Legislative Update from Rep. Iler– April 3, 2023
Last week at the North Carolina General was again very busy, with many bills coming through committees and the House and Senate chambers for votes. In the House we passed bills involving education, law enforcement, sports betting, and 2nd Amendment rights, among others.
House Bill 142 – Protect Our Students Act is an agency requested bill by the Dept. of Public Instruction to increase penalties for sexual abuse by school employees, increase reporting of such cases, show a video for grades 6 through 12 of how to recognize and guard against said incidents, and other safeguards. It passed unanimously 112 to 0. House Bill 382 – Registered Nurses in Schools makes it more efficient to allow experience to count in addition to education for school nurses, so that the pool of available nurses to be employed in schools will be larger. It also passed unanimously 109 – 0. Both bills went to the Senate for their approval.
House Bill 10 – Require Sheriffs to Cooperate with ICE makes sure the few sheriffs that do not hold illegal alien detainees when ICE officially sends a detainer for transfer to that federal agency must now comply with them. This bill passed on a mostly party line vote of 71 – 44 and went to the Senate.
The sports betting bill, House Bill 347 – Sports Wagering, passed the House on a split vote of 64 to 45. It allows on-line betting and betting at sports venues. As long as the bill contains betting at college sports venues and allows credit card betting, I have a hard time supporting it, therefore I voted against it. It went to the Senate for their approval and may well be amended over there.
Senate Bill 41 – Guarantee 2nd Amendment Freedom and Protections had been vetoed by the Governor. The Senate overrode his veto on Tuesday by a vote of 30 -19. It came to us in the House on Wednesday, and we voted 71 – 46 to override. As both chambers achieved the required 60%, it became law immediately. A lot of publicity has mischaracterized the bill, but it can be read at www.ncleg.gov.
The biennial state budget was voted out of the House Appropriations Committee last week and should be in the House chamber for a vote this week. It has kept us very busy in March, and now the Senate will work on it the next few weeks in April and May. June 30th is the normal deadline for completion of the budget.