Legislative Update: April 2013
HB 252: The House Finance Committee heard a proposal April 2 to repeal a law allowing Asheville to use some water revenue for road and other infrastructure repairs related to its water system.
House Bill 252, sponsored by Rep. Tim Moffitt, R-Buncombe, would reverse a 2009 law that allowed the city to use 5% of its water revenues for infrastructure related to water repairs, such as fixing torn-up streets and sidewalks.
In a proposal similar to taking Charlotte’s airport, Asheville’s airport and water system, the legislature recently held a public hearing designed to overturn Raleigh’s lease of the former state-owned Dorothea Dix hospital site for use as a park. Former Gov. Bev Perdue signed a lease for 325 acre-site with the City of Raleigh in a $68 million deal.
The current legislature and governor are considering abrogating the lease, which, like the taking of a city’s property for no compensation, would be bound to raise questions about the value of North Carolina’s word – and its signature on legal documents, if contracts are abrogated each time a new legislature takes power. The bill, SB 334, has already passed the Senate and now heads to the House.
Voting rights
Bills limiting early voting hours and same day registration and eliminating straight-ticket voting are now being in the legislature. Since 2000, early voting has been a resounding success here in North Carolina, increasing voter turnout by substantial numbers and percentages.
Curbing early voting
Cutting early voting opportunities will result in longer lines and increased problems during upcoming elections, as was seen in Florida, Ohio, and in other states that truncated early voting and tried in other ways to limit the franchise. It will also unduly impact senior citizens, students, and African Americans and other minority voters, many of whom, with limited resources, must take advantage of any opportunity that makes voting easier.
Many Democrats consider the legislation a partisan effort aimed at depressing Democratic turnout. The state NAACP has begun running ads on 14 radio stations and in eight newspapers attacking the efforts, saying they are a partisan attempt to suppress the turnout of black voters.
Another bill to limit voting from likely Democratic voters – students – is the newly filed “Equalize Voter Rights” act that would impose a tax penalty for parents whose children register to vote at their college address.
Curbing college voting
A bill filed in the State Senate would impose a tax penalty on parents whose college-age children register to vote at their college addresses. Senate Bill 667 would remove the tax exemption for dependents who register to vote at any address other than their parents’ home. The measure would affect only state income tax, but by taxing some people at a higher rate by denying them a deduction available to others, some commentators already have decried the bill as an illegal poll tax, outlawed since 1965 under the Voting Rights Act. But if it passes it could cut student voting in counties where college voters tended to vote Democratic.
The impact of student votes was seen in Buncombe County last November, when Warren Wilson College students gave Democrat Ellen Frost a 17-vote margin, which meant the newly expanded 7-member County Commission has a 4-3 Democratic majority. That is the exact opposite of the hoped-for outcome when legislators in 2011 changed the law to increase the commission’s numbers from five elected at large, to seven elected by districts. Their clear hope and expectation was that Asheville would have only three commissioners while non-city voters in the county would elect a majority of four Republicans.
Racial Justice Act
The NC Senate voted 33-14 to repeal the state’s historic Racial Justice Act and restart executions in North Carolina. The 2009 Racial Justice Act allowed death row inmates to appeal their sentences on the grounds of racial bias in the court system. If a judge agreed, the inmate’s sentence could be commuted to life without the possibility of parole.
Only three cases have been successfully adjudicated by overturning not just racially tainted convictions but wrongful ones, in which innocent men were convicted and spent years or decades in prison for crimes they did not commit; some died in prison before being released and pardoned. All were black men prosecuted by white district attorneys.
