Legislative Update from Rep. Frank Iler – July 15, 2013
After having the past week off for the Independence Day celebrations around July 4, the House of Representatives members returned facing a heavy load. We immediately had committee hearings on controversial bills that had been sent over from the Senate. We also dealt with other heavy committee agendas, due to the Speaker’s announcement that we should shut down committees after last week, except those that are crucial to the tax and budget process. Those key committees are the Finance, Appropriations, and Rules committees.
Our House Transportation Committee, which I co-chair, had six bills to consider in a 45 minute meeting Tuesday, and we got them reported out favorably. We won’t be meeting again, except in an emergency situation.
As reported last week, work continues on tax and budget negotiations between the House and Senate. House Bill 998-Tax Reduction Act is now back in the house and sitting in the Finance Committee. Negotiations are going on among all parties, including the Governor’s office, to come up with a tax reform plan on which we can all agree. Conference committees on the budge, Senate Bill 402 – Appropriations Act of 2013, were appointed June 20th. They are meeting on various parts of the budget, but the tax reform plan will have to be finalized before they can finish the budget. My expected completion date keeps changing, but I hope and expect we can finish these important bills in the next two weeks.
A Tuesday meeting of the House Health and Human Services Committee was controversial because it was a two hour long public hearing on what has been called the abortion bill. The provisions being discussed had been added to House Bill 695, which was regarding foreign law. After the hearing, comments from the public and from DHHS Secretary Aldona Wos were incorporated into improved language in the bill. The resulting provisions are now in Senate Bill 353- Health and Safety Law Changes. The result is an improved bill that better protects women when they choose an abortion at an abortion clinic, since it forces the clinics to meet stands of a regular surgical care clinic or a hospital. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is to study the issue, and can apply these standards that it deems about appropriate. Currently, the regulations on abortion clinics are very inferior to surgical care units and hospitals. We debated this bill three hours on Thursday and passed it by a vote of 74-41. You have heard a lot of misleading information lately on this bill, but it cleans up these clinics to protect their patients and does not shut them down unless they fail to comply. There are a total of 254 facilities in which a woman can get an abortion and this controversy is approximately 11 of them. No one is being denied an abortion, since it’s the law of the land, but this helps insure that it is safe. If one is against this bill, they are against women’s health. One debater implied that we protect animals better than women are protected in these facilities. We really need to bring these facilities into the 21 century and this bill accomplishes that.
Other controversial bills that we handled Thursday in a protracted eight hour session were the Charlotte airport bill and the regulatory reform bill. Senate Bill 81 – Charlotte Douglas International Airport creates an authority to manage the airport instead of the city of Charlotte. This is in line with North Carolina’s other three international airports, including ILM in Wilmington. It passed 72-42. Senate Bill 112 – Create Jobs Through Regulatory Reform had dozens of policy changes and studies. Some of them were controversial, but it had bipartisan support and passed 84 -28.
Please keep up with us and all these bills at the General Assembly website at www.ncleg.net.