By Kirk Ross
For a group of people who say they’re trying to help out job creators, the leadership of the N.C. General Assembly sure missed the boat last week.
I can’t think of any better set of job creators than this state’s educators, and what the legislature did to them in the after-midnight session last Thursday was just plain mean.
If you weren’t following exactly what happened and have been a little confused about whether it was extra-constitutional or not, don’t feel bad. It was a pretty confusing end to an already strange day in the legislature.
Here’s a quick synopsis:
The General Assembly was called back into town last Wednesday by the governor to consider her veto of a bill passed in the last mini-session that repeals the Racial Justice Act. Early on Wednesday, the GOP-dominated Senate quickly voted to override the veto sending it to the House, which is a little more evenly split.
As the day wore on, it became apparent that the votes weren’t there for an override, and ultimately an agreement was made to send the bill back to committee, ending the chances for an override vote. The session should have ended then and there, but it didn’t. A lull ensued. To kill time, members even watched the Orange Bowl on the big screen that usually displays the vote tallies.
As the House and Senate lingered, there was some suspicion that something was up, and in fact, there was. When the adjournment resolution was finally offered, it indicated that the General Assembly would adjourn and then reconvene in a new session at 12:45 a.m. When Democrats objected, debate was cut off. Over in the Senate, similar objections were raised. Unlike veto overrides, which require three-fifths of the members present, an adjournment resolution just needs a simple majority, and both chambers signed off on the abruptly scheduled session.
Most people paying attention at this point, namely a weary Capital Press Corps and approximately 29 people following #NCGA on Twitter, were convinced the session would be aimed at some of the remaining vetoes in the GOP’s veto garage. The possible targets for override included vetoes of a bill that would allow for fracking and offshore drilling, voter ID legislation and a bill eliminating automatic payroll deductions by educators for the N.C. Association of Educators.
When the new session finally started up about 1 a.m., the GOP had an advantage in the House. Earlier in the day, after a barrage of complaints, Gov. Beverley Perdue agreed to sign off on a midterm replacement to a vacant GOP seat. The Democrats were missing Rep. Larry Womble, who is still in the hospital after a near-fatal car crash, and Rep. William Wainwright, who took ill late on Wednesday evening and went home.
Whether the majority failed to muster the votes needed for an override of the fracking/offshore drilling or the voter ID bills or was simply beginning to get twitchy about passing such things in the dead of night, those two overrides never came up for consideration.
In a quick party-line vote, the House leadership meted out political payback to the educators’ organization and went home.
The move against the NCAE wasn’t much of a surprise. Last summer, in a closed-door meeting in a room with an open mic, House Speaker Thom Tillis said the dues legislation would show the NCAE, which had supported mostly Democrats, “a little taste of what’s to come.â€
What is a surprise to almost anyone who’s paid attention to the machinations of Raleigh in the past few decades is how that act of revenge went down.
It’s hard to imagine a more blatant and costly way of dealing with one’s political enemies. To hold the legislature open an extra day at a cost of around $50,000, while trashing any last shred of trust, ushers in the era of ultra-partisanship many of us have been predicting.
Now it will be difficult for any kind of “gentlemen’s agreement†on what might be considered in the remaining two sessions scheduled for early this year. And with the elections rapidly approaching, it’s hard to imagine that the short session that convenes in May will be anything but similar hijinks to what we saw last week.
Meanwhile, the fallout to the after-midnight session continues. Roundly criticized on the editorial pages, Speaker Tillis and his backers have taken to attacking the messengers. (He even canceled his Charlotte Observer subscription. That’ll teach ’em.)
And the NCAE went straight to court and won a temporary injunction because a Wake County judge said the bill itself – let alone the process of the override that made it law – was likely unconstitutional.
We’re in a new era now, one of raw politics and greater distrust. In the pursuit of petty politics, the group that rode into Raleigh last January promising greater transparency has shed themselves of that goal for good.