North Carolina lawmakers returned to Raleigh this week with a flurry of action expected on a wide range of policy proposals touching on everything from immigration rules to car seat safety regulations and state-backed Bitcoin investments.
On Monday the state House advanced two dozen bills through their final committee, setting them up for a vote on the House floor later in the week. Other committees are set to take up dozens more bills in the coming days. The action comes as lawmakers approach an annual deadline, looming next week. For the most part, bills that haven’t passed at least one chamber of the legislature by the May 8 deadline can’t be brought back up until the next session.
State lawmakers this year have filed about 2,000 bills. The effort to start limiting the legislature’s attention to a smaller number of them comes as state budget negotiations are also ongoing in the background.
The state Senate recently unveiled its budget plan. But it isn’t likely to be received with open arms in the state House of Representatives, which is working on a competing plan. Although both chambers are controlled by Republicans, they don’t always see eye-to-eye on issues such as how to balance tax cuts versus state spending.
State budget negotiations happen almost entirely behind closed doors. More publicly, the legislature — which took last week off — has plans to debate and potentially vote on dozens of bills this week and next.
One of those is House BIll 318, which would ramp up efforts to deport immigrants who are accused of criminal offenses, if they’re in the country without authorization. It passed the House Rules Committee on Monday, setting it up for a vote by the full House later this week.
Some sheriffs in Democratic counties had previously resisted cooperating with federal immigration officials, but last year the legislature passed a law requiring them to. This bill would enact stricter rules than what lawmakers approved last year.
Other consequential proposals approved for a floor vote Monday were House Bill 96 and House Bill 506, which are being touted as almost a package deal to invest the state pension plan into crytpocurrencies like Bitcoin while also addressing concerns that critics have over the wisdom of that decision. House Bill 96 would give the Treasurer permission to invest billions of dollars from the North Carolina Pension Plan and other public investment funds into crypto funds. House Bill 506 proposes a series of bureaucratic reforms within the State Treasurer’s office to increase oversight and accountability for its investment decisions. They were proposed to satisfy cryptocurrency skeptics both inside and outside the legislature..
Those new regulations on the office are supported by Treasurer Brad Briner, a Republican who also supports the crypto investing plan and touts it as a way to help the state make more money.
“I seek to relinquish some of my power to a board of qualified investment professionals to help deliver better returns for this state, so that we can get to a better place, not just for our budget, but for our retirees,” Briner told lawmakers earlier this month.
Those were just two of the 25 bills that passed through their final House committee Monday, setting them up for a vote later this week in the state House where they’ll all be expected to pass.
Others included:
- House Bill 568, which would ban lawyers, in many instances, from asking employees of the N.C. Department of Labor to testify in court about their work. Labor Commissioner Luke Farley, a Republican, requested the change. His lobbyist Monday said it could help make more workplace safety inspections happen, by preventing inspectors from being tied up in court. Democratic lawmakers were skeptical, indicating it might help businesses avoid accountability when their employees are injured or killed on the job.
- House Bill 288, which would require the POW/MIA flag to be flown at all state government buildings and public schools.
- House Bill 368, which would change state regulations around when children have to be in car seats by using height and weight requirements instead of just weight. It would also mandate that infants be in rear-facing car seats, a common safety recommendation that currently isn’t required by state law.
- House Bill 439, which would largely repeal the rules that currently make it a crime to carry a concealed knife. Republican lawmakers have been pushing to eliminate concealed carry laws for guns, which has in turn led some to question whether it would make sense for the state to have stricter knife laws than gun laws.
- House Bill 570, which would ban the use of PFAS “forever chemicals” from being used in firefighting foam.