He said the reason Republicans in the General Assembly are expanding eligibility requirements for the scholarship was that the program has not used up all of the funding appropriated to it for each of the past five years.
He criticized a provision of the bill which would allow students enrolled in private schools for the previous year to be eligible for the Opportunity Scholarship, essentially granting them a state-subsidized move from private school to private school. He also said a section allowing funding appropriated for scholarships to pay for the administrative fees of contractors organizing the program contributed to his disdain for the bill.”
“It doesn’t sound so much like ‘educational opportunity',” Houck said, “It sounds like ‘educational grifter opportunity.’”
Rethinking redistricting
Democrats in both chambers have launched initiatives to reframe the rules for congressional redistricting. House Bill 495 and Senate Bill 716 each attempt to make strides to depoliticize the state’s process.
The former aims to codify the N.C. superior court ruling in the 2019 ruling Common Cause v. Lewis where the state’s congressional maps were struck down as unconstitutional. The bill puts forth baseline criteria for congressional districts, which include preventing district maps from establishing an advantage for any party.
The latter is a more ambitious proposal, proposing the establishment of an independent redistricting commission. It also includes provisions to make the election of state supreme court and appellate court justices a nonpartisan process.
However, Michael Bitzer, professor of politics and history at Catawba College, said it would be one of the great surprises of this legislative session if these bills pass.
He said the Republican majority is keen to control the redistricting process as much as it can, and would be very reluctant to give up any ground in that arena. The governor’s inability to veto redistricting legislation, he said, would allow them to do just that.
“Redistricting is the most political activity in American politics,” Bitzer said in an email, “and it’s bound to stay that way for some time.”
Potential ban on vaccine mandates
The proposals above were joined by many others on the legislative agenda, including a bill barring the governor from issuing vaccination mandates via executive order.
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House Bill 558 would also make it illegal for schools and child care facilities to mandate the vaccination of children attending them and would require the state to secure the express written consent of individuals in order to track or record information about whether they have received certain vaccinations.
Chris Cooper, head of the political science and public affairs department at Western Carolina University, said the bill’s prospects are grim.
He said the bill is yet another in the growing list of bills aiming to limit the governor’s powers, as is shown by the specific mention of executive orders in the ban on vaccine mandates.
But this might be the bill’s undoing.
“The odds that Governor Cooper would agree to sign a bill that would limit his powers is extremely low,” Chris Cooper said in an email. “It also seems unlikely that the bill would draw enough Democratic support to allow for a veto override.”
Other bills that have made their way into the legislature include a bill to observe Daylight Savings Time year-round and a bill to appropriate funds to provide free breakfast and lunch to students in the state’s public schools — both of which already have the support of over 30 House members.
What awaits those two bills in committee, though, remains to be seen.
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