Sports wagering bill on the move in Senate
The Commerce and Insurance committee turned its attention to House Bill 347, which would legalize and regulate sports wagering in North Carolina.
Health Care
House moves Blue Cross, credit union, PBM bills
With crossover looming just a week away, the scramble to get bills through at least one chamber of the General Assembly before the deadline well and truly began on Thursday.
Senate mulls antitrust exemption for UNC Health
Senators are weighing a rewrite of the basic governance rules for the UNC Health System that will give it an antitrust exemption and cuts anyone it hires after Nov. 1 out of the Teachers’ and State Employees’ Retirement System.
Blue Cross bill starts moving toward a vote
Legislation giving Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina permission to transfer assets to a new nonprofit holding company cleared its first hurdle Tuesday, albeit in a way that suggests the road ahead has at least a few potholes.
Budget & Taxes
House bill targets international wire transfers
Republican legislators are usually fans of cutting taxes, and with legislative- and executive-branch economists agreeing the state's on track for about a $3.3 billion surplus in fiscal 2022-23, there are already rumblings that more cuts might be on the way.
Legislators hear cautionary note on revenues
Don't go counting your surpluses before they hatch. Fiscal Research Division economist Emma Turner didn't say that, exactly, to House and Senate appropriations committee members during a briefing Tuesday morning on the consensus revenue forecast from her office and the Office of State Budget and Management.
The long session's few new ideas
The first few weeks of the long session have been full of bills we’ve seen before – from legislation previously vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper to bills that just didn’t make it across the finish line last year.
Education
Familiar faces joining university trustee boards
Banker Hugh McColl Jr. and lobbyist David Powers are likely the most prominent names on the list of people the UNC System’s Board of Governors is preparing to appoint to campus trustee boards
Senate drops idea of broadening powers of Community Colleges president
Senate leaders appear unwilling to give incoming N.C. Community Colleges President Jeff Cox any of the expanded powers they contemplated granting a new system president before the announcement of his hiring.
County group objects to charter omnibus
The N.C. Association of County Commissioners says its members don’t want authority to allot capital funding to charter schools and will try to have the idea removed from omnibus legislation that the House Education - K-12committee is scheduled to review today.
Elections
Rollback of some environmental regulations
H462 had caught my eye earlier in the session, as it calls for the rollback of some environmental regulations pertaining to aquaculture, which is the fancy way of saying fish farming. On first impression, it wasn’t obvious what the beef was all about (so to speak), but I presumed the answer would emerge in due course.
New leader of N.C. Democratic Party faces an old challenge
The N.C. Democratic Party has new leadership, but key legislators say new Chairwoman Anderson Clayton and her team face an old challenge: money, and how to get its hands on enough to help the party's candidates compete.
Democrats to vote on leadership this weekend
Democratic Party leaders from across the state will meet this weekend to elect their state party chair – a contest that could have big implications for their direction.