April 3, 2015 Legislative Update
By Unknown
Spring
Break Y’all
For the
first time we can recall the House and Senate will take Spring Break next week.
The House announced last month it will have Spring Break while the Senate
announced it will hold skeletal sessions with no recorded votes. For
clarification, both chambers will do the exact same thing by holding a
“skeletal session” twice next week in order to meet the constitutional
obligation to not recess longer than 3 days while in session. We’ve
heard the best place to lobby next week is Augusta.
Rules
This week
chaos ensued in the House as it adopted the House Permanent Rules
to govern its activities. The Rules determine how the members may participate
in making laws and how legislation will flow. The House uses Mason’s
Manual of Legislative Procedure as its guide like most state legislative
bodies. The Rules are introduced and debated in a Resolution that the House (or
Senate) adopts without consideration by the other chamber or interference from
the Governor; it uses the committee process and requires approval by a simple
majority on the House floor. Once the Rules are approved, suspension of those
rules requires a 2/3 vote of the members present and voting. That means, in the
House, it takes 61 votes (or a simple majority of those present and voting) to
create the Rules and 80 votes (or a 2/3 majority of those present and voting)
to rescind or alter the rules. During long House Sessions there is often
unanimous support to suspend Rules that prohibit food in the chamber or require
men to wear coats on the House floor. More contentious is the suspending
of rules regarding adding a bill to that day’s calendar without notice. The
Rules also contain all those creative and nontraditional ways to get things
done that we’re so fond of.
Speaker
Moore prefers more transparency than his predecessor and is seeking to keep
substantive lawmaking out of the budget document, and non-germane provisions
out of conference reports. A popular change allows a House bill sponsor to
remove his name from a bill if the Senate has changed it substantially – or
even completely; many very controversial laws are passed attached to the
bills of unsupportive sponsors causing these members trouble back home with
their constituents. The House Permanent Rules also allow House
Members to sponsor 15 bills rather than 10, with a bill introduction deadline
of April 14th rather than yesterday. Just when the we thought
we could relax…..
In typical
fashion the highly disciplined Senate proposed and adopted the Senate
Permanent Rules on January 14th when the legislature held
its organizational session.
Sales
Tax Redistribution and Proposed Increases
Two bills
have been filed in the Senate to promote the Senate Republican plan of
redistributing sales tax revenue to rural counties while taking it from urban
ones by focusing on county population rather than point of sale. This is the
clearest example we’ve seen of the anticipated rise in fighting between rural
and urban North Carolina. After announcing the plan, urban counties got
fired up, so the bill sponsors have softened the blow by including provisions
to address that concern by allowing urban counties to raise taxes. The House
takes a gentler approach.
The
Senate approach:
·
SB 608—Simple
and Fair Formula for Sales Tax Distribution – was filed by Senator Rucho.
Because of reaction from urban counties, Rucho has said that he wants a
provision that will prevent counties’ revenues from falling below their
2013-2014 levels. To do this he said that the state will need an
additional $66 million in revenues. How does the state get more revenue,
you ask? More taxes, of course! Senate Republicans are
discussing options of expanding the sales tax to services. Examples we’re all
familiar with are barbers, lawn services, attorneys…
·
SB 369 – Sales Tax Fairness Act – was filed by Senator Brown with 11
other Senate Republicans signing on as sponsors. This bill would address
the loss in sales tax revenue from urban counties by allowing counties to raise
local sales taxes by a quarter-cent without a voter referendum.
The
House approach:
·
A
bill was also filed in the House to address the lack in revenue for rural
counties. HB 518 – County Sales Tax Flexibility –
does not redistribute the sales tax revenues. Instead, it allows all
counties to raise local sales taxes by a quarter-cent without a referendum in
most cases.
Historic
Tax Credit
HB 152 –
New Historic Preservation Tax Credit passed the House and was sent to
the Senate where it was referred to the Ways and Means Committee which rarely
meets. Committee Chairman Sen. Apodaca described the committee as a graveyard
which offered little hope to supporters of the tax credit. However, House bill
sponsor Rep. Ross suggested there are “graveyards” in both chambers. So this is
how it’s going to be….
Biosimilars
HB 195 –
An Act Amending the North Carolina Pharmacy Practice Act to Allow for the
Substitution of an Interchangeable Biological Product overwhelmingly
passed the House and goes to the Senate. The bill allows generic
alternatives to “biologics” to be dispensed by pharmacists thereby
significantly reducing the price of some costly treatments to cancers and
autoimmune diseases. The bill was a consensus effort of health insurance plans,
pharmaceutical companies and pharmacists – a rare coalition.
Vaccination
bill
Last week
we told you about the Senate bill that would remove the religious exemption
from immunization requirements and the resulting onslaught of angry
anti-vaccine parents in the hallways of the General Assembly. Well, it
looks as if protesting from the general public actually works… Sponsors of
the controversial bill along with Senate Leadership released a statement this
week that read, “After hearing serious concerns about stricter vaccine and
immunization requirements from our constituents and from citizens across the
state, we have decided we will not move forward with Senate
Bill 346. The vaccine bill is dead.” We’ve never
seen anything like this; the moral of the story: Don’t mess with angry
moms.
Wake
County Commissioners Redistricted
SB 181
– Wake County Commissioner Districts – was passed by the House
after the Senate approved it last month. The bill changes the way Wake County
elects its Commission by establishing districts rather than the current
county-wide races which resulted in a Democrat sweep last November. The
districts will overlay the newly-formed Wake County School Board
districts. In addition, two new regional districts will also be created,
one representing Raleigh and the other representing Wake County’s rural and
suburban areas. No Democratic lawmakers supported the bill in either
chamber. Because this is a local bill, it does not require the governor’s
signature and becomes law upon Ratification.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for visiting our blog. Please comment after registering.
<< Home