Reading Between the Legislative Lines

Bill 873 would drastically lower tuition at five of the state’s universities.
Bill 873 would drastically lower tuition at five of the state’s universities.
By Nelda Holder –

Two mid-May bills in the NC General Assembly, House Bill 1086 and Senate Bill 873, serve as examples of what might loosely be called legislative cautions in reading the fine print.

Both Bills have upbeat titles that seem to promise one thing, but the devilish details deliver something of a different nature.

Senate Bill 873 has so far generated more heat, and as a result been dramatically changed—largely as a result of its perceived potential effect on three of the state’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

As first introduced by WNC Sen. Tom Apodaca on May 10, the bill carried the short and seemingly positive title “Access to Affordable College Education.” It claimed to be “designed to make the benefits of public higher education, as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the state free of expense.”

That sounded like a good start, especially since it was backed up by these rationales:

  • Average debt of $23,440 for NC (resident) students graduating from a public four-year institution, increased 52 percent since 2007-2008
  • Four million out of 31 million attending college between 1994 and 2014 spent at least two years in school but did not earn a degree
  • Median earnings of approximately $40,000 for those in North Carolina with a bachelor’s degree, with many graduates still using funds for educational debt repayment
  • Increases in higher education costs and student debt threaten the value of a higher-education investment

Apodaca’s solution to the student-debt problem—backed up by some 26 Republican co-sponsors—was to first guarantee that tuition and fees remain constant (or decrease) during a four-year (eight-semester) academic program, and to mandate a reduction in student fees by 10% to 25%. Following that reduction, the bill requires a cap of 3% on future increases per academic year.

Such proposals could obviously benefit a large number of students in the university system, but missing from the bill was any funding to the institutions to cover the losses in operational funds that would incur from these mandates.

Details, details, details

But then the issues got more complicated. The original bill proposed further steps that selectively affected only five schools in the university system: Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Winston-Salem State University, and Western Carolina University (Apodaca’s alma mater). The proposals included:

  • Cutting tuition to $500 per academic semester for residents and $2,500 for non-residents at these five institutions only
  • Requiring/empowering the Board of Governors to consider the effect the elimination of the cap (18%) on increase in enrollment with the power to increase or lower the cap on its own
  • Requiring the UNC General Administration to evaluate any effects of the current names of these “constituent” universities with regard to “number, academic strength, and diversity of student applications”

The latter came with a proviso that as of 2017, the Board of Governors should recommend “appropriate name changes” for any of the five named institutions that they deemed would benefit from such action.

HBCU and the public’s perception

The US News & World Report ranks Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU as designated by the U.S. Department of Education) that are a part of the overall “2016 Best Colleges” rankings. Spelman College in Atlanta Georgia, a private institution, ranks first on their HBCU list (tuition and fees, $26,388). North Carolina’s HBCUs rank as follows:

#9 – North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, founded 1891; (in-state tuition and fees, $5,872; out-of-state, $18,632)

#12 – North Carolina Central University in Durham, founded 1910; (in-state, $5,755; out-of-state, $17,793)

#18 – Elizabeth City State University, founded 1891; (in-state, $4,497; out of state, $16,172)

#25 – Fayetteville State University, founded 1867; (in-state, $5,265; out-of-state, $16,873

#30 – Winston-Salem State University, founded 1892; (in-state, $5,583; out-of-state, $15,113)

#48 – St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh, founded 1867; (private, $17,890)

Unranked – Livingstone College in Salisbury, founded 1979; (private, $17,246)

Unranked – Shaw University in Raleigh, founded 1865; (private, $16,480)

*Institutions in bold are on the list of five from the Senate bill.

Two of the schools SB 873 singled out were not HBCU institutions. UNC Pembroke was founded in 1887 as a school for American Indians, although its enrollment now is diverse. In-state tuition is $5,534 and out-of-state tuition is $15,982.

The fifth school on the Senate’s original list, Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, has in-state tuition and fees of $4,624.50; out-of-state, $9,821.

An outpouring of criticism struck the sponsors of the Senate bill, with perhaps the largest portion focused on how the schools would replace the money that the bill would deny them—potentially thousands per in-state student. With no answer to that spelled out in the bill, and only a tentative nod toward budget appropriations, the financial quicksand was hard to trust.

Other complaints had to do with not consulting sooner with the schools themselves in developing this proposal. And then there was the visceral reaction to what was perceived as the endangerment of the HBCUs, both from the financial standpoint but also from the idea of name changes to these historically significant schools.

Where they stand now

At press time, Apodaca planned to drop all three HBCUs from the legislation, leaving just Pembroke and WCU in the tuition-reduction scheme. There had already been, in the bill’s fourth edition, a modification that called for the state’s director of the budget, on the authorization of the Board of Governors, to authorize an increase in the university system’s base budget of up to $70 million to cover the cost of the lost tuition revenue (based on five institutions, not just two).

A proposal to establish a merit scholarship at NCA&T and at NC Central has remained in the bill, aiming to use public and private resources to provide up to 50 scholarships (40 for resident students) at each school for each academic year. The four-year scholarships would fully fund tuition, student fees, housing, meals, textbooks, a laptop, supplies, travel, and personal expenses. Called the Cheatham-White Scholarships, these would honor two of the state’s turn-of-the-20th-century members of Congress, Henry Cheatham and George White, who were African American Republicans.

The Urban News urges you to contact NC Senator Tom Apodaca to express your opinion of SB873. Phone (919) 733-5745, or email [email protected].

Refugees_are_human_beingsAnd then there’s HB1086

Over in the House, a new bill to spell out new rules for local governments in the realm of refugee resettlement appeared as the Refugee Resettlement Act of 2016. Barely two pages long in its original form, its full entitlement begins: “An act to allow local governments to request a moratorium on refugee resettlement activities.”

To request such a moratorium, the local government must approve a resolution that does the following:

  • Requests moratorium on settlement of additional refugees
  • Documents that the local government lacks capacity to settle additional refugees
  • Documents that further resettlement would have adverse impact to existing residents

Should a local government wish to offer resettlement to additional refugees instead, the bill then requires a public hearing “prior to notifying the North Carolina Refugee Assistance Program of its available capacity to settle additional refugees,” and prohibits local governments from requesting the settlement of additional refugees until they have documented that they have the capacity to settle additional refugees.

To lift a moratorium, or to request additional refugee resettlement, the bill requires local governments to hold a public hearing on refugee resettlement to consider these factors:

  • Ability of the community’s social service and healthcare agencies to meet the existing needs of the community’s current residents
  • Availability of affordable housing, low-income housing, or both, and existing waiting lists for that housing in the community
  • Ability of local schools to meet the needs of existing or anticipated refugee student population
  • Ability of local economy to absorb new workers without causing competition with local residents for job opportunities, displacing local workers, or adversely affecting local wages or working conditions

Lifting a moratorium also requires the approval of the North Carolina Refugee Assistance Program.

The primary sponsor of HB 1086 is another WNC legislator, Rep. Chris Whitmire (R) from Henderson/Polk/Transylvania district. Other sponsors include the House Majority Leader, Mike Hager (R) from Burke/Rutherford, and co-sponsors include House Majority Whip John Bell IV (R) from Craven/Green/Lenoir/Wayne. At press time, the bill was referred to the Judiciary II committee following its first reading.

The overall effect of the bill, if passed, would likely so burden the impetus for resettlement in a community that resettlement would become essentially cease in this state, oddly belying its title.

The United States currently accepts up to 70,000 refugees per year.
The United States currently accepts up to 70,000 refugees per year.

“Well-founded fear of persecution”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the United States currently accepts up to 70,000 refugees per year (from different regions of the world). Background checks are run through several federal agencies before any refugees enter the country, and 49 states participate in refugee resettlement “to assist those fleeing persecution to become self-sufficient and integrated into their adopted communities.”

A refugee, according to the NCSL article, is defined by Immigration and Nationality Act as “any person outside his or her country who has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

States receive federal funding for cash and medical assistance, social services (language and job training), and other specific needs.

In 2015, California and Michigan adopted resolutions encouraging the U.S. to “recognize the moral obligation to assist innocent civilians,” but in the same year, Ohio became the first state to seek a halt to resettlement of Syrian refugees—followed by Pennsylvania. At least a dozen states including North Carolina have now introduced measures regarding refugees this year.

And so it would seem the “well-founded fear of persecution” may be sprouting its own roots in the same nation founded on “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” And HB 1086 could potentially provide that fertile ground.