It's 5.06 and welcome in to a Wednesday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 FM. WBT, I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. After more than a thousand days since the last time a state budget was approved in North Carolina, Democrat Governor Josh Stein signed North Carolina's roughly $34 billion state budget on Tuesday ahead of his deadline to act, ending a nearly three-year stretch without a new comprehensive spending plan and closing one of the longest-running budget standoffs between the North Carolina House and Senate. The governor hosted a signing ceremony and impromptu press conference at the governor's mansion on Tuesday, describing some of the details of this budget.
This is his opening comments talking about some of the major investments that this budget makes across the state of North Carolina. This budget bill gets a lot of things right. It delivers the largest starting teacher pay raise in nearly 50 years. in the largest overall teacher pay raise in the last 15 years. It protects health care for millions of North Carolinians by fully funding Medicaid.
It gives double-digit pay raises to state law enforcement officers and bonuses to local law enforcement officers. It appropriates another $700 million to help the people of Western North Carolina continue their recovery from Hurricane Helene. The budget also makes meaningful investments. in our community colleges. The DMV.
Child care. and summer food programs for our kids. These are real wins worthy of celebration. and worthy of my signature.
So, after careful deliberation, this morning I will sign the state budget into law. This signing comes after the Republican-led General Assembly sent Stein the budget last week following months of negotiations over spending levels, tax policy, education, Medicaid oversight, Hurricane Helene response, public safety, and more. The bill, Senate Bill 257, passed in the House by a vote of 88 to 21 and in the Senate by a vote of 35 to 10 with strong bipartisan support. Those final votes marked a major breakthrough for legislative leaders as the state continued operating largely under spending levels that were approved back in 2023. And while the governor said it does make some major investments and he would sign the budget into law, he said it is not without its flaws.
I won't sweep this budget's flaws under the rug, however. The legislature is slashing more than 1,000 state government positions, making it harder for us to meet the people's health and safety needs. Many state employees' raises don't even keep up with inflation. And even the more meaningful raises that are in the budget still leave us lagging behind our neighbors in competitive salaries. The budget cruelly punishes low income people who need access to justice.
It eliminates the Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities. which ensures that all people can get the care they need to address their health conditions. As well as the Office of Historically Underutilized Businesses, which connects people to jobs and opportunities. It creates unfunded mandates for local governments at the same time the General Assembly is taking away mechanisms that are available to them to raise revenues. It makes real the General Assembly's wrong-headed threats of retribution against Charlotte.
Charlotte needs to enhance road safety. and minimize community impact. And that balancing process should be collaborative. It's full of unconstitutional and petty provisions that strip power from the executive branch. politicize state government.
and undermine its efficiency. These provisions are certainly counterproductive. But as I previously noted, The legislature has accepted many of my big ticket budget recommendations. and having just celebrated America 250 this weekend, We remember that our democracy has always run on compromise for the common good. And for these reasons and because it delivers for North Carolinians in important ways, I support this budget.
The governor had until later this week to sign the budget, veto it, or allow it to become law without his signature. By signing the measure Tuesday morning, he avoided a potential override fight with Republican legislative leaders, which would have been interesting, as I mentioned just a couple of minutes ago, passing strong bipartisan, passing with strong bipartisan support in both the North Carolina House and Senate. House Speaker Destin Hall, the Republican from Caldwell County, said this budget invests in the people of North Carolina. It delivers historic raises, keeps taxes low, strengthens public safety, and protects taxpayer dollars by making targeted investments to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse. Every dollar reflects our commitment to build a North Carolina that is a better and more affordable place to live, work, and raise a family.
Some of the other details in the budget include raises for teachers, state employees, and law enforcement officers, continued scheduled income. Tax cuts, adds new Hurricane Helene recovery funding, maintains the current levels of spending in the Opportunity Scholarship Program, includes Medicaid-related guardrails, and makes several tax and policy changes. Senate Leader Phil Berger, the Republican from Rockingham County, said that the budget reflects the state's strong fiscal position. saying in part, for over 15 years, Republicans in the General Assembly have meticulously crafted budgets to rein in runaway spending that Democrats were dependent on. After decades of fiscal recklessness, Republicans right-sized state government and sent billions of dollars back to residents in the form of regular personal income tax cuts and reform.
Governor Stein highlighted a couple of the major successes and investments in this budget at the signing ceremony at the governor's mansion on Tuesday. He started off with talking about what this budget does for the education industry across North Carolina. Let me tell you how it delivers. The budget delivers for Christian. Christian Martin is a Winston-Salem native who teaches eighth grade English and social studies in Craven County.
He also serves on my teacher advisory committee, and he is here with us today. He's known that he wanted to become a teacher ever since he was in high school. And as his college friends were debating careers with better financial outcomes. He knew that to pursue his passion, he He would have to make a financial sacrifice. Beginning teachers are choosing to forego other more lucrative careers, and if they stay in North Carolina, they're missing out on better salaries that they could earn in our neighboring states.
But today we are beginning to right that wrong. This budget I'm signing delivers the largest raise for starting teachers in nearly a half a century. It is also the largest overall teacher pay raise in about 15 years. And when it comes to student outcomes, this budget embraces ideas that work. Advanced teaching roles.
Science of reading expansion. School safety grants, apprenticeships, all ideas that I had included in my budget recommendation because they will improve student achievement. Our kids are our future, and no investment is more important than the ones we make in them. That's Governor Josh Stein at the governor's mansion on Tuesday signing the state budget after more than a thousand days since the last time that a General Assembly had approved a budget and it was given to the governor. The first time that Governor Josh Stein has had the ability to sign a state budget after being in office now more than a year and a half.
Just heard the governor there talking about education, public safety, also a major investment in this budget as well. This is what the governor had to say about that. This budget delivers for Derek. Captain Derek Simmons is a shift supervisor at Neus Correctional Institution who's worked in corrections for 28 years. He works to provide offenders a safe environment.
a positive role model and a new way of thinking. But where he used to have 28 correctional officers on duty at a time, he now only has seven or eight. These vacancies compromise security and strain the officers who remain. Our state is facing similar vacancy challenges across state law enforcement agencies and public safety. In fact, the State Highway Patrol is currently making due with about 350 sworn vacancies across the department.
Vacancies happen when we don't invest in people. When we don't pay our hardworking law enforcement officers in a way that honors the demands of their work. This budget works to make it right with a minimum of a 13 percent pay increase for state law enforcement officers and correctional officers. as well as a $1,750 bonus for local law enforcement officers. Since serving as your Attorney General, I have been hearing from police chiefs and sheriffs, many of whom are here today.
about their challenge of recruitment and retention. Because, as we all know, law enforcement. Is not an easy job. It's a tough job. but it is a critical one for our communities.
When we cannot recruit and retain public-spirited officers, North Carolina families become at risk.
So we have to do everything in our power to support those who keep North Carolina safe. This budget takes important steps forward on public safety. That's Governor Josh Stein at the governor's mansion yesterday, highlighting a couple of different elements, a couple of the other major investments that the state budget approved by the North Carolina legislature last week sent to the governor. It had been on his desk for a couple of days ahead of a signing ceremony at the governor's mansion on Tuesday. We'll hear from the governor about some additional funding, including Hurricane Helene funding, some other funding issues, some other funding priorities, and some other issues he does have with the state budget coming up here in just a couple of minutes.
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We are covering a busy Tuesday at the Governor's Mansion in Raleigh. As Democrat Governor Josh Stein officially signed North Carolina's $34.4 billion state budget into law, he did have to decide whether or not he was going to act on that budget by July the 12th. If he chose not to act on it, it would have become law automatically. Three options for the governor. Do nothing with it.
It becomes law automatically. Sign the legislation or veto it, setting up potentially more veto override votes in the North Carolina General Assembly in the coming weeks.
However, the governor highlighting some of the major investments in which this budget makes as part of the reason why he will sign it and did sign it. The governor also highlighting that there are flaws with this budget. It does not go far enough in certain sectors or areas, seemingly noting that the good outweighs the bad as part of his justification for signing the budget. We've heard a couple of areas in which the governor is focused, education and public safety. One of the big funding areas in this state budget after more than three and a little more than a three-year stretch is funding for Hurricane Helene.
As we approach the two-year mark of that, that storm leaving unimaginable amounts of devastation and destruction in western North Carolina. The governor highlights some of the investments made there. This budget delivers for TW. T.W. Randall and his family have lived in their home in Bakersville, in Mitchell County, for about 20 years.
When Hurricane Helene struck, their house flooded. causing damage to the foundation and roof. The Randall family didn't have anywhere else to go, so they stayed in their home. until they got sick from the mold. Then they faced both a North Carolina summer.
and a mountain winter in a camper without the shelter of their home. TW works as a manager for the long-term recovery group in Mitchell County.
So while he was facing his own challenges, he was hard at work solving other people's. Western North Carolina is dotted with stories like the Randalls, people who are hard at work at their recovery, and it is our job as the state and federal government to match their grit and determination. Western North Carolina, we stand with you. We are sending you more than $700 million in this budget. This is the third Hurricane Helene recovery package that I have signed since I was governor.
This money will fuel temporary housing program, the Temporary Housing Assistance Program. It will support local governments. It will help fight wildfires. and it will will repair more private roads and bridges. It will also fund more volunteer-driven home repairs like the one that helped the Randalls.
It's also going to unlock matching funds from federal recovery programs. The state of North Carolina is committed to rebuilding Western North Carolina over the long haul, and I am grateful for the legislature's partnership in this work. That's Governor Josh Stein at the Governor's Mansion yesterday hosting a signing ceremony for the 2026 Appropriations Act, Senate Bill 257, the $34.4 billion state budget that we covered in great detail last week here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. The Governor also highlighted some of the other pieces of funding that this budget accomplishes. There are other ways that this budget delivers.
The General Assembly heeded my request to fund Sunbucks for next summer. This keeps kids fed through the hungriest part of the year when they are not at school. They agreed to restart the state's healthy opportunities pilot. which helps Medicaid beneficiaries Maintain access to healthy food, transportation, stable housing. ultimately improving their health outcomes and saving taxpayer dollars.
They also agreed to remove the data center sales tax exemption for electricity so that you and I will no longer be subsidizing their energy consumption. The budget funds the community colleges, Propel NC and Apprenticeship NC to connect more people to good paying jobs in high demand careers that can support a family. It allocates $100 million to child care subsidies so that more parents can find child care that they can afford, especially in our rural communities. And it funds the places we all love, like Zoo Asia and our state parks. allocates fifty million dollars to preserving our state's farmland.
It continues to strengthen the state's cybersecurity efforts. And the DMV, which has already seen a reduction in wait times of about 85%. It provides funding for a new Fayetteville Veterans Home. It makes significant investments in testing for and treating PFAS and other forever chemicals so that North Carolinians can trust the water they drink from their tap. That's Governor Josh Stein yesterday at the governor's mansion.
The governor rounding out the discussion, saying that these are some of the investments that can be made when the legislature works together and compromise can be made. Also highlighted some of the other flaws, some of the other issues that he sees in this state budget. When we work together across our differences, And when we put our people first, we can get good things done for the people of North Carolina. These investments we are making today will move our state forward. They will point the way forward as well, where we need to keep going because we are not there yet.
The truth is, North Carolina, we've got a lot of catching up to do because there have been years of chronic underinvestment in state and public services. The largest starting teacher pay raise in history still does not invest enough in our veteran teachers. The biggest correctional raise officer raises in our state has seen in years. does not move us out of the bottom ten states in the country. The historic state trooper raises that we're excited about.
Move starting pay from 49th to 41st in the country. If I told y'all we were 41st, you would not be proud. But it is a heck of a lot better than forty ninth. Nurses and other state employees are going to make less money. Money and real dollars today than they did two years ago when we last passed a budget.
because of inflation. And too many essential behavioral health investments have been left on the table by the General Assembly. For those who lose their job through no fault of their own, there are no increases for unemployment benefits, an area where we are lagging far behind. neighboring states. And the budget fails to sustain our NC career work centers, our NC Works career centers for those who are seeking employment.
Short-sighted.
Furthermore, the legislature is continuing to pay wealthy people to send their children to unaccountable private school at the same time our public schools have been chronically underfunded. And while the budget pushes out further tax cuts beyond this year, which is a good thing. It nonetheless maintains future reckless pre-programmed tax cuts for corporate shareholders and the wealthy.
Meanwhile, it failed to enact my working families' tax cuts that would have put more money into people's pockets, people who need it. We should be prioritizing the people of North Carolina, not big corporations. North Carolina's got a good thing going. We really do. And if we want to remain a top state where families want to raise their families, where people want to raise their families, where businesses want to invest.
We have to continue to invest in the state, in our people. This commitment cannot be a one-time effort. It has to be something that we do over a period of years. Regardless, some of some of the governor's issues, some of his objections, continuing to take shots at tax cuts here across the state of North Carolina, the opportunity scholarship program, and other major priorities that Republican lawmakers have been enacting and working on enacting over the last 15 years, regardless of any of those issues, the governor would go on to then assign the budget. He did so in Raleigh a Tuesday morning after a nearly three-year stretch without a new comprehensive spending plan.
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Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM. WBT, I'm Nick Craig. A good Wednesday morning to you. It was a busy day in court on Tuesday for bar owners across the state of North Carolina that had sued the state of North Carolina and former Democrat governor Roy Cooper over what they believed to be illegal shutdowns of their bars during the COVID-19 pandemic. To get us caught up this morning, Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
Mitch, last time we chatted about this story, the bar owners in the North Carolina Tavern Association were looking for a deposition of the former governor and some of his top health officials across the state. You were in court yesterday as another hearing took place. What's the latest that you're following? On that issue, Nick, no development because the judge in the case, Edwin Wilson, did not take up the idea of whether. Former Governor Roy Cooper and his former Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen would have to give depositions in the case.
When you and I chatted about this the last time, remember that was a big issue. And the lawyers for the bar owners were saying that the lawyers representing former Governor Cooper, who work for the current AG, Jeff Jackson, defending the actual real defendant in this case, who is Governor Stein. Kind of confusing there. But the suit was filed against Governor Cooper because Josh Stein became the governor. He is now the official defendant.
But the bar owners want to have the deposition with Governor Cooper because he's the one who made the decision to close the bars back in 2020. The accusation was made that the lawyers from the Department of Justice who are representing Stein, Cooper, and Cohen, apparently, are trying to shield Cooper from having to give any testimony under oath while he's running for Senate.
Well, anyway, in the hearing, that issue didn't come up. It was put off. But some other issues were addressed that were. very interesting. One is that the bar owners were trying to split up this case where it stands now into two different parts.
First, they wanted to deal with liability. They wanted to address the issue of whether the governor's shutdowns ended up violating the bar owners' rights, economic rights, the rights, as our state constitution says, to the fruits of their own labor. They wanted to address that first. Then, if the judge decided that, yes, these orders violated the economic rights, then you would get to the process of going through determining what the bar owners actually lost, what sort of compensation they might get, what kinds of damages the court could put forward.
Meanwhile, on the other side, the Department of Justice lawyers who are prosecuting this on behalf of, or are pursuing this on behalf of the governor, they're trying to get the discovery done first. They're trying to go to all these bar owners saying, well, tell us about your operations. How many people did you employ? What kind of money did you make? And the lawyers for the bar owners are saying they're being smothered by all these requests for information.
In fact, it has had an impact on the number of plaintiffs in this case. When this case started, the court hearing. Mentioned there were more than 200 different plaintiffs working with the North Carolina Bar and Tavern Association. That number had by May dropped to about 65 or so. And just the night before the hearing, the number of plaintiffs was down to 52.
And one of the lawyers representing the governor said that he thought there were probably another 20 or so that might drop out. And so there would only be about 30 plaintiffs left in the case. And they're saying you need to address this just so you know who are the real plaintiffs in this case moving forward.
Well, the bar owners asked Judge Wilson to split the case in two. After about a 40-minute hearing, he said no, he wasn't going to do that. As the case adjourned, he called the lawyers back in in a back room with him to come up with a schedule that would deal with the discovery. He basically asked them ahead of time: isn't there a way to go ahead with this discovery process that would be less burdensome? And the plaintiffs said, No, not really.
And the defendant said, well, we really have to do this discovery we're doing.
So their plan was to iron out some sort of mutually agreeable discovery process. The other thing worth mentioning before we get to your questions that came out of this was that Carolina Journal reported in June that a second similar case involving bar owners and suing then Governor Roy Cooper had been voluntarily dismissed. Both of these cases, one of them was called Howell v. Cooper. The other one was called North Carolina Bar and Tavern Association v.
Cooper. Both of them got to the state Supreme Court. And last year, the state Supreme Court allowed both of them to move forward. It was a split party line vote. The five Republican justices saying yes, the two Democratic justices saying no.
But the majority said that both of these cases could move forward. And we learned in this court hearing that in the Howell v. Cooper case, the other case, there was a successful mediation. Case is over. That's why it was voluntarily dismissed.
Lawyers representing the governor and lawyers representing the bar owners in that case came to an agreement. We don't know what the agreement is. There's nothing in court that says what it was, but it was a mediation and described in this court hearing as a successful mediation.
So now only one group of bar owners at last report, 50 or so are now trying to move forward with this case, and we will see what happens in the weeks and months ahead. Mitch, you teed me right up. Yes, I do have a couple of questions. Last couple of times we've talked about this, there's been some questions as to whether the North Carolina Bar and Tavern Association, just baked right into the name, who and what they are, since they aren't actually a bar or tavern, there was some question whether they should be party in this suit at all. Was that discussed in court on Tuesday?
Yeah, it was. And it seems to be the case that the North Carolina Bar and Tavern Association has to be dropped as a plaintiff because at this stage in the case, what really is going to happen is a determination of whether the governor violated individual bar owners' constitutional rights. And if so, how much to pay to those individual bar owners. The Bar and Tavern Association obviously works with bars and bar owners. It isn't a bar itself.
And so it couldn't have any damages. If you shut down the Bar and Tavern Association, that wouldn't stop anyone from making any money. It wouldn't stop anyone from plying their trade.
So the Bar and Tavern Association, which played a substantial role in bringing this case together and moving it all the way through the state Supreme Court, is not going to be a player in this case as it moves forward in this, the rest of the case, determining whether there's individuals. Individual liability from the governor, and then what the damages would be for the plaintiffs. Great update there. Let's transition on over to this discussion over discovery. This is an interesting one.
As I think most people are probably aware, Mitch, if they've ever stepped foot into a bar across North Carolina, most of them are truly small businesses. It is a small ownership group or often cases a family, a couple that owns the bar, just one individual person. They have a couple of bartenders on staff. It's very much a mom-and-pop style operation from yesteryear with many, as many small businesses used to operate across the country. I would imagine going through and trying to get the state all of this documentation in an industry where there's not that many people traditionally involved in the process is probably weighing pretty heavily, as it appears some of the bars in this case are indicating.
Yeah, that actually cropped up in the hearing. One of the lawyers representing the bar owners is former state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr. And he was one of the things that he said fairly early on was that the lawyers from the Department of Justice, who once again are representing the governor in the case, that they're over-complicating things, that it's really easy to decide this. All of the plaintiffs in this case were people were bar owners who had a particular form of alcohol license, and that form of license was the only type of bar that had to close and stay closed throughout the length of the COVID pandemic. And he said, you know, after six years, a lot of these people have just given up and they've thrown in the towel.
He also talked about the fact, and another lawyer who's on that side, Mike Toddy, were talking about the fact that you're talking about small businesses that have had all kinds of challenges.
Some of them never reopen, some of them reopen with. tens of thousands, maybe even $100,000 or more of credit card debt that they amassed while trying to stay afloat.
Some of them reopened, but then had to close.
Some of the people who were involved have then died. All of this came out during the court hearing. And basically, the idea from the bar owners that the judge didn't ultimately accept was, look, we shouldn't, after six years, keep this dragging on. What we should do right now in a fairly short period of time is decide whether the governor violated the economic rights. And then if you decide, Judge, that that was true, then the next thing is to go back and do all of this discovery process and find who is in need of damages and how that would play out.
So the judge did not buy that argument, but the judge was also sympathetic to the idea of trying to make the discovery as harmless as possible for the plaintiffs who remain in the case. Yeah. Mitch, since you were in the courtroom, I'm not making any accusations with this question, just trying to understand some of the mood and some of the back and forth. Was some of the argument here from the lawyers representing the bars that maybe the Justice Department was maybe strong arming them a little bit, requesting insane amounts of paperwork and documentation that is incredibly labor intensive? Was that kind of the gist that you got as this discussion was happening in court on Tuesday morning?
Yes, I don't know that everything that you described in there was what was discussed, but certainly the idea from the bar owners was that the Justice Department lawyers were trying to get way too much information beyond what is needed at this point in the case. In fact, one of the words that was used by Bob Orr, representing the bar owners, was that the Justice Department lawyers were trying to smother their clients with these requests. He also threw out at one point, and this generated a lot of chuckles and a denial on the other side. It was like he said their discovery requirements as generated by their AI machine. And people were saying, wait a minute.
And the lawyers on the other side said, I don't think we used AI for anything. We're asking, what was the name of your bar? How many people did you employ? It's fairly standard stuff. And another thing that was of interest is when the Justice Department lawyers mentioned That the other case, the Howell v.
Cooper case, had been mediated successfully. They said, hey, the plaintiffs in that case. They gave us all the information that we asked for that's the same information that we're asking for in this case.
So the Justice Department lawyers were trying to suggest that this can be resolved and it can be resolved fairly quickly. And we did so in another case that's almost exactly the same as this one. It's an interesting case. We have continued to follow it in pretty great detail. We will continue to do so in the months and probably, unfortunately, to say, Mitch, years going forward, unless we get to some pretty quick settlement deal here.
We've got continuing coverage of this over on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com. We appreciate the update this morning. Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Good morning again. It's 5:54.
Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM. WBT spent a lot of time this morning talking about the governor officially signing the $34.4 billion state budget into law. He also signed a couple of other pieces of legislation this week. House Bill 1173, that's Jalia's Law. Jalia Toon was a 13-year-old girl in Greensboro, Goldsboro, excuse me, who was shot and killed in a random act of gang violence just days before Christmas 2025.
House Bill 1173 strengthens North Carolina's criminal gang laws by increasing penalties for gang activity involving minors or firearms, as well as additional funding, additional prosecutors and investigators for cases that revolve around gang violence. That bill passed some pretty strong support in the General Assembly. Governor signing that into law earlier this week. He also signed House Bill 1104 into law after a series of tragedies involving mental illness, including the murders of Irina Zarutska in Charlotte, Zoe Welsh in Raleigh. House Speaker Destin Hall created the House Select Committee on Involuntary Commitment and Public Safety.
This legislation, now law, improves the IVC or the involuntary commitment process and enhances public safety. It revises the state's involuntary commitment process and creates an inpatient capacity restoration program for defendants found incapable of proceeding because of serious mental illness. That is now law here in North Carolina. House Bill 162, parking lot reform/slash stormwater control, prohibits most local governments from requiring a minimum number of off-street parking spaces for new developments. The law also allows local governments to offer developers incentives for stormwater control measures that go beyond what state law currently requires.
And finally, Senate Bill 1041, the Public Workforce Modernization Act, overhauls the state's human resource system by updating rules for classifications, compensation, hiring, onboarding, employee discipline, grievances that might be filed, and other personnel policies within state government. All of those pieces of legislation were signed by Governor Johnson. Josh Stein on Monday, and then following that up with the state budget on Tuesday. It has been a very busy couple of days in the governor's mansion. Coverage on those four bipartisan bills and the state budget over on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com.
That's going to do it for a Wednesday edition. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning BT. We are back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT.
