Under the Dome: A debate about legislative rules reveals how session is different this year
Good morning and welcome to Under the Dome. I’m Avi Bajpai. Today, we’re taking a closer look at a debate that took place in the House last week that revealed a few interesting things about how this year’s session is shaping up.
Most debates of interest at the General Assembly are about particular pieces of legislation. This one was about the rules that govern how the chambers conduct legislative business, and in this case, how the House does so.
Working with Democrats on debate rules
Going into the debate, House Rules Committee Chair John Bell noted that Republicans, under the new leadership of Speaker Destin Hall, had sought input this year from multiple Democrats, including House Minority Leader Robert Reives and Reps. Tim Longest and Brandon Lofton.
One change Republicans were happy to make in consultation with Democrats, Bell highlighted, was to allow for one more opportunity for both parties to debate a bill and offer their closing thoughts when a motion is made to “call the previous question.”
That motion, if successful, immediately cuts off debate on a bill and calls for a vote. Rules that were previously in place allowed for leaders of both parties to take three minutes to make final remarks before the vote, but only on the second and third readings of a bill, and not during veto overrides.
The new rules adopted last week were revised to extend the final three minutes of debate afforded to leaders of both parties, or their designees, to votes on veto overrides as well, “to be consistent,” Bell said.
Democrats, and in particular Reives, acknowledged the effort Republicans made to get their input, but said there were still some issues that needed more work. And at least one of those issues revealed concerns with the legislative process that exist on both sides of the aisle.
Reshaping bills using conference reports
Rep. Pricey Harrison thanked House GOP leaders for their “added transparency” this session, and for working with Democrats on potential amendments to the rules, but said there was one “glaring absence” on an issue that “we hear the most about from the public, and that relates to conference reports.”
She pointed to the controversial bill Republicans enacted last year that allocated $227 million to a relief fund for Hurricane Helene, but also took away several powers from incoming Gov. Josh Stein and other Democrats who had recently won Council of State positions in November.
Republicans added those major changes to a previously low-profile bill about dental services. They did so by placing them in a conference report, which is supposed to be a way to reconcile two competing versions of a bill. Such reports skip the typical committee process, and can’t be amended, requiring only an up-or-down vote.
Instead, in a process known as “gut-and-amend,” legislative leaders have sometimes used the conference report process to roll out entirely new legislation, such as state budgets, or a bill banning most abortions after 12 weeks.
On the 2024 power shift bill, three Republicans representing the westernmost House districts of the state initially joined Democrats in voting against the bill, but later joined their party in voting to override then-Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the bill, which he called a “sham.”
Harrison made sure to point out that the use of conference reports to make sweeping changes or additions to bills at the end of the lawmaking process has been a longstanding issue under both Republicans and Democrats.
“This has been a problem, and it’s been going on for years under both parties, so it’s not really a partisan thing, but I think for the public, better transparency, better government,” Harrison said.
Harrison’s amendment would have required conference reports, once they have been agreed on and signed, to be heard by at least one standing committee that isn’t the Rules Committee before being voted on by the House. Harrison said requiring this additional hearing in a “committee of substance” would give the public more time to see what has been agreed to in a conference report, and weigh in.
Republicans voted down the amendment, but not everyone in their caucus agreed.
Four Republicans — Reps. John Blust of Greensboro, Ben Moss of Rockingham, Harry Warren of Salisbury, and Sam Watford of Thomasville — joined nearly all Democrats in voting for the amendment.
Later in the debate, Blust, a longtime House member who previously served in the chamber for 18 years between 2001 and 2019, stressed the need for more improvements to the current process, mentioning Harrison’s amendment as an example.
“The biggest abuse has been the use of the conference report, not to iron out the differences between two versions of a bill, which is absolutely necessary and is a good thing, but to be used as a whole introduction of a matter that never sees the light of day, and comes back here often mixed with several other provisions, and it’s take it or leave it all,” Blust said.
One lawmaker asks: “Why can’t it ever change?”
Blust mentioned the power shift bill as an example, but also brought up the push two years ago by Senate leader Phil Berger to include in the state budget casino legislation that was being drafted behind closed doors, saying that it was one reason why he decided to seek another term and return to the House.
The veteran GOP lawmaker said the rejection of the Senate’s insistence to include the gambling bill in the budget was “the House’s finest hour since I’ve been aware of politics.”
Blust also reiterated that this issue “has been happening a long time.”
“I’m not picking on anybody here right now, because I’ve seen some of these abuses for decades now, and I wonder, why can’t it ever change?” Blust said. “Why can’t it ever change?”
The leader of House Democrats, meanwhile, echoed frustrations with how bills have been traded between both chambers in the past, but said he was encouraged by the outreach from his Republican counterparts.
Reives said that even though Hall and Bell weren’t obliged to hear him out and solicit his ideas for how the rules could be improved, they started having conversations with him about “how we can make this place run better” in October, months before this year’s session even began.
The Democratic leader said he wanted to “publicly commend” both GOP leaders for how they went about devising a new set of rules, saying that while he was “casting no aspersions on anything that’s happened before,” he was sure “we had more meetings on the rules in this last five months than I had in total, in my 11 years.”
Today’s newsletter was by Avi Bajpai. Check your inbox tomorrow for more #ncpol.
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