NC lawmakers race to pass bills before summer break (06-26-2026--Hour3)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio and Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, I Daily Show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeatclendarshow dot com, make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. So what else is going on up in Raleigh? Well, a lot they are, you know, they're they're looking towards a three I think it's a three week break. So it's just been a mad dash. You got legislators and all of their aids and assistants and all the staff just you know, working round the clock trying to get all the legislation through that they can, and you know, and all of the negotiating that that entails. And so there's a lot of stuff, a flurry of activity occurring, and so it's kind of difficult to keep track of all the pieces of legislation. But as I said, they'll be on vacation for three weeks and so we'll have a lot of time to hash out all of the stuff that they did do while they're gone over the next three weeks. But here are a couple of things that moved. This is according to Brionna Kramer's piece at the Carolina Journal Carolina Journal dot com. House Bill sixty seven that passed unanimously. The bill combined healthcare provisions from about ten different bills put it all together. The bill tackles various healthcare issues, including updating the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, preventing surgical smoke exposure for workers. I guess they're finally going to ban smoking in the operating room, I guess, and developing a healthcare workforce enhancement program in community colleges. So sports fans, you may be interested in this one. House Bill three seventy eight passed one hundred eleven to one. This bill updates education laws, boosts protections for education savings accounts, and also allows Name, Image and Likeness Agency contracts for student athletes or the NA Image and Likeness or NIL. This is the way that student athletes get to reap some of the financial benefits of becoming household names because they're very good at their sports right Instead of the colleges controlling the NIL. This gives the athletes the individual control to monetize their athletic abilities. And it also and so this would allow for agency contracts. I don't know what all that means, but if it's anything like the world I work in, I assume it would mean like you could have an agency that signs a bunch of the student athletes rather than just like individual attorneys. You could have agents and stuff. You could create a boiler plate contract essentially. And maybe this works like a school could have an agency. I don't know, Maybe a school contracts with an agency and they deal with all of the NIL stuff for the students. I don't know, but that that passed and it exempts NIL deals from public records, so we will not know how much the kids are making with their NIL deal. And it's a contract, so contracts are usually private as well. So but on the other hand, I can see an argument that if it's a public university, we should probably know what the terms of the contracts are so they're not just like wasting taxpayer money. So yeah, unintended consequences. As the economist Thomas Sole said, there are no solutions. There are only trade offs. Next up, House Bill five thirty seven passed one oh eight to zero. The first part of the bill aims to expedite death declarations for missing disaster victims. So this enables families to legally declared loved one dead sooner if they are declared missing after a natural disaster. The second part deals with streamlining administrative processes vital records, allowing the adoption of birth certificates to come back to the local Register of deeds in order to be distributed. Next up, I'm just giving you a couple of the ones that I think are probably the most important EMS personnel provisions. This was interesting. House Bill nine seventy five also passed unanimously. It would allow EMS workers to carry pepper spray on duty and allow them to give emergency care to injured police or rescue dogs without needing a veterinary license. Once again, I'm amazed that we have to pass a law in order to do this. You're an EMT, You show up on a scene and there's a police canine that's injured on the ground, and you want to be able to try to help it, And like, it's not like there's an emergency vet that's going to be responding with blue lights or something. So, yeah, if the EMT is there and you can try to help out, try to help out. But no, no, we couldn't do that because I don't have a veterinary license. So now they'll be able to administer AID. Now, if it's not a police if it's not a law enforcement dog, then your dog is going to die. AMT won't be able to help your dog, but they will be able to help a police dog. So then there's this. A bill to expand the investigative powers of the State Auditor is headed to the Governor's desk. This according to wral Paul spect the Reporter, state law already empowers the auditor to investigate state and local government agencies. The House voted to approve Housepill five forty nine, which allows the state auditor to investigate any entity that receives state funding. Why would Democrats oppose this except for what that the auditor is a Republican or maybe is it because now some of your nonprofits quote unquote are going to be subject to inspection. This was. Housepill five forty nine that that passed. Allows the auditor to dig into records of state agencies and groups using state or federal money in order to search for fraud, waste, or mismanagement. There's another bill known as the Dave Act. And by the way, the auditor's name is Dave Bullock, so it's like Doge, but it's Dave. It would encourage Dave Bullock the auditor to suggest slashing state government jobs and spending, similar to the Doge efforts. Right, So I think this is a completely valuable piece off of a legislation. It's a good idea to be on the hunt for ways to cut waste, look for spending that can be cut. Look, if we started from a zero based budget, all of this would be different. But they start with continuation budgets, right, they say, what did you get last year, that's the baseline. We continue that over to this year. And if we start from zero, okay, well, now let's put stuff in come and make your budget requests. Like I want to see what you're spending your money on, what are your programs and all of that. But we're not on a zero based budget system. We are in a continuation budget system. And so therefore it's helpful to have somebody dedicated or an office in this case dedicated to looking for ways to cut government spending Senate Bill four seventy four. This would instruct the auditor to produce a report by the end of the year identifying which state agencies and state positions can be dissolved. The program would create the State Division of Accountability, Value and Deficiency or DAVE. The DAVE similar to the DOGE. That bill, which the Senate passed back in April, just came up for a vote in the House. Proposals from the DAVE Act are now incorporated into another House bill, which is a smaller budget proposal that seeks to fund various state operations while they hammer out the budget, which actually passed. I think it was like five billion dollars or something, just in the sort of like an interim budget deal. So so there's that state auditor. Oh, also state election Board. They're moving forward with a plan to collect missing identification numbers of voters, as they should, as the Department of Justice has told them, you guys need to clean this up, and now with Republicans in control of the State Board of Elections, they are actually doing so. 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. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven in mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality PERDU slide shows, videos, and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come. Who you are. Visit creative video dot com. I do have messages I will get to from the first two hours discussion on the s Exploitation Bill and then the I don't even know what to call up, but the you know the definitions and the school. Well, here, hang on a second, I'll give you the actual name of it, the actual name of the bill, which we spent the first two hours going over and playing ridiculous audio from Democrats. An act to officially recognize two sexes in North Carolina, to prevent the sexual exploitation of women and miners. To limit the use of state funding. To modify the law related to birth certificates, to modify the law related to civil remedies for gender transition procedures on non miners. To allow students with religious objections to be excused from certain classroom discussions or activities, and to allow parent access to library books. And to provide for restrictions on school sleeping quarters. And this is anti trans according to the Democrats. So I do in fact, you know what, I'll just read the messages that I got on that. Now, it's all a distraction. In a PEAT tweet says kids are going to learn that druggies exist, but they don't need the K twelve schools encouraging and teaching them to become one. Right, that was the argument one of the Democrats made, Like they're going to find out that there are gay people anyway. Yeah, so once again it's about age appropriateness. And Seth points this out in an email. Why do we have explicit ratings for music and movies but nothing for books? Right? And when you read the writings and the interviews and podcasts performances from the people who are leading the American Librarians Association, you realize that these are gender queer activists. That's what they are. They are left wing activists. And again, always remember the issue is never the issue. It's not about LGBT. The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution. And what is the revolution in leftist ideology, you know, in the Marxist religion, what is it? What is the revolution? It is the tearing down of the structures, the institutions that Western civilization has built, specifically around God, the family, governance. You rip all of that away, you pit people against themselves, and you rip it away in order to create a more perfected society. You keep only the perfected elements of the society. You rip everything else down, you start over build a new and Marxist Marxism coming from the Hegelian school of thought that the state was the highest power. That's it. So everything is about how do you get there. And there are people that are inside these movements, these activists, and they are unaware of this. They are unaware of the animating philosophies underneath that's driving whatever project they're working on. But make no mistake, that ideology is there and the people who do know it are using you to drive it. And they are capitalizing on your suicidal empathy, right, your politeness, your niceness, your kindness. They weaponize that in order to advance their project. So there was that. I mentioned the changes to the name, image and likeness deals, and I did get a message on that that this is from Andy who says, I don't think NIL contracts or the money is allowed to be funded with taxpayer money. Athletic departments get most money from boosters and ticket sales. All right, well that's good to know, so the auditor will be able to Yeah, so its like, okay, well maybe the auditor needs to look into that stuff whatever, but they're going to be the NIL deals are exempt from public records. They're not public records. And I said, on the one hand, okay, their contracts, so I could see why that would be not a public record. But on the other hand, if it is using any kind of taxpayer funds, then we probably should have somebody monitoring that stuff. But if they are not to be funded with taxpayer money, then okay, boost away boosters, do your thing. Also, the state Board of Elections unanimously approved a three part plan to collect missing identification numbers from one hundred and ninety five thousand voters that are on the state's voter rolls. A piece by Teresa Opeka at Carolina Journal dot com, the executive director Sam Hayes of the Board of Elections said he came up with a plan that would work to obtain driver's license numbers or the last four digits of social Security numbers for registered state voters who lack either number in their voter records. You're supposed to have one of those two numbers in your voter file, and we have one hundred nine voters that are missing either of those numbers. The missing information has been a requirement of the Help America Vote Act or have A which took effect twenty one years ago, which apparently is just not enough time for the state Board of Elections under Democrat control to have fixed this problem. Now we have a plan to fix it, 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, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news, slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. A lot is happening in Raleigh at the state legislature this week, they're getting ready to go on break, so they're just trying to plow through as many pieces of legislation as possible before the break so they can wrap it up as well, wrap up as much as they can. They still got the budget to hammer out as well. So one of the things the State Board of Elections came up with is this three part plan, and the purpose of the plan is to finally get into compliance with federal law passed twenty years ago to get identification numbers for all voters. One hundred and ninety five thousand voters in our state do not have the numbers either a driver's license number or the last four digits of your Social Security number the choice. Again. This is from Teresa Opeka her article at carolinajournal dot com. The choice to provide either form of identification was marked as optional on our state's voter registration form until Carol Snow filed a complaint with the state Board of Elections in twenty twenty three. The registration application was then corrected about two months later, so we had an improper form, I guess for twenty years. The US Department of Justice filed the law lawsuit against the state and the Board of Elections last month over this missing information. State election officials hope that this plan will resolve the lawsuit and others and then bring the state into compliance with a recent North Carolina Court of Appeals order. So first part of the plan, they're going to send out a bunch of mailings, first wave in July to ninety eight thousand registered voters who registered after the HAVA the HAVEA Help America Vote Act became effective in two thousand and four who apparently lack a driver's license number or social Security number and who have not otherwise complied with HAVEA. Those voters will vote provisionally until they provide the information. Then they'll do a second mailing over the summer to ninety seven thousand voters who have complied with have but for whom they don't have the numbers. Second part of the plan review slash correction by county boards of Elections. So starting now through August, all county boards of elections in every county, all one hundred county boards will review records in the voter registration database for active voters who may have missing ID numbers and correct records where the voter provided the info but it somehow didn't get entered at the county board level. Okay, so you may be getting contacted by the local board if you don't have the numbers, but you are an active voter. County boards will also correct records where the voter registered before have it took effect. So if you were registered prior to two thousand and four, but for some reason the database shows the wrong registration date. Okay. That's part two. Part three Provisional voting for voters who don't have the numbers. So going forward, then in future elections in person, voters who do not have the ID number are going to have to vote with a provisional ballot, which will count only as long as the voter provides the required information. So you fill out a provisional ballot, you give it at the time that you're voting, but then you have a certain amount of time to go in there and cure the deficiency. You've got to go back to the Board of Elections, show them your idea or something. The state board is going to create sort of a flag to appear on the records in their electronic or paper polling books. The poll books, so you will be flagged if you do not have this data. And then that will allow the Board of Elections people to say you got to vote provisional and you've got to come back in and give us your numbers. So it's a three part plan and they hope that this will you get the FEDS off their back. What else? What else? Oh, we're going to get to vote on more trains. Everybody, well, end roads too, but we're going to get devoted more trains here in Mecklinberg County. Joe Bruno at WSOC reporting that Mecklenburg County's transit plan bill was approved. It is now headed to Governor Josh Stein. Both the House and the Senate gave final approval. I expect Josh Stein will vote to approve this today. Now there is a there's an interesting tidbit in all of this because this thing almost got derailed. No pun intended, but it almost got derailed. And if you read the Charlotte Observer story you would not know this. This is why I always say get your news from multiple sources. I highly recommend you sign up for Business NC Business NC dot com. They have a thing called the Daily Digest and they say it comes right to your inbox and so I get this daily digest, this rite up by Ray Gronberg. Senators voted Wednesday in favor of this bill that would give Mecklenburgers permission to vote on referendum for a one cent sales tax surcharge to pay for transit and road projects. Okay, so keep in mind there was a road funding component in it, and this is the interesting tidbit. It has to do with the road funding to pass before the General Assembly is upcoming summer break, it had to undergo a third reading in the Senate House. That occurred, but they had some last minute changes though, so this was kind of in doubt. This morning. Senators in committee and on the floor had added provisions they said are designed to head off the possibility that Charlotte officials would use part of the sales tax revenue to reduce their general fund spending on roadwork. What does that mean they would supplant the funding. Yeah, this was a little bit of a loophole that was in the original version of the bill, which was to say, yeah, we're going to collect an extra one cent sales tax, and we have to break it down like if we make let's say we make ten million dollars annually off of the one cent sales tax increase, forty percent of that would have to be used for roads, forty percent of it rail projects, and twenty percent for bus service. Right, that was the breakdown, and that's in the legislation, so they would have to follow that. But that's see, that's what that's just for the one cent sales tax revenue. So let's say so it's a ten million dollar revenue from the one cent sales tax, and let's say that forty percent, then is what four million dollars? Well, let's say the city has a road budget of four million dollars. They could just say, well, let's just swap it out. Let's just take the four million from the sales tax revenue, and then we can take the four million that we're already funding from our property taxes and whatever, and we'll take that out and we'll just supplant it, sort of like Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Arc. We's got the bag of sand and he swaps it out for the idol. You know, opening scene. I'm not spoiling anything. Why would the state lawmakers all of a sudden last minute have this concern, well, you can thank the Charlotte City Manager for this. I'll tell you why. Here's a great idea. 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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Call or text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins of Aashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Ray Gronberg at Business North Carolina Business NC dot com. You can sign up for their daily newsletter at the website, the Daily Digest their Business NC dot com. So the legislature has approved this plan, this transit plan, it's going to go to the governor for his signature, I suspse Beck, you'll sign it, and then it'll be up to the Mecklenburg County Commissioners to decide whether we all get to vote to raise our sales tax by another penny to pay for this new transit plan. And that penny, as I understand it, it will not sunset. It will be used then to continue to fund these things. But before the vote was finalized today, there was some last minute changes made because there was this fear that the City of Charlotte would supplant current road dollars with road dollars that are legislatively prescribed in this bill. So whatever revenue comes in from the one sent sales tax, forty percent of it has to be used for Mecklenburg cities to use on their roads. It's Charlotte and all the six towns. You got to use it for roadwork. And they changed it today to codify that you cannot swap out any existing road dollars for this new revenue. Where would they have gotten this idea, the possibility? This is Ray Gronberg's piece at Business nc dot com. The possibility crossed their radar thanks to comments Charlotte City Manager Marcus Jones made to the City Council in early May. So, first off, thank you City Manager Marcus Jones, thank you very much. I know the city council members are going to be pretty upset with you, but I a taxpayer applaud you. I thank you for letting this cat out of the bag before the legislature finalize the legislation so they could change it and they could prevent you guys from pulling the old switcheroo and supplanting the funding council City Council minutes of their May meeting one of their meetings in May shows that Marcus Jones told the city council that the added revenue from the sales tax would quote give us more capacity to take some of the property tax and put it back into the general fund. Right, so we already fund road projects with property tax dollars in north in Charlotte, So we're already funding that. And what he was saying was, it's okay, we'll just take the new revenue, stick it in the general fund, and we'll reduce our road funding from the property tax revenue. That would free money up to pay for salaries for police officers and firefighters or for other uses. He said. This is not mentioned in the Charlotte Observers story. So the Senate added a provision that says cities that get road money from the sales tax surcharge have to maintain local expenditures for roadway systems at a level that meets or exceeds the average of the last ten years of spending on them. So we're gonna do a ten year look back. What have you been spending on roads? Take the average, and that's what you need to maintain. You cannot swap this out. No supplanting Okay, let's go over and talk to John. Hello, John, welcome to the show. Hey Pete, thanks for dating my call. Right it's at the end of the day. Hey, I wanted to I wanted to come in and I used to another chapter of life run a adminorist administ of city, and we weren't rich, and we needed money for streets and for a fire department. And when our city council came to me with that crazy idea to go out and talk to the taxpayer, I insisted, and I made it very vocal because I'm on the right side of the aisle. They were all on the left side of the aisle. How'd you get that job? How did you get hired? Well? It was it was interesting, Fete. It was interesting. There was It was based on raw talent and ability. There you go, I like, but they looked at me like I was a horned frog. And I flied out told him, and I had the newspaper there in the local radio, and I told him, I said, listen, if I go out and I generate this because our taxpayers, these are the people that provide the money. I said, you guys will not say, well, you just gave us a million dollars in theory. So we're going to now move from the general fund that million somewhere else. So I said, you want your streets fixed, we need fire equipment, then this is going to be in addition to And I got a tape. It was I enjoyed the fights I had in my political heyday. They were wonderful, and I missed them dearly. But it was it was based on principle. And that's where the reason it got etched into this codified. And I love the word you used there, was codified, because that's what it is. I said. The reason it got caualified was because we don't trust you, right because and it's all you got to do. You just got to look back at how all these miscellaneous revenues come in. The resource officers resource officers really fast. That's one thing, you know. The federal government says, i'll give you that fifty grand a year. Well, that's what my officers cost back in the day. I'll give you that fifty grand for three years. After that, you got to figure it out. Well, the minute they get it that first year, they say, well, I can reallogate this fifty from the general fund or the police fund somewhere else. No, you can't. Yeah, but if you don't get the grant next year. That's it. Yeah, so appreciates tenchn to call. I appreciate that legislature. It's a Republican legislator, a conservative legislator that probably wrote that in because he sees the writing on the wall. Yeah, no, it was. You're right, you're absolutely right. Thanks John, I appreciate it. Thanks for the call. Yeah, good to hear from you. Yeah, it's the sea of penny spend a penny. It's why we ended up with structural deficits for so long when Democrats ran the legislature. Here, that's exactly what they used to do. All right, that'll do it for this episode. 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 dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.