Legislative Update from Rep. Frank Iler – June 2, 2014

Week three of the short session began with a flurry of activity and anticipation.  The activity involved lobbyists promoting their clients’ positions on various bills, as well as Representatives and Senators checking to see if they had enough votes on various bills.  The anticipation was that the House would soon see the energy bill from the Senate. Perhaps the budget bill would also be finalized in the Senate and sent to us in the House by week’s end.

On Tuesday, there were so many meetings on bills coming to the floor for votes that our House Transportation Committee meeting was cancelled.  This was disappointing, as there were 14 bills on our agenda for that meeting, many of which were requested by the Dept. of Transportation and approved by our Transportation Oversight Committee.  As a co-chair of both of these committees, I am sometimes frustrated by anything that slows down our process.

Many groups were visiting Raleigh last week.  The Association of County Commissioners had their conference, and many visited the legislature.  It was a pleasure to have a visit from three of our Brunswick County Commissioners on Wednesday.  Commissioners Pat Sykes, Marty Cooke, and Frank Williams came by the office.  I am happy to say that our county officers and commissioners stay in touch with me on a regular basis.

The energy bill, Senate Bill 786 – Energy Modernization Act came over from the Senate on Wednesday and was put on our calendar for debate and a first vote.  The debate was long, as the bill contained the procedure for hydraulic fracturing to explore and extract natural gas in North Carolina for the first time.  This is the process that has had so much press over the last few months and years, and is referred to as “fracking”.  I was instrumental in the original to set up the rule – making process over two years ago, in 2012.  I knew that we expected to move ahead by 2014, once the rules were in place and we were confident that this could be done safely.

Over 120 rules have been written by the Mining and Energy Commission, which we set up in 2012.  Many of the opponents were saying that we should wait longer, until all rules are complete and approved by the General Assembly.  However, NO permits will be issued until the rules are complete and we will have a chance to disapprove any rule in 2015.  Also, no permits can be issued until after July 15, 2015.  I was satisfied with the process and voted for this bill.  Having passed the Senate 35 – 12, it passed the House 64 – 50.  In both houses it had bipartisan support.

House Bill 1050 – Omnibus Tax Law Changes came back after passing the Senate by a vote of 38 – 7.  It had been changed since we passed it last week with a vote of 84 – 29.  We had to concur with the changes they had made, and it passed the House concurrence vote 70 – 37.  It was sent to the Governor and signed by him on Thursday.  This is the bill that I mentioned last week with two main provisions affecting the taxing of E-cigarettes and capping the cities’ ability to charge business privilege license taxes. One of the Senate changes postponed the privilege license tax cap to July, 2015.

The big “B” word, the Budget, was on everybody’s mind and lips all week.  The Senate got the first chance to make changes and send them over to the House.  They finished their work on Friday and Saturday during extended sessions, and we will be taking it up early this week.