.

- Tell us a good story.

Well, for this show, let's talk about December 1st.

It's a big day in North Carolina, whether you know it or not, because it's a key date when new state laws take effect, some of which garnered national attention weeks and months ago.

So at the top of this show, let's start with now Iryna's law.

The comprehensive proposal eliminates cashless bail, makes it more difficult for defendants to achieve pretrial release for some crimes, and it gives law enforcement officials power to hold suspects for mental health evaluations, among so many other things.

Mitch, this one dominated the talk for what, about August on, and sparked some changes at special sessions and all that.

Iryna's law now.

Josh Stein's on board, and all the Republicans, of course, some Democrats.

- Yeah, I mean, this of course, was sparked by the sad and tragic events that happened in Charlotte with the light rail killing.

And the General Assembly came back and said, okay, this is our opportunity to deal with some of these crime issues.

I think some of the things that you saw in Iryna's law were things that you would expect and probably ought to be done, like stepping up, not allowing people to go back on the streets if there are reason to keep them behind bars, making some more things for the magistrates to have to do before they'll let someone back out.

There were some other things that were thrown in there that really didn't have to be part of the legislation, but may or may not have been a good idea anyway, like sort of clamping down on the judicial pause that we've had now for 20 years on the death penalty.

They didn't really have to do that, but that was obviously a priority for some, including we know Senate leader Phil Berger, when they had that first news conference, he said, we need to do something about the death penalty, and shock, that ends up being in the bill.

To me, though, I think the most interesting thing that will come out of this is probably not the elements that were in the bill itself that make immediate changes, but probably that study that's gonna be done of mental health and the justice system and how those two things work together, and also the committee that was set up afterwards to talk about involuntary commitments and how you make that system work well, because the main thing that came out of that situation was something in the system wasn't right, where this guy who had had a history of 14 times going in and out of the judicial system, sometimes with violent incidents, and was still out there and was able to commit this crime, I think that was the main thing people took away from it.

They said, something's not right, we gotta do something, and Iryna's law maybe helps with that.

- Kimberly, of course, the Republicans drove this, it's not a special session, but they just came back 'cause they don't ever adjourn, and then you had your governor, Josh Stein, the Democrat who took pause, reflected on it, and then at least gave the appearance, he gave a measured response of whether to sign it or not.

He didn't veto it, so what do you make of his approach as a Democrat to a Republican bill compared to how other Democrats might have been just strictly opposed to it based on provisions like the death penalty?

- I think that's the job of the governor is to take a comprehensive look and a comprehensive approach to the bill.

He has to be thoughtful.

I think there are times when he probably sits at that desk and wishes he had line item veto power, but he doesn't, so he really has to look at the collective nature of the bill.

I mean, I think people knew or believed there are parts of that bill that were really important and could have been addressed before or after, and sort of the rush of coming back in after this tragic death and the week after addressing them when they weren't addressed before is concerning.

I think the governor was really concerned with that death penalty provision that said you can now be killed by a firing squad, and that shouldn't have been put in these bills.

Those are the things that should be debated likely separately, and I think he went on to say that you would never see someone die by firing squad and that it was barbaric under his watch.

So I think that's what the governor is tasked to do.

- Jim, you were in the Senate.

Why does it take occurrences like what happened on the Charlotte Rail to jolt big legislation to pass so easily?

If we don't have this news event in Charlotte with the young lady being murdered, a bill like this may have never gotten across the finish line if you just started working on it in January.

Why does that happen?

- I think priorities change.

Everyone comes into the General Assembly.

They've got a list of, let's say, 10 items, things that have bothered them or members of their community, so they have their priorities they're working on, and everyone's list is different.

But when you have an occurrence like this, I get so much attention, I think the people tend to coalesce around it, and the lawmakers do too, and move it up on their priority list.

So I think that's why it was addressed so quickly.

- Dawn, I've covered stories years and years ago, Republican sheriff, Democratic sheriff, they all say the jail is nowhere to put someone who's suffering from mental illness, but the streets are not where they belong either because bad things can happen if they are ill while they are out.

What do you make of that debate?

Can the fire behind Iryna's law stick around long enough to get a good, wholesome debate over mental health and criminal justice?

- I think they are talking about it a lot more, and I feel like mental health in general, the General Assembly has been taking a closer look at the past year or more, and Iryna's law was driven by this tragedy and the news at the time, but it was also the opportunity to put other things in there, like the death penalty, which was Senate Leader Berger's priority to include in there, and the involuntary commitment is a committee that started and met even though they haven't had voting sessions lately, that committee has already met and is planning to again.

So I think that the debate is resulting in some action or some more action at least, and there are these quick bills that happen driven by what constituents want and what's going on with the news, and then there's all this stuff on the background all the time.

So I think there's gonna be, we'll see more versions of what was in Iryna's law, but that kind of thing that's talked about for a year, for a couple years, several years, and then if there's an opportunity for a bill that's going to pass that has a lot of other support and you wanna get something else in, that's just how it goes, you put it in the bill because you wanna do whatever you can to get this issue, this provision across the finish line.

- And one other thing that's important that we haven't talked about yet is the power of video.

Because this incident happened and no one was really talking about it for probably a couple of weeks until people saw the video, and that's what really sparked this.

And I think now in this age when the artificial intelligence is allowing things to be made on video that look real that aren't, that's really something that we're gonna have to keep in mind because it is so powerful that if you imagine something like this that didn't actually happen, but people see it and say, oh, we need to do something about it.

- In this case, the power of video and social media, '91 was Rodney King, that was video recorded, so video does matter, but yet so many of us lament the idea of a leaked video or some sort of surveillance but online video.

Where does it belong in discourse?

Because if you think about it, if we can see it on film to video, it makes politicians move sometimes, Kimberly.

- It does, but I've gotta tell you from having young women working in my office, from having young daughters, they got a hold of that video and they didn't even want to.

They didn't seek it out.

They were just scrolling on social media and without permission, the video is up and I think there's some desensitization that's happening to us as a country and it's just, I see your point and it's important and it forced movement, but it is also worrisome that you can be sitting there in your living room and you are now watching someone lose their life and we have to balance that out with how to make movement with also being sensitive.

- Let's talk about another veto override.

It will now allow private school employees to possess firearms on private school campuses if the private school leaders approve the possession.

Churches could have a legal concealed carry on church grounds if there's a private school on the same church campus.

Threats to legislators, Mitch, elected officials, legislative security officers.

You do that, you're gonna receive enhanced penalties.

Talk about video news events, school shootings, possession on private school grounds.

What's controversial?

There was a veto in it, why?

- Well, I think there is some concern about having guns in schools.

I mean, that's been a concern in public schools for a long time.

This is another one of those bills where a lot of different things were thrown together, some of which seem to make sense being linked.

Others you think, okay, I'm not really sure why this was thrown into it, but the main point was that there has been, for years, the law against having a gun in a school.

And some owners of private schools said, well, wait a minute, for security of our school, it should be good if someone is authorized.

You don't just say, and anyone could come in with a gun, but if the board of trustees of the school or the administrator of the school says, well, this person should be allowed to have a gun and we're a private school, why should the government tell us we can't do that?

There was that.

And then there was the piece of a church that has a school and the church would have been able to allow people to carry guns, but because there was a school, they couldn't.

And then this law said, well, if you're a church and you have a school, people could bring a gun when they're church services, but not when the school is in session.

So those were a couple of pieces of it.

And then there was the other piece that did not seem to have as much to do with the rest of the bill, but it was stepping up penalties for people who assault or threaten a government official, which may or may not make sense, probably does make sense in some respects.

It didn't really seem to have a whole lot to do with the gun pieces of the bill.

- I think, or the discussion of the private schools and church connected to churches and those guns is that the training was a factor.

And it's like, who's approved if it's not actual trained law enforcement, like school resource officers and public schools.

And so that was some of the concern.

I remember going to committee meeting where they talked about it and the question of, if you're allowing someone to carry a gun, again, it's still a gun in a school, does this person have the proper training?

Can they be trusted enough that it's going to be secure, that they know the right response, that sort of thing.

- When it comes to gun policy and the General Assembly, from your time in Senate, what makes it so hard to get a bill that is debated very, very well, as opposed to a bill with multiple parts that does feed the Second Amendment debate, freeze gun ownership, deregulates?

It's not like we never stop and talk about pro and con, it's either you ram it through or you stop it hardcore with a veto or a court order or some such.

- I think the opinions on gun ownership, gun rights, gun laws, they seem to be pretty set in stone in the General Assembly.

I'm not sure how many minds you're going to change on that topic down there.

I do think that good, healthy discussion in the committees or on the floor is a good thing, but I haven't seen it change many votes in time.

Maybe others see that differently, but I just don't think many votes are up for grabs on that topic.

- Is there a lack of nuance in the gun debate in the public?

Do you either love it or you hate it?

- Well, I think there's this narrative that they're putting out there that giving everybody a gun makes us safer.

And I think there's an argument to be made that it's quite the opposite of that.

And so I think you saw that in giving it to churches and letting it around schools.

It feels like we're going backwards when it comes to that gun debate.

And I think this actually flows into Iryna's law a little bit too.

We're doing one thing, but we're not treating some of the real root causes, and that's mental health and mental illness and what is causing people to shoot up schools and do all these things.

- Let's move to the next topic as we go through the new laws that take effect.

How about the state auditor, Dave Boliek?

His powers grew through 2025.

Actually, more responsibility comes to his plate December 1st.

He'll soon have control over whatever purchasing decisions he wants, independent of any state agencies that normally dictate such powers on behalf of state agencies.

The auditor, as of December, can investigate any publicly funded organization, not just a state agency.

The auditor can inspect any state documents and not be required to consult with the executive branch for release.

Those who refuse, he'll just take to superior court, Jim.

Dave Boliek is a powerful man.

We saw him last week with two very hard-hitting audits.

What do we make of this?

That's not a quiet accounting-type job anymore, it doesn't appear to be.

- Yeah, so the auditor position in about 25 or 30 states has additional powers like ours does now.

And it has to work independently of the other agencies.

One of the changes that I saw is that they said he's exempted himself from information technology.

Well, Health and Human Services got a waiver on that.

They have their own.

And according to governmental accounting standards, the Yellow Book, which is their gold standard, they are supposed to be independent and no one else should be able to control their data or block their access.

So, you know, it's actually from a governmental oversight position, I think a reasonable thing to do.

It's just new and it's different.

It is giving more authority to the auditor, but I'll point out it's policy.

There's no guarantee that auditor is going to be a Republican in the future and the office will still have the authority.

- That's a good point, Dawn.

A powerful auditor, Boliek, so he runs for governor.

There's a lot of rumors he might be eyeing a race in '28.

So right now he has a lot of power.

If he leaves, would lawmakers take that power back, you think?

- I think there's a good chance of that, actually.

And that was part of the discussion when this first happened.

Reporters asking the legislative leaders about you decided to put this in the auditor.

Dave Boliek is a Republican.

It's a statewide elected office.

The previous auditor, Beth Wood, was a Democrat.

And even Board of Elections appointment control, that shift in other states, it's under the Secretary of State.

North Carolina works different.

All states are different as far as their exact governing structure and council of state and that sort of thing.

So yes, it has become maybe even more so a political job.

And we're seeing, like, what are these reports?

I remember last week Boliek was like, audit after audit after audit.

And as a reporter, just keeping up with going through and covering all these things, part of it is what the auditor's required to do and some of what Boliek has looked into.

And he campaigned on having a closer look at the DMV because those are problems.

So I think we're seeing more of some of news things, maybe political-driven, what you're trying to focus on.

Even in one of the many budgets that became law in the past few months, the Department of Administration, which is a Stein Cabinet agency, is directed to give more office space to Boliek in the Albemarle Building, which is where the auditor's offices are and the governor's offices because the state auditor's office is growing and they're producing a lot of work that we're seeing daily.

- Well, Kimberly, you've worked in state government.

What a reward, more room in the Albemarle Building.

- I mean, what a reward.

- Let's talk about Auditor Boliek.

How does he stay above the fray?

'Cause I mean, Beth Wood was a Democrat, quiet.

I thought Republicans generally liked her service.

Boliek's got a different personality and I haven't seen him get into the weeds too far yet with battles with Democrats or anyone.

So is the auditor's office still above, is it still above the political fray with the Democrats?

- You know, I can't believe that it will.

- I set you up on that, I know I did.

- You did, and I just, I was sort of giggling to myself over here when he's like, "Oh, it's just good government.

"Like, just good government.

"We're just gonna consolidate."

And I don't think that that's how Phil Berger and Dustin Hall make decisions anymore, is just good government.

I really feel like they have found their Republican horse.

They have hitched a wagon to him and they are putting everything they can in the wagon.

And like Dawn said, I think there's a lot of conversation about the fact that he's gonna run for governor.

I don't believe we've ever had a governor who came from the auditor's office.

That probably isn't the profile people are gonna look for when they're gonna look at a governor and a gubernatorial candidate.

So not only are they consolidating their power into his office and taking it away from some of the Democrats and the agencies and making sure he can do some things that are unheard of, they're actually giving him a bigger platform to run on as well.

- Mitch, dig in on this.

I just said out loud what people have thought and said quietly for the last few weeks, but these audits, some good timing on some of them.

Do you see a political tinge to them or just it's time for these audits to be released as just part of the calendar of state business?

- Well, a politician practicing politics shouldn't surprise anyone.

I think this is, an interesting thing about this to me is that it seems as if Auditor Bolick is approaching this job in a lot of respects the way that for years and years, attorneys general have approached the job.

I mean, they don't really do basic law enforcement.

They put out crime stats and then basically do other things that help gin up their profile, like filing interesting lawsuits.

It seems as if the auditor, there is a basic job in there to conduct these audits that aren't all that interesting, but Dave Bolick has picked up on some other things that are in the news, are noteworthy, and are raising his profile.

And depending on how those audits come out, it could be a good or a bad thing.

I mean, having a politician who wants to be seen as doing a good job can be good because it can lead to good results.

- And what he's picked, DHHS lapsed salaries last week, the NCOR with the home recovery for Eastern North Carolina.

- Started with DMV.

- So I mean, DMV, they're good topics even if you don't work in television or do politics for a living or cover it.

I mean, these are kitchen table, right?

- Yeah, and I think people want the accountability, even if it's one part of the government holding another part of the government accountable, it's another aspect of showing that they are not just letting things go, that they're looking to it, especially with NCOR because that goes back years.

- But I will predict that if the auditor does run for something else or got beat in election, sometime between that election and the following year, there would be a no Dave act or Dave is gone act or something like that.

- No more Dave.

- But that would do away with the whole good governance thing that Jim has said.

This is just an act of good governance, no politics.

(laughing) - That really is required by governmental accounting principles that he be independent.

You can go look that up.

That's why 25 or 30 states do it.

- All right, a legislation aimed at preventing the exploitation of women and children also becoming law.

This bill was amended to add the official definition of two sexes, Dawn, male and female.

State funds cannot be used for gender transition surgery, prescriptions or other related gender procedures.

Public schools would publish public listings of books kept on campus.

Those are the add-ons that earned the gubernatorial veto.

The bill itself was aimed at pornography, making sure people weren't exploited with sex abuse material as they call it now.

And Republicans did tackle a lot of add-ons here.

- Yeah, it's like what we were talking about earlier in the show that if you wanna get something across the finish line and there's a bill that already has support, you add things to it.

So that's why it had a variety of things.

This was one of several bills that Republicans with help from Democrats were able to override Governor Stein's veto.

I think it was July, sometime this summer, and this was one of the votes that had a Democratic vote with them in the House because they don't have a veto-proof supermajority in the House.

And that's what finally did get the result of what they wanted, but a lot of these handful of Democrats that occasionally vote with Republicans have had a lot of focus because there is no way unless there's enough people in the room absent for the Republicans.

Republicans have supermajority in the Senate, they're fine.

But as far as in the House, they needed Democrats to come over to their side.

And this was just one of several bills in one day that they overturned.

- Jim, male and female defined in state statute now, no in between there, public school, the whole library thing, let the moms for liberty check your books if they wanna ask for them or whatever.

Does this bill put to rest a lot of the social issues that dominated 2024?

Some of them were always doing something with the transgender athletes and things like this.

To the point that even people were coming on this show exhausted by the continual focus on it.

- I don't think so.

I don't think the issues are ever totally put to rest.

I think you always see different versions of them later, different groups, things pop up.

It seems like cockroaches are easier to kill than some of these issues, I think.

- Were you comfortable in office always addressing these issues or being in a position where a reporter like us could come up and get you with one of these type questions about these social issues?

- I never saw that happen with a reporter.

- Never once.

- I'm just kidding.

- But are there gotchas in some of these really well-defined partisan issues?

- I think in the political arena, there's always a gotcha or an attempt to manufacture one.

You know, it's the nature of the beast.

- Kimberly, my perception is this bill as originally written would have probably earned well over 100 votes in the House, maybe unanimous support across both chambers and an easy signature of Governor Stein.

Why do you think they're tacking on the more savory or more controversial provisions that may have nothing to do with exploitation of women and children in video and media?

- Well, a lot of times in politics, those are called a poison pill that they sneak into bills because they want the other side to be forced to vote on a good issue like protecting women and children by putting in something like this that they know fundamentally so many Democrats are against because they just don't want this vulnerable community to keep getting attacked at the General Assembly.

- Do you think voters would buy in that Democrats voted against the exploitation of women and children?

I don't think so.

- No, but they're also trying to continue to put them on record about supporting the trans community to go run things against them in the future in vulnerable districts.

- Mitch, is this just the way the game is played?

I mean, this is a bill that could have been left clean and everyone would have felt like society had taken a step forward, but as it is a step forward anyway just with a few more additions to the law.

- A shock there's politics involved.

Yes, you take a bill that everyone supports, you throw something that's kind of related but has a clear partisan divide to it and see where the chips fall.

And then there will be some Democrats in districts that can go either way who will have to choose, do I go with what I think my district wants?

Do I go with what my party wants?

And it makes it tough for them and Republicans are happy to do that to them.

- We gotta go really fast on this last topic.

I do wanna touch on it.

The polling has Cooper leading, Whatley or Don Brown by nine or 10 points depending on how you look at it.

There is an interesting candidate named Kate Barr running against Tim Moore, an incumbent Republican, 14th congressional seat, safe Republican district, Kimberly, and she's a Democrat running in the GOP primary.

Explain this in 20 seconds so I can get everyone's opinion on a Democrat hacking the system.

- I think she ran in 2024 on a platform called Kate Can't Win.

And she knows it's important to hold people accountable and nobody else in a Republican primary is gonna hold Tim Moore accountable and make him own some of his actions.

And I think she's happy to go out there and do it.

- Jim, does she get points for creativity?

- I guess.

I don't know where you can cash those in, but yeah, okay.

If she wants to do that, that's certainly up to her.

- Is there a little gimmick, Dawn?

What if she got some votes?

- It gets people talking about it, you know?

And you don't wanna see where nobody runs against someone else ever, you know?

So at least it's, you know, she has making her case.

We'll see.

- Mitch, an open primary, I don't know.

- Well, I mean, it's gonna be interesting and you will see which Republicans don't like Tim Moore 'cause that's why they would vote for a Democrat who's obviously a Democrat running in this race.

It's also one of our greatest pieces of literature was about a man tilting at windmills and this is what you see with this.

- Kate Barr.

All right, thanks panelists.

Email me your thoughts and opinions at statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'm Kelly McCullough, thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

♪ - Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you to invite you to join them in supporting PBSNC.