Legislative Update from Rep. Frank Iler – April 10, 2017

Last week in the North Carolina House of Representatives: we passed a major regulations bill that helped Brunswick County, we passed a revision of the state board of elections, and we passed school calendar bills that I opposed.

Committees were meeting every hour last week, sometimes two and three at a time. Most committees had multiple bills before them, often a half dozen or dozen at a time.  For example, the House Transportation Committee on Tuesday handled seven bills. 

One of the bills that made it through the committee process and appeared on the House floor on Wednesday was Senate Bill 131 – Regulatory Reform Act of 2016-2017.  One of the many provisions in this bill relieved several counties from the emissions inspections on automobiles.  Brunswick was one of the counties on the list that was struck out, and will no longer be required to have the emissions inspections.  The safety inspections must still be done.  It passed 87 – 29 on Wednesday and 84-27 on third reading on Thursday.  Since it was a Senate bill that we changed in the House, it was sent back to the Senate for their concurrence.

Senate Bill 68 – Bipartisan Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement came to the House floor Thursday.  It reorganizes the State board of Elections to give equal representation to the two major parties.  This mandates the Governor to appoint four members from each party for a total of eight, instead of the Governor appointing five members currently, including as many as five of them from his party.  This balances the board’s decisions, while requiring a member of the opposite party to agree on any decision.  This also combines the Ethics Commission with the State Board of Elections, since most of their decisions involve campaign issues. This board also can regulate lobbying activities, since these are heavily involved with ethics.  The bill also balances the local Boards of Elections with two members of each party rather than three, two of whom are from the Governor’s party.

Two school calendar bills came to the floor Thursday, House Bills 375 and 389.  One allowed local school districts to align with the calendar of their community colleges, and the other was a pilot program in 20 counties to allow schools to start the Monday closest to August 10th rather than the Monday closest to August 26th.  There is no change in the ending date of June 11th.  I made the argument that these two weeks are 20% of the ten week summer season for vacation rentals in the coastal areas, and could cost thousands of jobs and up to $5 billion in economic activity in the state over ten years.  Some seemed to have difficulty understanding that people from all over the state and other states rent the thousands of beach houses, and not folks from the coastal counties.  There seemed to be no concern for jobs on the coast or the economic importance of tourism because the bill(s) passed by large margins.  One can only hope the Senate has more sense and sensibility about our economy.  These sneaky tactics are not good for our state. I expect to chair the House Transportation Committee on Tuesday, and to see many more bills coming out of committees and onto the floors of the House and Senate.