Under the Dome: State lawmakers start session; NC sues RealPage and 6 landlords
Good morning and welcome to the Under the Dome newsletter. I’m Emily Vespa.
The General Assembly started its legislative session Wednesday in a mostly ceremonial opening day. All 170 members of the House and Senate were sworn in, and lawmakers elected their leaders.
The House elected its first new speaker in over a decade. In a speech after he was sworn in, new House Speaker Destin Hall said fostering business expansion and investing in education are among his priorities, report Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan, Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi and Avi Bajpai.
Hall, a Republican from Caldwell County, told reporters his top priority is Hurricane Helene relief, which he said he hopes to pass in a mini budget bill early in the session.
The legislature, which will now take a break and reconvene on Jan. 29, will try to pass a two-year budget this year. Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, who was unanimously reelected as president pro tempore, said he hopes to reach an agreement with House leadership on a spending cap first and then work out the details of the budget.
Read more on the key takeaways from opening day.
NC SUES LANDLORDS, ALLEGING THEY WORKED TOGETHER TO HIKE RENTS
North Carolina joined a bipartisan group of states and the federal government Tuesday in accusing six landlords of illegally colluding to raise rents with RealPage, a real estate software company, reports Avi Bajpai.
In a federal complaint filed Tuesday, Attorney General Jeff Jackson and other attorneys general expanded a previous lawsuit against Texas-based RealPage to include the landlords, who the lawsuit alleges worked together and with RealPage to decrease market competition.
The lawsuit alleges RealPage uses an algorithm that relies on landlords’ “competitively sensitive information” to recommend pricing.
The six landlords named in the lawsuit have allegedly used RealPage’s algorithm to set rent prices in roughly one-third of one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments in Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, Jackson’s office said in a news release.
“North Carolinians are struggling to afford their rent as it is — we won’t stand for landlords and real estate companies making the problem worse to line their own pockets,” Jackson said in a statement. “I’m suing these landlords to make sure they play by the rules so North Carolinians can get fair prices for rent.”
REPUBLICAN NC SUPREME COURT JUSTICE DISSENTS IN DECISION TO BLOCK FINALIZING RIGGS WIN
Republican state Supreme Court Justice Richard Dietz broke from his party to dissent in the court’s decision to block the certifying of the race for a seat on the court, reports Kyle Ingram.
The court ordered the State Board of Elections not to finalize the state Supreme Court race, in which Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs leads Republican Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes, in what initially appeared to be a 5-to-1 decision. Later in the day, Dietz announced his dissent in an amended order.
Dietz said Griffin’s post-election request to throw out over 60,000 ballots that he said were invalid came too late.
“Permitting post-election litigation that seeks to rewrite our state’s election rules — and, as a result, remove the right to vote in an election from people who already lawfully voted under the existing rules — invites incredible mischief,” he wrote. “It will lead to doubts about the finality of vote counts following an election, encourage novel legal challenges that greatly delay certification of the results, and fuel an already troubling decline in public faith in our elections.”
WHAT ELSE WE’RE READING
The North Carolina legislature has allocated $30 million in taxpayer funds to crisis pregnancy centers in the past three years, and some lawmakers and advocates said there’s not enough oversight of the centers, The Assembly reports.
Today’s newsletter was by Emily Vespa. Check your inbox tomorrow for more #ncpol.
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