Buncombe County Senators on the Job

By Nelda Holder –

This is the second part of an overview of legislation put forward by Buncombe County members of the North Carolina General Assembly. Last month we reviewed members of the House; this month we look at the Senate.

Buncombe County can count two state senators in the North Carolina General Assembly. The major portion of its territory is labeled Senate District 49, to which Sen. Terry Van Duyn (D) was elected last fall for her first full term in Raleigh. (Van Duyn was appointed for a partial term following the death last year of long-serving Sen. Martin Nesbitt.)

But a southern sliver (including Arden and Skyland) of Buncombe County is allocated to Senate District 48, which also includes Henderson and Transylvania counties. That seat is held by Sen. Tom Apodaca (R), now in his seventh two-year term. As a veteran senator from the majority party, Apodaca sits on 28 Senate committees in all and chairs or co-chairs 10, including Ways & Means, Rules & Operations, and Education/Higher Education. He further serves as a member of Appropriations/Base Budget. He is a busy man.

Van Duyn, in her first elected term, has already won a leadership nod and serves as Democratic Whip in the Senate. As a minority member, her committee assignments are slimmer in number, but she serves on seven standing and non-standing committees and is co-chair of Joint Legislative Emergency Management Oversight.

Meanwhile, as individual legislators, Van Duyn and Apodaca carve different paths in sponsorship or co-sponsorship of bills in their chamber. Filing dates for local and public bills in the Senate have now passed, and this is an overview of their individual pursuits for this session.

Van Duyn has sponsored 57 bills, a good number of which involve education and health. She has been a primary sponsor of 13 bills, including the I WILL Act (SB 611), designed to provide mammograms for incarcerated women and to appropriate funds for housing assistance for female offenders reentering the community.

Other primary sponsorships have included bills to make school playgrounds available to the public (SB 315) and to establish a broader nondiscrimination policy for public employment by adding “sexual orientation, gender identity or expression” (SB 544).

The senator has co-sponsored 44 bills aimed at various achievements including a pay increase for experienced teachers (SB 384); increased access to education for young people who are graduates of North Carolina’s high schools or obtained their General Equivalency Degree (GED) in the state (SB 463); allowing school-based health centers to offer contraceptives (SB 484); institute a Poverty Task Force in the state (SB 584), and provide for autism health insurance coverage (SB 676)—a bill for which she shares co-sponsorship with Sen. Apodaca.

Apodaca’s bill profile is a bit more technical in nature, including 41 primary sponsorships or co-sponsorships. His 11 primary sponsorships include the establishment of ABLE accounts (Achieving A Better Life) for use by individuals or families supporting individuals with disabilities (SB 367); an act to increase funding for the state’s Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) program (SB 326); and an act to limit parole review frequency (SB 675).

He and Van Duyn were co-sponsors (along with area Sen. Jim Davis of Franklin) of a bill to offer conditional restoration of the driver’s license of offenders who successfully complete a drug treatment program or DWI (driving while intoxicated) Treatment Court program (SB 671).

The senior senator has signed on as co-sponsor for 30 bills, including the Sales Tax Fairness Act (SB 369) that would change current sales tax allocations (a controversial proposal because of its effect on larger municipalities and hub counties that would lose significant funding through the reallocation). Apodaca has also co-sponsored a bill to establish a legislative study committee to look at composition and methods of selection of local school boards (SB 672).

Bills are now are moving (unless purposefully sidetracked) in the direction of the Legislature’s 2015 “crossover” deadline of April 30, which is the date by which non-spending bills must be passed out of their chamber for ratification consideration this session.

The General Assembly provides a website that offers easy tracking of the official legislative actions of representatives, as well as access to bill texts, committee activities, calendars and more at www.ncleg.net.

To find information on individual legislator activities, go to the upper right-hand corner of that home page and locate the representative or senator in the “View Member Info” selector.

Read Nelda Holder’s blog, www.politicallypurplenc.com