GOP turns special session into an attack on Cooper
Published December 16, 2016
Editorial by The Fayetteville Observer, December 16, 2016.
Unfortunately, state legislators are up to shenanigans again. After passing a bipartisan bill Wednesday that will provide much-needed disaster relief for victims of the fall's fires and floods, Republican leaders sprang a surprise, new special session on the public. The primary goal of the session, where members could introduce just about any bill, is clearly to cripple the incoming gubernatorial administration of Roy Cooper. The Democratic attorney general last month knocked off incumbent Republican Pat McCrory in a close race.
The way it has gone down only deepens the profound mistrust many state residents already have for the General Assembly. For weeks, Republican leaders, including House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger, have been asked whether the GOP planned to "pack" the N.C. Supreme Court, which the elections flipped to a Democratic majority, by expanding the number of members from seven to nine. Party leaders said they had discussed no such option, and even began to make fun of Democrats' fretting. Turns out they had other plans. They revealed them yesterday, in the form of nearly 30 bills, some stretching 50-plus pages. One bill calls for reducing the number of governor appointees from 1,500 down to 300, and requiring Senate approval for cabinet positions. Another measure removes the partisan split on county boards of elections, which is currently 2 to 1, with the majority reflecting the party of the governor. Republicans were fine when elections board majorities aligned with their man, McCrory. The move is significant. Republican-led elections boards were responsible for voting-access issues in Guilford and Mecklenburg counties, which both had an inadequate number of polling sites open for the first week of early voting. Guilford had one site for half a million people, which one analysis found reduced early voting in the first week by 85 percent. The clear goal was to reduce the Democrats' traditional advantage in early voting by hitting urban precincts.
This latest GOP power grab feels like the kind of backroom deal that's produced some of our worst piles of legislation, to include the anti-gay-marriage Amendment One and the voter ID bill, which an appeals court said targeted black voters with "surgical precision." Both were overturned. Then there's HB2, a bill rammed through in less than 24 hours that has cost the state millions in economic development because many companies and organizations see it as discriminatory.
We're sorry to see lawmakers use a session supposed to be focused on disaster relief to return to lousy form.
