Weekly Briefing

Some Important Bills for the Final Week of the Legislative Session

By Rob Schofield

With the omnibus budget bill slated for final passage today, the North Carolina General Assembly expects to adjourn its 2007 session this week. Lawmakers will now turn their attention to dozens of substantive bills that await a final verdict. Here are some topics that deserve special attention:

Ethics and Lobbying Reform – After a rather perplexing, session-long delay, legislators finally appear poised to follow-up on last year’s ethics and lobbying reform effort with some additional meaningful amendments. Last week, the Senate began consideration of a pair of bills containing mostly technical changes that had passed by the House in May. The plan of leaders from both houses is to inject several more substantive changes into the bills – some sought by advocates at groups like the Coalition for Lobbying and Government Reform and some not. They include (among many others):

• Opening up most Ethics Commission and Legislative Ethics Committee meetings to the public – this had been a demand of reformers last year.
• Making clear that gifts from legislative liaisons to public officials are banned in the same way as gifts from private lobbyists.
• Adding an exception to the gift ban for items sent as “expressions condolence related to the death of an individual.”
• Amending (loosening?) the ban on gifts from lobbyists by changing the language from “no lobbyist…may directly or indirectly give a gift to a designated individual” to “no lobbyist…may knowingly give a gift to a designated individual” or “to a third party with the intent that the ultimate recipient be a designated individual.” 

At this point, it seems likely that some versions of the proposals will pass prior to adjournment. Reform advocates will be watching with a mixed sense of optimism and concern.

High Risk Health Insurance Pool – Unlike the lobbying and ethics bills, this proposal to help provide health insurance to a relatively small group of hard-to-insure North Carolinians has been the subject of relatively steady discussion throughout the session. With a few days to go, however, lawmakers continue to debate the appropriate way to pay for the relatively modest cost. Should they require insurers to contribute to the fund as the House proposed, or simply pay for most of the program out of General Fund – as proposed by the Senate?

As Adam Searing of the N.C Health Access Coalition wrote last week, it appears, at this point, that the Senate has unnecessarily complicated what had been a relatively tidy and common sense compromise worked out by the House.  It remains to be seen whether a workable solution can be fashioned this week.

Fair Treatment for Children with Special Needs – Most legislative sessions feature at least a few good bills that simply get “lost in the shuffle” despite a lack of any opposition. An obvious example this year is a one-sentence proposal that passed the House way back in March on the subject of children with special needs. Ironically, it is the intent of the bill to help secure services for kids who, themselves, get lost in the shuffle of the public schools.

State and federal law have long required that children with disabilities be provided with special treatment when it comes to meting out discipline. Unfortunately, there is an enormous loophole to this rule in North Carolina for kids whose disability has been ignored. Many of these children receive suspensions and expulsions each year even thought the behavior on which the discipline was based is the product of their disability. Under the terms of the bill awaiting action in the Senate Education Committee, schools will be deemed to have knowledge of the child’s disability if “before the behavior that precipitated the disciplinary action occurred, the performance or behavior of the child clearly establishes the need for such services." Supporters remain hopeful that the bill will pass this week.

“Voter Owned Elections” – In a pair of close and dramatic votes last week, the House succeeded in giving final approval to a bill that would enact a pilot program for public financing of statewide elections for three council of state offices: Auditor, Insurance Commissioner and Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The program would be similar to the public financing program now in place for the Appellate Judges. Candidates who volunteer for the public financing program would have to collect 700 small contributions to qualify and agree to limit their campaign spending. They would receive state money to run their campaigns, the amount determined by how much has been spent in previous elections. Candidates could choose not to participate and continue to accept contributions from private donors. When they raised more money than the publicly financed candidate received, the state would match the money raised by the privately-funded candidate up to a certain level.

The bill has not yet been scheduled for a Senate hearing, but supporters remain hopeful.  

Expungement of Juvenile Records – Having failed to pass legislation that would have ended North Carolina’s status as one of only three states that still, automatically, try and punish 16 and 17 year old juveniles as adults for any crime, lawmakers will give further attention this week to legislation that would, at least, allow some non-violent juvenile criminal convictions to be expunged.

Under legislation that passed the House last week, individuals who have been convicted of crimes committed while they were 16 or 17 years old may, four years after the end of their sentence, petition for a court order that expunges their record. There are many limitations and exceptions in the bill designed to assure that the persons in question are truly deserving. Moreover, pursuant to a House floor amendment, several drug possession offenses have been removed from the bill’s reach so that they may not be expunged. A Senate bill that actually provides more generous opportunities for expungement also remains alive this session, but seems unlikely to pass in its present state.      

School Violence Prevention – Somewhat amazingly, one of the more controversial bills this session is a bill that would direct school officials to target and control the bullying and harassment of all children. The bill is controversial because of the opposition of conservative “family values” groups. They oppose the bill because it makes mention of the fact that bullying and harassment commonly includes the targeting of children in a variety of vulnerable sub-groups – including those perceived to have a different sexual orientation. This, they say, would provide “special legal protections for homosexuality, bisexuality, cross dressing and other such sexual behaviors.”

But of course, as the proponents note, the point of spelling out several categories of individuals that are most commonly subjected to bullying and harassment (see page 2 of the bill) is not to create “special” protections, but to help assure similar treatment for all by making absolutely clear to those who supervise the schools what bullying and harassment are. Too often in the past, thousands of innocent children have been physically and emotionally tortured as insensitive and/or uninformed teachers and administrators have stood by, oblivious to what was happening under their noses, letting “kids be kids.”

In order to allay the concerns of opponents, however, the bill sponsor added the following language in the House: “Nothing in this act shall be construed to create any classification or preference beyond those existing in present statute or case law." Unfortunately, this has yet to serve its intended purpose and the opponents continue fight the bill at every turn. At this point, it remains to be seen if the Senate Judiciary II Committee will endorse the proposal or acquiesce to the opposition.  

Death Penalty Reforms – Finally, two significant proposals to reform the state’s broken capital punishment system still await Senate action after having passed the House this spring. The North Carolina Racial Justice Act – a proposal to assure that no one is executed because of the effect of racial considerations – remains stuck in the Senate Judiciary II Committee. Likewise, a proposal to require a “proportionality review” to assure that defendants are not sentenced to death while others in identical situations are sentenced to lesser sentences also remains in the same committee. Supporters remain hopeful, however, that one or both will still receive favorable consideration before week’s end.    

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 11:02 am and is filed under Weekly Briefing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.