The NC General Assembly came to a close on June 30, 2017, but legislators plan to return in August, September and maybe November. That means that some of the environmentally harmful bills that the Chapter worked against this year remain unresolved and could come up for a vote.
Cassie Gavin, the NC Sierra Club's director of government relations, reports on the details of the January-June 2017 session of the NC General Assembly.
Looking at the big picture, the environmental themes of this legislative session were continued attacks on water quality protections in the name of “regulatory reform,” giveaways to favored corporate interests, a big effort in the House to reach a consensus energy bill, and a relentless push by the Senate to stop wind energy development.
In what is unfortunately becoming normal practice, throughout 2017 many non-controversial bills passed the House, then were gutted and revised by the Senate to include completely unrelated language. These revised bills, called proposed committee substitutes (PCSs), were often sent to committee members late at night before morning committee meetings, leaving legislators and advocates scrambling to analyze complicated proposals within a limited time frame. Often, there was only one committee meeting on the revised bills before they headed to the floor. A deliberative, inclusive process would allow stakeholders to bring in issue experts to answer legislators’ technical questions and would give the public an opportunity to weigh in. Instead, as was the case in 2016, many major policy decisions were needlessly rushed and decided behind closed doors.
The makeup of the General Assembly did not change significantly after the 2016 elections, so the Republican party continues to hold a supermajority in both chambers. This means that it is not usually necessary for leadership to compromise with the minority party in order to pass legislation or override a veto. Nonetheless, it was helpful this year to have new leadership at the NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and other state agencies under Gov. Roy Cooper. This meant a stop to the steady stream of bad environmental proposals coming from DEQ that we saw under Gov. Pat McCrory. We also saw DEQ staff weigh in publicly in committee meetings and work with legislators and stakeholders to improve some problematic environmental proposals.
As always, there was tension between the House and Senate, with each chamber pushing bills that the other declined to take up. There was also tension between the Legislature and the Cooper administration, which was illustrated by eight gubernatorial vetoes (five have been overridden so far). Our focus, in general, was on working with our allies, House members, and DEQ to improve or stop environmentally harmful proposals, while educating and engaging our members and the public about such legislation.
Even in this tough legislative atmosphere, environmental advocates had achievements. But challenges remain as the General Assembly prepares to return ... and return. Download Cassie's full report to learn more about what happened and what remains unfinished in this unfinished 2017 session.