NC Legislative Round-up | Hour 1

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 in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to thepeakclendarshow 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. Glad you're going to spend the hour with us. We've got a lot going on, lots of big headlines coming up in just this hour alone. We've got North Carolina's Treasurer, Brad Briner joining us on the show. Plus, we're going to be talking about all those kids heading back to North Carolina's UNC campuses across the state. What do we see in the state budget, what should they expect when they get back on campus. We're going to be talking about that and a lot more over the next few hours. So stick around. We've got a lot to share and we want to hear from you. Give us a call or text us at seven zero four five seven zero one zero seven nine, or shootover a text at seven zero four five seven zero one zero seven nine. Wbt's text line is driven by Liberty Buick GMC. Here are some of the headlines that we're following today. Among them, a form Gaston County teacher is suing the school district, claiming her free speech rights were violated when she was fired over a Facebook comment denigrating conservative activist Charlie Kirk following his assassination. Holly Ackerman's lawsuit says the comment was made on her personal account while she was off duty and did not interfere with her work as a teacher. Gaston County Schools suspended Ackerman and later fired her after an investigation into the post, saying it caused significant disruption to the operation of the school. The lawsuit names the district, members of the school board, and Superintendent Morgan Hartchert. Ackerman is seeking damages for lost wages and emotional distress. Also, the North. Carolina Court of Appeals has a decision that could affect cities across the state. In this ruling, that's ruled that the City of Raleigh did not have the authority to charge more than sixteen million dollars in road impact fees to a developer. The decision could reach far beyond Raleigh, as more local governments across the state are increasingly looking to developers to help pay for roads and utilities and other infrastructure needs for rapid growth that we're seeing here in North Carolina. So the unanimous three judge panels said the city lacked the authority under state law to require payments as a condition of development approval. The fees were tied to a residential project, and the developer argued that they amounted to an unlawful tax. So that ruling now raises questions about whether similar fees imposed elsewhere in the state could face legal challenges. Now, the city could ask the North Carolina Supreme Court to review the case. And North Carolina's most expensive private schools receive little voucher fund. That's new information if you've been launching a lot of the news over the Opportunity Scholarship program. So there's a new analysis from the John Locke Foundation, publisher of Carolina Journal, that finds the state's elite private schools are taking very little money from the North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship Program. Researchers reviewed one hundred schools receiving the most Opportunity Scholarship money and compared tuition levels and school affiliations. Several of the state's most expensive private schools don't even participate in the program at all, and among those that do, scholarship students typically account for less than five percent of their enrollment. Instead, most Opportunities scholarships are going to smaller, religious and community private schools across the state, so say researchers. This school year, more than six hundred private schools participated in the program, and the maximum scholarship ranges up to seven thousand, six hundred and eighty six dollars for students from lower income families, with smaller awards available for higher income households. Also, a new report says that one in five North Carolina households struggle with energy costs. A report from the Lock Center for Food and Power and Life say about twenty percent of North care North Carolina's households experience what's known as energy poverty. That's when families spend a disproportionately large share of their income just to keep the lights on and keep their houses cool, particularly in these hot summer July months. The report says low income household seniors and many rural residents are the most affected. John Sanders from the Lock Foundation's Center for Food, Power and Life is going to be with us in just a little bit coming up in the next hour to tell us more about what this poverty index means. But researchers say policymakers should really start focusing on keeping electricity reliable and affordable as demand continues to climb. Now, our state is expected to see some significant growth in electricity use over the next decade, mostly driven by population growth, but also we've seen a manufacturing expansion and new data centers that could tap into our so the report warns that higher utility costs would hit the state's lowest income residents the hardest. North Carolina is also changing the way the state handles involuntary commitments for people with serious mental illness. Governor Josh Stein has signed the state legislature's bill into law aimed at improving the process after lawmakers have examined two high profile killings involving suspects with documented histories of mental illness. The change expands includes expanding options for court ordered outpatient treatment, allowing some commitments to continue for up to one hundred and eighty days and requiring additional study of how the state's mental health and criminal justice systems work together. Supporters say these changes will help make sure that people who may be a danger to themselves or others can get treatment before a crisis happens, but some mental health advocates say the state's biggest challenge really remains a lack of resources, including enough psychiatric beds and treatment options for people who need the help the most. The law is all part of a broader debate over public safety, individual rights, and how North Carolina responds to mental health emergencies. So would you like to stop changing the clocks twice a year? So? The US House in Congress has voted to end the twice a year time change. Lawmakers approved the bipartisan Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight savings permanent across most of the country. The bill passed the House threeh eight to one point seventeen and now heads to the US Senate. President Trump supports the measure. If it becomes law, Americans in most states would no longer spring forward in March or fall back in the fall. Although states have already all those states that have already observed permanent standard time, like Hawaii Arizona, they could continue to do so. Democratic Senator US Senate candidate Roy Cooper is facing renewed scrutiny about a twenty twenty one settlement that resulted in the early release of about thirty five hundred North Carolina inmates during the COVID pandemic. That settlement resolved a lawsuit filed by the NAACP over prison conditions, and Cooper, who was governor at the time, was named a defendant. Speaking Monday, Cooper told reporters that while he signed the order, the releases were really part of a court approved settlement that the Department of Adult Reaction Corrections determined which inmates qualified for release. That settlement has become a central issue in the Senate campaign that will go to voters in November because some inmates released under Cooper's order later committed violent crimes. The New York Posts reported eighteen people released under the settlement were later charged with murder, while others reported having hundreds of additional arrests and violent offenses. Cooper's campaign says those criticisms misrepresent both the settlement and the former governor's role in it, so this issue comes as new public policy polling surveys suggests the race is tightening for US Senate from North Carolina. The poll of seven hundred and fifty nine likely voters conducted Friday and Saturday over the weekend shows Cooper leading Republican Michael Wattley forty eight percent to forty four percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus three point six percentage points. That puts this really into a competitive race. Meantime, the Wattley campaign has announced a seven figure streaming advertisempaign. The new ad, titled Miles, highlights Watley's visit to all one hundred North Carolina counties and promost several of President Trump's policy priorities. Republican Senate candidate Michael Watley will be joining us here on WBT in just about an hour. All right. For over a year now, you've heard me talking about create a video. 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Jenna Robinson, President of the Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Good afternoon, Jenna, thanks for joining me. Great to be here. Donna, good to. Talk to you. So, as students are getting ready to head back to you and. See campuses, what are some of the biggest issues you're seeing in higher education that families, policymakers, particularly when you look at the state budget, should be watching this year. So to start with the state budget, I think the biggest news is that universities finally got their enrollment funding, which is key to their operations. The General Assembly funds universities based on how many students they have and how many student credit hours they're teaching. And because of the delay in the budget, the university universities have been waiting a long time for that funding. And so with the budget coming through, they are getting that funding that gives them a lot more reassurance and security about knowing what they can do going forward, and so it's really good that they have that information now in that money now. But there were also some other changes in the in the budget that I think are worth mentioning, and I think one of the really good ones was that Propel and Seeing was funded, and that is the community college plan that incentiveizes workforce programs and so instead of just incentivizing, you know, student credit hours, it's actually looking at what the workforce needs and which of those high quality programs are you know, are graduating students who then go and get jobs in the workforce that are of particular importance to North Carolina. And so that was in the budget. There was also a faculty retirement incientive program that was in the budget, which is kind of dealing with the problem that's been going on that there have been enrollment declines at some of our UNC system schools, and so in order to deal with those without having to do layoffs, we've got this retirement incentive program. And there are some cuts in the budget to universities, but far less than university feared. The biggest thing that was done in the budget was saying that universities had to cut vacant vacant positions, which is just a common sense cut. If there is no one in that position, it hasn't been for six months, you know, you shouldn't still have it around and it shouldn't. Still be funded. All right, Well, that's encouraging. So one of the big things that jumped out to me lately is un c W. This is fascinating to me. So UNCW is moving forward to plans for a new medical school. This could really change the game out in eastern North Carolina for UNCW. What what do you think about that? When? And does it you think it. Will help address our medical providers shortage? Right? So this is it's addressing a real need any eastern North Carolina, and in a lot of places in rural North Carolina, we do not have enough doctors and it's very hard to get doctors to move into those areas. And so I am very sympathetic to that need that North Carolina has, but I'm somewhat skeptical that this is going to fix the problem because you know, ECU has existed for many years and what happens is that not enough of ECU's graduates end up staying in North Carolina. And so it's not it's not one pipeline problem. We've got people going to North Carolina schools, you know you and c. Chapel Hill has a medical school, Wake Forest has a medical school. Medical schools exist in North Carolina, and the students are leaving, they're choosing to go elsewhere. They're also choosing to specialize in, you know, cardiology or in asphesiology instead of doing primary care. And so most of the doctors that you need in rural North Carolina are primary care positions and that is not what a lot of the students are choosing to do. So unless the students at UNCW are going to be really different, they're all going to choose primary care and they're all going to choose to stay here in North Carolina, then this won't necessarily solve our problem. I think that the state needs to look at, you know, why are doctors not choosing to go into those rural areas and what else can be done to allow nurses or to deregulate or to do something else to address those shortages in rural North Carolina. Very interesting. So the Martin Center released a fifty state comparison. Let's talk about getting into college. Let's say you're not packing up your kid, You're worried more about applying and getting in. The Martin Center recently released to fifty state comparison examining standardized testing requirements at public flagship universities. What's the biggest takeaway from your research on that? The biggest takeaway is that very few state flagship universities are requiring standardized testing at all. Most schools will accept your standardized test, if you take it, they will look at it, they will consider it. California is the one big exception there right now, in California, university admissions off officers cannot even look at your scores. They cannot consider them at all. And if you're following the news, you may have heard that faculty are now kind of an open rebellion about this. They want standardized testing back because students have been getting into University of California schools who are completely unprepared. They need remedial mass. They cannot succeed because great inflation is so high that the admissions counselors or the admissions officers with no standardized tests to go on, can't tell who's ready for college and who isn't. But everywhere else in the nation, you know, the universities will look at your scores, but if you don't send them in, you don't have to. And that's something that the Martin Center thinks is a problem because there standardized tests have two really important functions. One is kind of the problem that the University of California is seeing right now. Standardized tests let us know in an objective way who is ready to do college level material, and grades don't do that anymore. The second thing that standardized tests do is allow elite universities, really competitive universities that have you know, thousands upon thousands of applicants, to discern, you know, the top from the top, who is truly elite. They need as many metrics, as many objective metrics as they can get to figure out, you know, who should get these limited number of places is at UNC Chapel Hill, at the University of Virginia, at the University of Georgia. And so for those two reasons, I am a huge proponent of bringing standardized testing back to our flagship universities and really to all state universities because they do serve those two very important complimentary purposes. It really does. And I think that's fascinating because my kids were all went during a time when they had to when they had to provide that standardized testing, and we went through a lot of difficulty with it, and it's just one of those things that I think does ensure that they're prepared. How concerned are you about AI on college campuses? Because I've got a college student now, and I saw this past semester a lot of professors are going back to those blue books. Do you remember the blue books that. We had to take tests and exams in. Some of those professors are bringing them back. How concerned should we be and how do we guide our college students as they get back on campus. I think this is a really hard question, a harder one than a lot of the kind of the faculty reports that you're seeing are making it. They have, you know, one one view on it. The faculty are seeing AI I use, and they are absolutely panicking because they do have to change things. They do have to go back to blue books. They probably should bring back oral examinations, they should bring back you know, socratic teaching in the classroom. There are a lot of things they can do, and they and it does mean huge changes for faculty, So I get that. But also we know that future students need to use AI in their jobs. We're already seeing jobs that are saying that you need to know how to use AI in order to be considered. And we know, for example, that AI has already been making breakthroughs and things like medicines, and so the universities really have to walk a tightrope here in ensuring that students are not abusing AI to the point that they are not learning how to think and discern and judge and write. Students absolutely need those skills and there's no AI short kept to get there, but fantastic also need to learn to use AI for their future careers. And so this is a it's a balancing act that universities have to strike and I think they're still struggling with it absolutely. Jenna Robinson, President at the Martin Center for Academic Renewal, Thanks so much. Have a great day, Thanks Dona, good to talk to you. Joining us now. North Carolina's state Treasurer Brad Briner. He is the state's chief financial officer. It's a huge job managing our public funds, managing our state health plan for seven hundred thousand employees pensions. Second treasure Briner, thank you so much for joining us today. Pleasure to be with you, Donna, Thanks for having me. These are huge things, particularly the State Health pl And tell me about how that's going. You've had a lot of updates lately. We have been hard at work and my team gets a lot of credit for all of that. You know, like every other health insurance program in the country, we're struggling with costs. Every health participant in this country is struggling with costs, and we're not different. The difference is we are big, and we've been trying to use that as an asset to try to create a recipe for sustainability for the State Health Plan in the future. We announced a bunch of things coming out of the board meeting last week, preferred providers, a new third party administrator, and like all getting at one central thing, and that's how do we make this plan affordable and great for our members? Absolutely well, let's talk about the State Health Plan. Board selected Blue Cross North Carolina for that third party administrator. That's been a big change in just a year. Tell me more about how that decision. How y'all arrived at that decision? Sure, So as our current third party administrator, they took over the day I took office, so January first to twenty twenty five, so they've been at this for eighteen months. Prior to that, Blue Cross was the third party administrator for forty plus years. As the state health plan has changed is what we're doing here to try to make the state health plan affordable and sustainable has changed our work. We really needed a different relationship with a third party administrator. We're now in the middle of negotiating directly with hospital systems to try to get them to give us volume discounts for our members, and we wanted to go out with an RFP request for a proposal to get a third party administrator who could do new and different things with us. So we did that and we got two responses, Aetna and blue Cross. We got those proposals, went through them in detail, and it was quite clear that blue Cross was in a much better position to provide the services that we need going forward relative to ANA. Let's talk about access providers, Duke Health particularly. There's some new news about that as well, isn't there yeah. So the basic architecture, and this starts January first of twenty twenty seven, is that we have partnered more closely with health systems who really want to serve state employees. And the way that we're doing that is those providers have provided substantial capacity at a reduced price for the state health plan. We are passing on those savings to our members to encourage them to go see those providers. And we have three tiers. We have a preferred tier for the Triangle that's un see Health particularly, but across the state and other places Nova and unc Health. With the two big preferred provider systems, we have access which is essentially the same cost as last year. We have lots of part of the of the state that do not have competitive health care markets, and so we wanted to do no harm, so to speak, across all those regions. So if you're somewhere where there's only one hospital near you, almost invariably that hospital is going to be in the access to here, not costing you any more next year than it did this year. On the flip side, we will have non preferred providers, those who just for whatever reason, for their own business reasons, don't really want to work with a state health plan. They are going to be higher costs. They're going to be higher costs for a state health plan to pay for you to go there, and they're going to be higher costs for you to go there as well. So we're hoping members vote with their wallets and find a provider who is preferred or at least access and shop for your services. That way, it'll benefit you financially, it'll make the plan sustainable for the long run. Yeah, And I mean, at the end of the day, you're in charge of the pocketbook. So what could this mean for our state? Are we going to save money through this plan? What are the goals? Yes, very much. So. First of all, for our members, we do have a consistent increase in health premiums going on, so that those will go up a small amount this year. But the preferred provider program offers our members the opportunity to save thousands of dollars literally thousands of dollars, and that will help the state health plans say sustainable over time as well, because those preferred providers are passing on material discounts to us. In the end, our goal is to not ask so much going forward, from the state through the budget, through the taxpayers not asked so much from our members, through increase premiums by keeping provider costs down. That is encouraging. You mentioned the state budget now that lawmakers have passed it as sign we've got our spending plan. What are your biggest takeaways from the new state budget from your perspective and the Treasurer's office. Yeah, First, I'd say I'm really impressed and thankful to the General Assembly enacted as budget. It's fiscally responsible, it funds a lot of critical needs. Invariably, people find fault any time a budget has passed, but I think this is a pretty good one that does a lot of things that we need to as a state. It adds to reserves, and so as the state treasurer, I think about that a lot. Are we in a position to respond to the inevitable challenges down the road, rainy days and other things like that. So it adds materially to reserves. It lowers taxes, which I think is appropriate. We are a growing state financially and we do not need to continually keep taxes high. So impressed with that. And it keeps the flywheel going that has been so beneficial for the state for fifteen years now. Absolutely, So you know this is I believe this is your first gig as a public servant in the state government. So looking at it from a business perspective, what do you see are the big challenges that we face as a state going forward? You know, health care cost, pensions, debt, or something else. What are your thoughts. Healthcare costs across the border number one. So yes, it is my first gig in state government. I am consistently amazed that we talk so much about the revenue side and so little about the expense side of state government. But maybe that's on the side. On the expense side, there's no question the category that is the hardest to deal with, and that's healthcare costs the state health plan. I think we have a reasonable trajectory of cost increases going forward based on what we've put in place, but medicaid is the big one, and medicaid is very, very large in terms of expenditures and growing faster than anything else. That's the key expense driver for the state budget that we still don't have a great answer for. There are only so many degrees of freedom, given that it's a federal program, and they have a lot of strings attached to the money they alloy case of the state. But we've got to do a better job managing the expense burden of medicaid, otherwise our entire budget is going to end up funding Medicaid. Ultimately, very interesting. North Carolina's treasure Brad Briner, thank you so much for your time this afternoon. Have a great day. Always a pleasure. Thank you. So this cyclist Sphora parasite is getting worse. North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services now says that there are thirteen people hospitalized across the state with this parasite. About three hundred cases have been reported North Carolinas, the third highest, I believe, behind New York and Michigan. It's getting worse. It appears it's a microscopic parasite that causes pretty serious gastro intestinal symptoms when people eat something that is contaminated. But the weird thing about it is they say that you have to scrub produce with a brush because the parasite doesn't just rinse off, and the only way to really get rid of it is to cook vegetables and fruit to one hundred and fifty degrees. It's an ugly, ugly thing. But they said to make sure one you use a produce brush, wash your hands frequently, clean your countertops frequently, your utensils, whatever, and that you should refrigerate cut or peeled produce within two hours to kill this. But they said, really the only way to kill it really is to cook produce and fruits and vegetables to one hundred and fifty eight degrees fahrenheit. They also said to cut away bruises when you have a piece of fruit, cut away any damaged or bruised area on fresh fruit and vegetables. We were talking about this this morning in my house and my husband said, well, you know, jokes on them. I don't need vegetables anyway. So I'm not really sure what's going on with us, but it's getting worse. So make sure you keep an eye out, clean your fruits and vegetables well, and rest and get fluids if you do get sick. So thirteen people, according to the DHHS in North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services now hospitalized in North Carolina with this parasite. In other news, we have the teacher in Gastonia you might remember at Web High school who said that she who was fired for posting a denigrating post on Facebook about Charlie Kirk after his assassination. She's now suing So that former Gaston County teacher suing the school district, claiming her free speech rights were violated when she was fired over the Facebook comment where she questioned why anybody would be mourning Charlie Kirk, calling him a bit of a choice word that I can't share here on the air. But Holly Ackerman's lawsuit says that the comment was made on her personal account when she was off duty and did not interfere with her work as a teacher. Gaston County Schools suspended Ackerman later fired her after investigating the post, and they say no it caused significant disruption to the operation of their school, so her lawsuit names the district, members of the school board, and Superintendent Morgan Houchard. Ackerman is seeking damages in the lawsuit for lost wages and emotional distress. So new ruling from the North Carolina Court of Appeals could have statewide implications for municipalities. The state Court of Appeals as ruled the City of Raleigh did not have the authority to charge more than sixteen million dollars in road impact fees to a developer, So the decision really could mean a lot beyond Raleigh, as more local governments across the state are increasingly looking to developers to help pay for the roads, utilities, and other infrastructure that's needed for rapid growth. The unanimous three judge panels said the city lacked the authority under state law to require the payments as a condition of development approval. The fees were tied to a residential project, and the developer said they are really an unlawful tax. That ruling now raises questions about whether similar fees imposed elsewhere in our state could face some legal challenges. Now, the city can ask the North Carolina Supreme Court to review the case. A new study shows that North Carolina's most expensive private schools receives little voucher funding, and new analysis finds that the state's elite private schools are taking very little money from North Carolina's opportunity scholarship. Researchers looked at one hundred schools receiving the most opportunity scholarship money and compared tuition levels and school affiliations. So several of the state's most expensive private schools do not participate in the program at all, and among those that do, scholarship students typically account for less than five percent of the enrollment. Instead, most opportunity scholarship dollars are going to smaller, religious and community private schools across the state. This school year, more than six hundred private schools participated in the program. The maximum scholarship was just over seven thousand dollars for students from lower income families, with smaller awards available to high income households. 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 thepetecalnarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.