The North Carolina House of Representatives passed a mini-budget bill Wednesday with significant bipartisan support, sending the temporary spending plan to the desk of Gov. Josh Stein as legislative chamber leaders continue to negotiate over a more comprehensive budget.
Those negotiations between the House and Senate, which have deadlocked this year over raises for state employees and reductions in state income tax, have been “slow go,” according to Rep. Donny Lambeth, R-Forsyth, a senior chairman of the appropriations committee.
“This plan is a step along the path that ultimately leads us to a final budget,” he told his colleagues on the House floor Wednesday.
Among the most notable allocations in the mini-budget, H.B. 125 is a $600 million rebase for the state’s Medicaid program, $142 million for a crop-loss program, $3 million for additional DMV offices and $6 million for a DOGE-style program at the Office of the State Auditor.
The bill also includes step-increase raises for some public school employees, but it doesn’t go as far as giving across-the-board raises like some representatives have sought.
It also doesn’t address changes to state income tax. Republican leadership in both the House and Senate support decreasing those rates over time, but disagree over how to handle it. Stein and the Office of State Budget and Management have warned that North Carolina is heading for a “fiscal cliff” if the legislature doesn’t pause scheduled tax cuts.
Twenty-five Democrats joined Republicans in passing the mini budget, 91-23. All but two Democrats voted for the legislation in yesterday’s Senate vote.
Lawmakers who voted “no” said that they would have preferred to see better raises for teachers and more funding for disaster relief in the wake of Tropical Depression Chantal. Others took issue with cuts to the Department of Environmental Quality and increased funding for the Republican-led Office of the State Auditor.
Stein, who has repeatedly pressed lawmakers to pass a comprehensive budget, hasn’t yet commented publicly on the bill. The level of Democratic support makes it almost certain that the bill will become law regardless of his approval. Eight of the governor’s vetoes were overturned in Tuesday’s legislative session with the help of a few swing Democrats.
After the mini-budget
Shortly after the passage of the mini-budget, state representatives on the House Judiciary 1 committee met to discuss an omnibus bill that would make several changes to the elections process.
H.B. 958 would require individuals to provide their full Social Security numbers when they register to vote (current process requires just the last four digits), prevent “never residents” from voting in statewide elections, ban ranked-choice voting as well as remove photo ID exceptions for overseas and military voters. It also makes tweaks to various deadlines and processes for vote counting and ballot curing.
While Republicans tout these changes as common-sense reforms, Democrats aren’t so sure.
Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, who sits on both the Election Law and Judicial committees, told CPP that “99 percent” of the bill is in response to Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs’ election victory over Jefferson Griffin.
Riggs pulled ahead in that race after a lengthy vote tallying process. Jefferson challenged the result in court, alleging that thousands of Riggs’ voters had been improperly registered, but ultimately lost.
Bill co-sponsor Rep. Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke, claims the purpose of the bill is to bolster election integrity. Harrison sees it as unnecessarily complicating the voting process.
“It’s responding to a problem that doesn’t exist,” she said.
However, Harrison commended Blackwell for negotiating on certain items in the legislation. The version approved in the Judiciary committee Wednesday cut back on a controversial provision that would have allowed the Republican Executive Director of the State Board of Elections to replace up to 25 employees. That number was instead decreased to five.
The new version also pushed some deadlines for curing provisional ballots and tallying absentee ballots.
The Judiciary Committee voted to approve the new version of the bill and referred it to the Rules Committee. Neither Blackwell or House Speaker Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, have signaled that they’re in a rush to get a floor vote on the bill.
While adjourning Wednesday, Hall said he’s not sure the House will have any voting sessions for the remainder of the year unless more progress is made in terms of a budget. Bills that are less of a priority may need to wait until the short session starts in spring of 2026 to be taken up again.
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