Legislative Update from Rep. Frank Iler – June 20, 2016

Last week in the North Carolina House of Representatives, we got closer to a budget for 2016 – 2017, passed a major regulatory reform bill, and welcomed some important visitors from back home.

After receiving the budget bill, House Bill 1030, from the Senate the previous week, we got to work to negotiate the differences in the two budget proposals, the one from the House and the one from the Senate.  I met with the chairs of the House Appropriations Committee on Transportation, along with the Senate chairs of the comparable committee.  Our Senator Rabon is part of that group.  After a series of meetings during the week, we agreed on Thursday and presented our budget to the senior chairs.  Other areas, such as Education and Health and Human Services were still working on their budgets later in the week.  We hope to have a full budget for an up or down vote this week.

Senate Bill 303 – Regulatory Reform Act of 2016 was in the House for a vote last week. This bill is part of a continuing effort to provide relief from excessive regulation to the citizens of North Carolina.  It clarified and changed many laws governing the lives of our citizens. Some of them include clarifying that the employee of a business franchisee is not an employee of the franchisor, simplifying the requirements to become a general contractor, requiring the Department of Environmental Quality to study riparian buffers along our waterways, and consolidating many environmental regulations.  After several amendments it passed 109 – 0 on Thursday.

We continued to have visitors from home last week, including firefighters from several towns in the county.  Firefighting representatives from Shallotte, Leland, and other towns were making sure we continue to support this important service for our citizens.

We were also very pleased to have a House page from Brunswick County.  Lexi Kopp paged all week in House sessions and committee meetings.  She is from South Brunswick High School, and is the third member of the Kopp family to page for us in recent years. This is an excellent civics lesson for our young people to see how our state legislature works. (A note to parents who would like to have their high school students page in the House or Senate: contact your House or Senate member by January of each year to schedule a week for that year’s session.)