By Cassie Gavin
Senior Director of Government Relations
The legislature met this week and primarily focused on drawing a new map for North Carolina’s 13 U.S. congressional voting districts after a state court signaled that they are likely to rule the existing congressional districts to be unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. New maps were passed along party lines by the House yesterday and the Senate is expected to vote on the map today. Democrats have expressed concerns that the map is still too partisan. The map passed by the legislature will have to be approved by the court and, if approved, could be challenged. Gov. Roy Cooper does not get to review, sign, or veto redistricting bills passed by the General Assembly. To learn more about the mapmaking process, see WRAL’s reporting on it.
Also on Thursday, the legislature passed a bill to provide state matching funds for federal disaster dollars to help places like Ocracoke with hurricane recovery. There was bipartisan agreement on directing state funds to this purpose, but yesterday a new version of the bill was released that contained new language that would require any funds received by the state to be appropriated by the legislature.
The new language might affect how the Volkswagen settlement funds, approximately $92 million, are administered. The Volkswagen funds are a result of a settlement between the car company and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after the company was caught disabling emissions controls in vehicles, resulting in thousands of tons of pollution over legal limits. The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) put out a plan to spend North Carolina’s part of the Volkswagen money in three phases; applications for the first phase are now in. DEQ received 116 applications totaling $52 million for Phase 1; $27 million is available - some for electric vehicle infrastructure. The Sierra Club advocated that the maximum amount of funds that can be used for electric vehicle infrastructure be allocated for that, which DEQ is planning to do. The disaster bill was sent to the governor for consideration.
There was no movement on environmental bills like the Farm Act this week. Expectations are that the legislature will adjourn this week until a later date - perhaps until January 2020. But note that legislators may be called back to Raleigh for so-called “emergency sessions” even if an adjournment resolution specifies a date to return.