Legislative Update from Rep. Frank Iler – May 26, 2015
The word on everyone’s mind in the North Carolina House last week was “BUDGET”. Budget meetings occupied every waking moment. Tuesday saw an all day House Appropriations meeting and Thursday’s House session lasted all night and into Friday morning.
Tuesday and Wednesday in the House and Senate are usually big days for committee meetings. However, in the House we had one committee scheduled for Tuesday. It was the Appropriations Committee. Comprised of over 70 members, the full committee is made up of all the committees that have been meeting over the last few weeks to hammer out their portions of the budget. In my case this was the Transportation Appropriations Committee. Tuesday, all the budgets were combined into the House budget, which would then be debated, amended, and voted out to go to the House floor. There were over 100 amendments submitted. Some were withdrawn or ruled out of order. We voted on almost 55, many of which passed and were added to the budget. As usual, the meeting lasted over 8 hours.
Wednesday, we were scheduled to take up the budget on the House floor. However, negotiations were still going on concerning major parts of the budget. So the two parties had their separate caucus meetings and the budget consideration was pushed into Thursday.
Thursday dawned bright and warm in Raleigh. We knew, however, that we would be inside most of the day. Additional negotiations were still going on. Finally, after several adjournments and recesses, we began debate on the budget at 3:00 p.m. There were many amendments offered. We debated and voted on almost 60 of them, which took us right up to midnight. We had to take a vote by midnight, as it is a two day vote. Otherwise, we would be pushed into Friday and Saturday to finish our work. So, the Speaker called for the vote on the full budget just prior to midnight. It was a pleasant surprise to see a big bi-partisan vote of 94 – 23.
Having adjourned just before midnight Thursday, we convened the Friday session at 12:15 a.m. Friday morning, about 15 minutes later. We took up about half a dozen more amendments and then had the final vote, known as “Third Reading”. It was again a strong bi-partisan vote of 93 – 23. There were 61 Republicans and 32 Democrats voting “aye”, while 11 Republicans and 12 Democrats voted “no”. It was the most bi-partisan budget vote since I have been in Raleigh and the most that anyone can remember.
The budget, House Bill 97, now goes over to the Senate, where they will modify it for their priorities for a few weeks. Then it will be negotiated with the House. If we finish it by June 30th, it would be on time. However, this rarely happens. I expect a more organized week, but shortened by the Memorial Day holiday Monday. Also, the NC General Assembly basketball team is playing the South Carolina General Assembly team in Columbia Tuesday night. NC won the first game last year in Raleigh, and will seek to defend their trophy. I assume we will have two good sessions Wednesday and Thursday.