AP Dillon on the legislative LOOOOONG session (02-24-2025--Hour3)

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[00:00:28] For the third hour here, News Talk 1110-993-WBT, let's welcome back to the program AP Dillon. You can read her work at the North State Journal, NSJ Online. Also, she has her substack, apdillon.substack.com. AP, thanks for joining me. How are you today? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on, Pete. All set for the long session in Raleigh?

[00:00:54] Well, I've had assurances from both Senate Leader Berger and House Speaker Dustin Hall that they would like to see us out by June. And if I could take to the bank how many times leadership has said that they wanted to be out by June, I would be a rich person by now. Yeah. It tends to run long. Even the short sessions run long nowadays, it seems. Yes, they do.

[00:01:19] Yeah. All right. So you have been tracking what has been filed so far, and I think the number, the last number I saw you had was 310 bills filed so far in the General Assembly. Is that, I'm assuming we assume? That was at the end of last week. I haven't looked this morning to see what happened. Okay. Put it into the file. Right. I assume it's going to be more. Oh, yeah. It's going to be more.

[00:01:43] Right. And so, all right. So first off, there are some deadlines here for when these bills have to get filed, and I'm not going to go through all of the specific deadlines. But there is the big day that everybody focuses on, which is crossover day, right? This is, what, May 8th. And that's when all the bills that get filed in the House have to cross over to the Senate if they're going to move and get approved, and the Senate bills go the other direction. So they call it crossover day.

[00:02:13] Yeah. I think that excludes local bills, I think, are excluded from that and a couple other types. But the majority of the public bills have to be passed by that chamber in order to be considered during crossover. Right. And local bills are important, just for noting here, that these are, like, specific for smaller areas. Like, if it's something about, I think, Mecklenburg County just saw something about their transit sales tax referendum. So that would be a local bill.

[00:02:42] You don't need the entire state to vote on. I'm assuming it's a local bill. You don't need the whole state to vote on that. Right. That's correct. You'll see a lot of education bills that are also local bills, which is, honestly, this is one thing that has piqued my interest in the last few years. The number of bills filed in the House and in the Senate lately asking for school calendar flexibility has increased quite a bit over the last couple of years.

[00:03:08] I wrote about this a couple of years ago for North State, and I was looking at it this year. And as of last week, there were 15 calendar bills that were filed for various districts and two standalone bills. One was Senate Bill 103 and the other one's House Bill 121, and those two bills are nearly identical, and they basically want all districts to have calendar flexibility of when they open to close.

[00:03:33] Right. And this makes sense in a state that's got the weather diversity and geographic diversity, topographical diversity from mountains to the coast. Right. You get different areas that may not need to be in school for the exact same length. I mean, they have to hit a minimum number of instructional days, but where those days are allocated, it seems like might be better decided at the local level.

[00:04:01] But I think this is still a remnant of the power of the tourism industry, right? They want to be able for everybody to be off at the same time so all the tourism flocks down to the coast. That's how I understood the issue. Well, yeah, the tourism lobby is pretty strong on this. The current K-12 calendar law in our state, it requires a minimum of 185 days or 1,025 hours of instruction.

[00:04:27] And under that law, the school start date can be no earlier than the Monday closest to August 26th and the end date no later than the Friday closest to June 11th. So that puts districts in a bind. Like, for example, Wake County just had three school days missed for the snowstorm that we had here. And they don't have any more bank days, so they can't push out their end date, which is close to June 11th or on June 11th.

[00:04:56] And so they had to claw back the teacher work days, three of the teacher work days for the traditional calendar kids. And some of the year-round calendar kids are having to go to school for three hours on a Saturday. So, I mean, it's a little weird, but the Senate has had no appetite for changing the calendar law. The last time I interviewed Senate Leader Berger was, I believe, two years ago on this issue. And at that point, he said he saw no reason to change it around.

[00:05:24] But here we have 15 plus two standalone bills, one in the Senate, one in the House, asking for such a change. I don't wonder if it's going to see a little bit more conversation this time around. Yeah, well, we do know if Medicaid expansion was any indication, Senator Berger can have a change of heart and mind on... Yeah, Medicaid's about to have some issues, though. I mean, the Fed sort of promised us, you know, the 90% reimbursement rate, but I just don't see that happening. No!

[00:05:53] And I also think that, well, you know, it's written into our Medicaid expansion that if they don't make that 90%, then they can start slashing back the funding or basically rescinding the expansion. And whether or not the lawmakers will have the guts to actually do that remains to be seen. Yeah. But, you know, that's an interesting piece that I don't wonder if that might get addressed a little bit. I saw a couple of bills in here that have to do with health care.

[00:06:23] Let's see. Let me scroll down. Senate Bill 24, it's talking about addressing increasing health care costs, because according to a couple different outlets, I think Forbes was one of them, we're the most expensive state in the nation for health care. So they want to drive down costs that are driven by, quote, government-mandated health insurance,

[00:06:47] as well as any new legislation with health benefit mandates has to repeal an equal number of existing mandates and have the equal impact in funding. So you can't put something new in without taking something old out that costs the same. Yeah, I think those are called pay-fors. Like, you've got to show how you're going to pay for it. So, yeah. And I'm okay with that idea as a concept, sure. Yeah, there's an almost identical measure in the House. That's House Bill 46.

[00:07:16] So Senate Bill 24 and House Bill 46 on that one. Have you seen anything or heard anything regarding the certificate of need laws? No, but I did attend an event a week or so back that had health care folks there who came and talked to legislators and lawmakers. It was an event by North Carolina Partnership for Reform. They had Scott Jennings from CNN as their lead speaker at the luncheon part.

[00:07:45] But earlier on, they had a health care guy in there who was talking about how health care costs have surpassed college tuition for cost. That's impressive. Yeah, there were some interesting things. I'm going to have an article dropping at North State this week about that event, and there will be a nugget in there about the health care pieces that were in there. Right, and I also saw some stories within the last week, I want to say, of some certificate of need proposal,

[00:08:13] and there were people complaining about it, I guess, at a public hearing or something. And for people who don't know, this is a stupid law that the government has to approve whether or not a new medical facility opens in any given area, and they have to issue this certificate of need after the government determines that there is a need for this service, which is asinine because the government is not the expert in this. The medical facilities are.

[00:08:40] And it's a barrier to entry, for one, for certain things. It jacks up costs, for another thing. It's a little bit of rent-seeking behavior on the government's part. You know, and it's also protectionist on the part of the bigger providers out there. Yeah. I mean, it's all around, it's not a good thing. And the expert that spoke at the event that I went to called North Carolina's con laws the worst in the nation of all states that still have these kind of laws, and I think there's only about a dozen of them left.

[00:09:09] And I don't even hear a defense of the laws on their value. You know, like, all I hear is like, well, I don't know if there's an appetite to vote them away yet. Like, that kind of a thing, I never hear like a definitive case made in support of these types of laws. You know, they make claims that they do things that they obviously do not, like lower costs. And they definitely don't do that. Right.

[00:09:36] It keeps the public from being able to shop around for the best deal. Right. You know, I mean, we can do anything we want, and we can customize pretty much anything we want, from like our phone to our Froot Loops, but we can't customize our health care. Right. For, you know, to find the best deal out there. Yeah, you can't. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. I remember there was a colonoscopy, I think, clinic that wanted to open on the county line, Buncombe and Henderson County, about a decade ago.

[00:10:06] And there were people showing up from the community that were just like, I don't think we need this. Like, well, that's not your call to make. Like, why do I care what some random person showing up at a hearing is saying? Like, you're not an expert in them. Have you run a market analysis on this? No. So it just limits competition and options for the consumer. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can read that there are way more bills, obviously, 300 of them. Now, AP doesn't go through all of them, but she goes through a bunch over at North State Journal,

[00:10:37] NSJOnline.com headline, legislative session opens with more than 200 bills. And then on her sub stack, she's added even more. That's APDillon.substack.com. AP, thanks for your time. I appreciate it. We'll talk with you next week. Absolutely. Thanks, Pete. All right. Thank you. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life. And our stories are told through images and videos.

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[00:11:57] In her Substack piece called Over 300 Bills Filed So Far at NCGA, she highlights a number of different bills and in the North State Journal article as well. But for example, Republicans have filed some bills. She says that mirror Trump administration agenda items like ending DEI, protecting farmland from foreign ownership, as well as no tax on tips.

[00:12:28] Democrats have been filing the same type of bills that they file every year on marriage equality and altering the state constitution by removing the provision recognizing marriage as between one man and one woman. That was a constitutional amendment, if I recall correctly. Amendment one, as it was called. And then there's this.

[00:12:49] A bill filed in the Senate would protect arrest mugshots from being published and would make them non-public records, meaning nobody could obtain them even through a public records request. Senate bill 129 was filed by Senator Tim Moffitt, who I know he was a representative in Buncombe County, Asheville area.

[00:13:19] Or he was a state representative, I should say. He then lost to Brian Turner. And then he moved down to Henderson County. And is now a state senator from Henderson County. There are no other sponsors listed on the bill as of AP's post.

[00:13:41] The bill, she says, as a parent and a taxpaying citizen, is not only alarming, it represents the protection of criminals at the expense of public safety and the public's right to information. As a reporter, this is an anti-transparency bill. It blocks access to information that the public pays for and has a right to. So this is one of those issues I can make the argument either way.

[00:14:11] Because there are websites that scrape the mugshot, well, you know, pool, if you will. And they get all of these photos from various, you know, law enforcement entities around the country. And they then post the mugshots. I mean, I think there's even like a magazine. I think it was like I remember there being like a little, you know, it looks like the penny trader or something.

[00:14:39] It was at gas stations in the Asheville area years ago. I don't know if they still do it. And it would publish like all of these mugshots and names and charges that were filed against various people. Now, keep in mind, simply being arrested and charged does not mean that you are guilty at that step, right? So that's one aspect of it.

[00:15:02] And when you have, you know, somebody, a neighbor gets arrested for indecent liberties with a minor, you want to know who they are, what they look like. You know, it's an easy way to be informed about a potential threat in your neighborhood. So I understand the argument that AP lays out here.

[00:15:20] There's also another sort of permutation of the magazine with all the mugshots, which is essentially a scam operation where if you've ever been arrested, then these people, these organizations will get your information and they will charge you money.

[00:15:47] They'll try to get money out of you to erase your mugshot or push it down in the search results and all of that. And so there's this, and they are oftentimes the very ones who are promoting your mugshot. And sometimes they put your mugshot onto a website with charges that you actually never were charged with.

[00:16:11] And so you see this and it's like, wait, I got arrested for a, you know, open container as a 20 year old or something at an off campus college party. Right. So you get arrested and then they take your mugshot and it's five, 10 years later and they've attached something else to it. And now some other charge to it. And now you want to get that removed. And lo and behold, you can go to them and pay them that posted it. You could pay them a bunch of money and have it removed.

[00:16:41] So there is this, I would, I would say, you know, highly unethical, if not a criminal enterprise that has emerged around this. Now, I don't know what the exact rationale is for this bill, but that is one of them. There is also, where is it? She's got a whole list of them here at the North State Journal. Oh, yes. The DMV. The DMV, which.

[00:17:11] Do you remember like 10 years ago, Pat McCrory got elected. He was like, we're going to overhaul the DMV and we're going to make it more customer friendly. Customer service needs to be something we really focus on. Remember all of that? I guess they, you know, Pat lost his reelection. So I guess we just abandoned all of that. And yeah, because like I had to, I had to take a day off of work and drive almost 100 miles to get to a DMV for an appointment so I can get my license renewed.

[00:17:38] Which was weird because I had just gotten the real ID license about a year prior, but they didn't count that as a renewal. They counted it as a duplicate, even though it was not a duplicate. It was an upgrade to the real ID where I had to show them all of the information. But I didn't get the eye test, so it didn't count. Yeah. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do too.

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[00:19:01] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Senate Bill 63 would create a board of motor vehicles. I know there's a joke there about being bored with motor vehicles that I won't make it.

[00:19:23] Anyway, you would have nine members and there would be a study for potentially creating a motor vehicle authority to replace the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles. The study is due by January 1, 2026. The bill's primary sponsors or one of them is Michael Lazara, Republican from Onslow County.

[00:19:51] He has been vocal about wanting to privatize the DMV. The agency and its chief, Wayne Goodwin, Democrat, were questioned by lawmakers. Wayne Goodwin, by the way, is former Democrat Party State Party executive director, I believe. They were questioned by lawmakers on various issues during three oversight hearings last year.

[00:20:16] So the creation of this board of motor vehicles with nine members to do the study as to whether or not to create a motor vehicle authority, which would then hire some private company to run the DMV, which at this point, I cry uncle with the DMV. I don't think it's repairable. I don't understand.

[00:20:46] I don't understand. Did you hire the entire Obamacare web development team to do your DMV site? It's, oh, it's so bad. It's so bad. And like trying to schedule DMV appointments and like, oh, well, you can walk in. Like, yeah, you might be able to walk in if you're out in the middle of nowhere. Try to walk in and see somebody in West Charlotte. That's not, it's not going to happen.

[00:21:15] The line is out the door, like through the parking lot, around the building. It's awful. And there aren't any appointments. You can't even see appointments. You can't schedule appointments that are more than like 30 days out or something. So you can't even look like, okay, I know my license is expiring in six months and I have to go in. You're requiring me to go in. So I'd like to make an appointment. Oh, sorry, there are no appointments at this DMV office.

[00:21:45] Okay, well, how about in month two? No, sorry, we don't even open that calendar for you. You can't even look at that. Okay, well, how about if, is there another appointment somewhere in my vicinity? Well, here's a list of every single DMV office alphabetically and you can pull from the list. I don't know where some of these offices are. And then you got to open up the individual office. Then you got to punch in the dates.

[00:22:13] Then you got to find out, okay, do you have any appointments available? Like it takes so long. It's so not user friendly. How is this possible? How do you not have somebody that can set up some sort of a calendar system? There are literally free programs that are available for scheduling meetings and making schedules, making appointments. We deal with them all the time on apps and such.

[00:22:42] Don't tell me that this is technology that is so beyond the capability of the DMV. Ugh. Stan says you can only call something customer service if it's something that you're purchasing where you're not obligated to do so. With government, you are obligated. So therefore, they don't care if you wait in line or not. And they never will since you're required to deal with them regardless. Yeah. Now I get it.

[00:23:09] But you can set up a sort of, you know, an internal culture that prioritizes that. And, you know, you can offer incentives for employees to behave in customer friendly ways. And you can design your website to be more user friendly. And this is not just DMV, by the way.

[00:23:33] This happens all the time in the private sector, too, where it's like they never talk to their users to find out what the user wants. They just think it would be cool to offer this and that and this bell and those whistles. And the user doesn't actually want any of that stuff. A smart company will look at that, look at the metrics and say, oh, I see nobody is actually using these bells and whistles that we put on the site. So why don't we get rid of them? Right. But I don't know if there's an incentive for DMV to do it. It's just. Oh.

[00:24:04] Yeah, it's it's not good. There is also House Bill 64, which proposes a constitutional amendment, which we would then get to vote on, which would require the governor to obtain majority approval from both houses of the General Assembly for any clemency grants. So reprieves, commutations and pardons.

[00:24:32] So the governor would no longer have carte blanche authority to just pardon a whole bunch of people. They would have the governor would have to get. A majority vote on the pardons and the commutations and such from each House in the legislature. Constitutional amendment bills are not subject to gubernatorial vetoes. And so if it is passed out of the General Assembly, it would then just go to us, the voters for a vote. Yay or nay.

[00:25:02] Come November. But I mean, it's got to clear the House and Senate first before we ever get a chance to vote on it. OK, let me talk to Charlie. Charlie, welcome to the program. Hey, Pete. Hey. You make an awful lot of sense there on this DMV. I'm right up the alley on that. I've been working on it for six months. You know what we need to do? What's that? We need to make it so your tag is permanent with your vehicle.

[00:25:32] Unless you trade it or junk it, there's no use to renew a dad burn tag every year and have somebody track that and waste time out of your life and simplify people's dadgum situation on their vehicles. So I will say that the DMV. So, all right. The tag isn't being. Well, the registration is being renewed and then the taxes have to get paid. Right. So that's how they do that. And then the inspection in Mecklenburg County.

[00:26:01] But not all counties, I think, have to do the inspections. And so. But not all. But not all. Not all states make you renew your tag. You're paying a tag fee, too. Ah, yeah. Someone's getting paid to track. Yeah. No, that's truly. So, like, if you want to do the inspection and you want to, you know, charge the taxes, the property taxes, which go to Mecklenburg County. Right. And I think the state maybe as well on that. But, yeah, there is a tag renewal.

[00:26:30] And I don't know if they're making money on that or if that's just to cover the cost of the administration of it. But, yeah, they did do away with it. Because you used to have to get the two stickers. And now, at least, they're down to just one sticker. One for the inspection, right? You get the little sticker when you have your car inspected. And then the state is alerted by the inspection shop. And then you get the sticker in the mail when you pay your taxes. Right. But, you know, the inspections are rude, too.

[00:27:00] They don't do anything. If your car is 10 years or older or less, they just put a computer and check everything off and give you a sticker. They don't do anything there. No, they always tell me I need new tires. No, they say I need new tires. As if they're selling tires. Yeah, yeah, right. Charlie, I appreciate the call, sir. Thank you. Yeah, well, and, you know, brake light is out, headlight is out, those kinds of things.

[00:27:29] But, yeah, I mean, it's like if you go to a shop and they do, you know, a multi-point inspection anyway, like you're going to get the same kind of stuff, you know, when you bring it in there for that. Now, the key there is like the emissions tests, I think, where you've like we're in an urban zone. And so we have to have the emissions tests. I don't know if that's a state law, if that came down from the EPA or not. I forget.

[00:27:57] I think there's something to do with like population size and density that require certain areas to have the emissions tests as part of the annual inspections. But I don't remember. I'm just interested in exploring the idea of making the DMV something other than it is, which is in its current state, pretty awful. That's it.

[00:28:19] So that's and, you know, maybe more offices, you know, self-serve kiosks and stuff like that. Maybe. I don't know. I'm just spitballing here. I'm not on the board. So. But I welcome the opportunity. Here's a great idea. Yep. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in Western North Carolina? Just a quick drive up the mountain. And Cabins of Asheville is your connection.

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[00:29:36] And they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Okay, so I do have some messages though. This is from Lee who says,

[00:30:10] Oh wait a minute, hang on. Update. Update. Update. When I click on that site, it shows no availability. Right. That's what I mean. Like, you get these false, you get false hope when you're on the DMV site. Like, oh, there's a, there's an office. It's got availability. And then you click on it and it's gone. It was never there to begin with maybe. Or am I to believe that somebody happened to be confirming their appointment just as I was looking?

[00:30:39] It's just awful. So maybe we'll see some improvement there with the state legislation. What else? House Bill 5 and Senate Bill 50 would allow individuals to be able to carry a concealed handgun without a permit. Notably, Senate Leader Phil Berger has given his backing as co-sponsor of the Senate version.

[00:31:03] A.P. Dillon at North State Journal reports in line with the U.S. House's Protecting Privacy and Purchases Act, House Bill 38, would prohibit credit card companies from using any kind of coding like for firearms. So, because this was happening. Credit card companies were adding codes and then not allowing you to use a credit card to purchase a firearm. It's like, well, how do I get my miles then? Right? Like, I want my miles.

[00:31:35] But you shouldn't be, so that would prohibit the card companies from creating the codes and using anything like that to tag and track purchases, as well as from discriminating against firearms purchasers and vendors. And then there would be a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per violation in the bill. There's another bill that would shorten the early voting period to just one week.

[00:32:04] And, oh, also Senate Bill 55, along with House Bill 87, both target cell phone use in K-12 schools. That is a topic for another day. But I do intend to do it. I've been collecting show prep on that topic and will tackle it at some point here. Now that we've got legislation filed, I'll take a look at those bills, too. And we'll hash it out. All right. That'll do it for this episode.

[00:32:34] Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete Calendar show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone.