When the N.C. General Assembly finally ends its session this week, it will have been one of the longest and most expensive in more than a decade.
The long, contentious session has run nearly three months beyond the June 30 end of the 2014-15 fiscal year.
North Carolina’s legislature typically has a longer, and more flexible, schedule than most states because of how state law outlines the General Assembly’s duties. Other states have created a stricter schedule for their legislatures.
What this can mean for North Carolina — as it has this year — is an unforeseen cost when the legislature runs over the allotted time to finish its business.
The extra cost to taxpayers: more than $2 million.
At the heart of that overrun: conflict between the N.C. House, the N.C. Senate and the governor’s mansion — all of which are now controlled by Republicans.
“Unified party government does not always mean unity,” said Michael Bitzer, professor of political science and history at Catawba College in Salisbury. “Right now the Republican Party — particularly in the legislature — is a very different party, even between the two chambers.”
The state Senate, elected from more rural parts of the state, has pushed a strong conservative agenda, Bitzer said.
It’s met pushback from a comparatively moderate N.C. House whose representatives come from more suburban and urban areas.
Add to that Gov. Pat McCrory, a moderate Republican who was once mayor of the state’s largest city.
“That’s the triangle of conflict we’re seeing,” Bitzer said. “When you have divided power and they can’t all play nice with one another, that’s when you see these delays.”
Those delays have costs — both political and financial.
What it costs
The average monthly cost to run the legislative complex when the General Assembly is in session is just more than $5 million, according to information from the Legislative Services Office.
The state usually budgets for 23 weeks of active legislating during “long sessions,” which are held in odd-numbered years. It generally budgets for eight weeks in “short” sessions, which come in even-numbered years.
The budgeted money — about $52 million for the 2014-15 fiscal year — covers everything from staff hours and travel allowances for lawmakers to the cost of postage and utilities.
The cost when the legislature runs over its budgeted time: about $210,000 per week.
Those overruns come out of cash reserves that had about $7 million last month.
“I think it’s very unfortunate we’re spending $2 million on these delays,” said Rep. Pricey Harrison (D-Guilford). “That’s money that could have gone to pay for teaching assistants, future salary increases for public employees and other public functions. There are much better ways to spend that money.”
Rep. Jon Hardister (R-Guilford) said every legislator would prefer to have a shorter, less expensive session. But when weighed against what the legislature accomplished in this year’s session, he said, it was worth the extra time.
“I would personally rather stay and get it right,” Hardister said.
“This year the House and the Senate were very far apart on the budget, which I would say is the primary reason we ran overtime,” he said. “But I think we came to a good compromise.”
Despite the differences between the two chambers, occasional veto fights and veto overrides with the governor, Hardister said there’s no denying the General Assembly got a lot done in this year’s session.
“When you look at what we did — bond packages, economic incentives, funding for teacher’s assistants which we fought for, money for driver’s education and a pay increase for starting teachers, the historic tax credits — I think all that was worth taking the time.”
Political costs
But some political experts and lawmakers say the prolonged session was less about perfecting legislation and more about political ambition and gamesmanship.
“What we’re seeing is really symptomatic of a party in power wanting to put its stamp on the state,” said Bitzer.
Since 2010, when the GOP took control of both the state House and Senate for the first time in 140 years, Republicans have been open about their desire to transform the state in ways large and small.
Longer sessions, more legislation and more conflict are all part of that, Bitzer said.
Two of the most time-consuming and divisive issues of the session — redistricting and the state budget — are often major vehicles for shaping the state in the interest of the party in power, Bitzer said.
Sweeping and controversial redistricting laws — like the one that sought to restructure and redistrict the Greensboro City Council — are one way for a party to impose its will, shore up its support and best political adversaries, Bitzer said.
The Greensboro redistricting law that passed in July was stalled later that month when a federal judge ruled there were constitutional problems with it. The City Council will remain unchanged through this year’s elections.
But a lot of time and money was spent on the issue and the resulting lawsuit. More of both will be spent when it goes to a full trial, likely early next year, or if the General Assembly again takes up the issue to head off such a trial.
“We spent so much time in the session on that and other things that didn’t change anything, that didn’t go anywhere,” Harrison said.
The way large, complicated issues like redistricting and the budget were jammed through without sufficient discussion left lawmakers in both parties feeling short-changed.
“It’s amazing how many of these things come up on a Thursday afternoon, before the break,” said Rep. John Blust (R-Guilford). “The Greensboro bill came up on a Thursday afternoon before our July vacation. So it was, ‘We have to do this now, we don’t have time for more discussion, we have to make this decision.’”
The same thing happened during the budget fight, Blust said.
The General Assembly took two weeklong breaks, Blust said — one in April and one in July. He was against taking the breaks with so much unresolved, especially the budget. Then when House members had serious problems with the Senate version of the budget, he said, they were told they had to hurry up and pass something.
“As we got into some of the weeds and had some complicated things to resolve in the budget, I made the point that these might have been great discussions to have in the first or second week of July but now it’s September,” Blust said. “You really should have the conversation, but you’re out of time.”
Blust said it isn’t clear to him whether that’s a deliberate strategy — but it usually leads to the leadership getting what it wants.
“I guess in diplomatic circles they call that brinkmanship,” he said.
Things do sometimes move too quickly in Raleigh, Hardister said.
But people may not realize that even when legislators are on vacation they’re still getting a lot accomplished, he said.
“I know that when I’m not in Raleigh, I’m still on my computer and on my phone,” Hardister said. “I’m reading things, I’m asking questions of the staff, I’m sending people things and I’m talking over issues. The pace is fast, but I don’t think it’s because we’re wasting time.”
Whatever the cause of the harried pace, Harrison said, it amounts to “a disservice to the public.”
“These are important public issues and they deserve real public debate,” she said. “When you schedule votes on the same day that hundreds of pages of legislation hit peoples’ desks, when bills get gutted or new provisions show up that weren’t in the House or the Senate version of a bill and we vote on them without discussion ... that’s not what we’re supposed to be doing here.”
That’s a sentiment that seems to resonate with the public.
An Elon University Poll released last week found the General Assembly’s approval rating has slipped to 30 percent — down from an already dismal 33 percent in April.
The same poll found McCrory, who very publicly butted heads with the General Assembly on major issues like redistricting and the budget throughout the summer, had a 40 percent approval rating — an increase of 2 percentage points over April’s poll.
“I think the long session and the budget stalemate probably hits home for voters because of the school situation,” Bitzer said. “School districts didn’t have their funding before the start of the school year. You’d have to think that would take a toll on the approval of the General Assembly.”
Keeping promises?
State Sen. Bob Rucho, a Mecklenburg Republican who is chairman of the Senate Redistricting Committee and co-chairman of its finance committee, said the criticism over the length and cost of the session is meaningless.
“The only people who are being critical of it, the only people who care, are the media,” he said. “It’s easy to be critical of it — but we got money for roads and transportation, we got a balanced budget, we got Medicaid under control. We just did a $21.75 billion budget. How much is it worth for us to have done that?”
Rucho, who has served eight terms in the Senate, said previous assemblies may have adjourned earlier and spent less money in overruns — but they didn’t tackle some of the very serious issues facing the state the way this assembly has in this session.
“If you take on the challenging issues that most General Assemblies aren’t willing to do, it will take longer,” he said. “We always have to pass a budget, but this time we also took on Medicaid and transportation bonds — both of which were neglected by many of the General Assemblies in the past. If you look back, no General Assembly has tackled these tough issues like we do.”
The measure of the legislature’s success shouldn’t be how many days it meets or how much it costs, Rucho said, it should be whether it accomplishes what it set out to do.
“All the critics in the world can talk, but we told them what we were going to do when we first came here in 2010 for 2011 and this completes the lion’s share of what we promised,” Rucho said. “How many General Assemblies can say that?”
He said too much is made of conflict between the Senate and House.
“Do we have different opinions on how to solve some of our problems?” Rucho asked. “Probably. But that’s good — you don’t want everybody in lockstep. The debate that occurred, the input we had from the Senate and the House and the executive, that’s what you want.”
Blust, who has served eight terms in the House and one in the Senate, said the length and cost of sessions is a perennial discussion, but the party in power rarely wants to commit to getting it under control.
“I’ve seen it ebb and flow,” he said. “We had some sessions that went long in the late 1990s and early 2000s where they were talking session limits,” Blust said. “Then the next session tends to go faster because they get some grief and they don’t want to go as long as the last one. It’s amazing how short the memories can be, though.”
Blust predicts next year’s short session will stay short — but anything can happen, he said.
“You’d think with this many sessions as a Republican legislature we’d have gotten some of the heavy lifting out of the way,” Blust said. “But I guess we’ll see.”
