Legislative response to WakeMed merger is changing + Uphill battle for hemp bill
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Sen. Jim Burgin amended his hospital-merger bill to remove merger oversight provisions.
- A House bill would ban hemp and kratom for people under 21, but the Senate may resist.
- A rollout of a budget bill is delayed again. Democrats complain they're shut out.
Good morning and welcome to Under the Dome. I’m democracy reporter Kyle Ingram.
Today’s newsletter includes assists from politics reporter Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi and our summer intern, Ronni Butts.
But first, a brief budget update:
While some legislative leaders had initially predicted a June 15 release date for the long-overdue state budget, don’t hold your breath on seeing it drop next week.
Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall told reporters the process is continuing at a steady pace, but it may take a bit longer to have a full budget released and voted on.
“I’m not optimistic we’ll have something to release next week,” Berger said on Wednesday. “I continue to feel that we should be on track to get a budget done by the end of the month.”
Speaking of the budget...
Senate Democratic Leader Sydney Batch told reporters in a press conference on Thursday that Democrats are being shut out of budget negotiations. Most Republicans, she claimed, are being left out too, leaving many lawmakers clueless about its contents and when it’ll be released.
“We have sent our requests … and have specifically flagged projects that we think are important. We have not heard back,” Batch said. “We don’t know whether or not they’ll make the budget.”
Batch was joined by three Democratic senators, including Sen. Lisa Grafstein, who said that state employees like corrections officers need pay increases. Batch said raises need to factor in market rates and inflation.
Though Batch said she doesn’t know what’s in the budget, she hopes that it won’t include policy, which would create further partisan divides.
— Ronni Butts
Healthcare merger bill advances without its key provision
A bill filed by a top legislator over healthcare policy, in response to the proposed merger between WakeMed and Atrium Health, saw movement in a health committee Thursday.
But it ended up looking a lot different. The bill was amended by its sponsor, Sen. Jim Burgin, an Angier Republican and healthcare budget writer, to cut the bill’s central provision: increased oversight of hospital mergers by Council of State members.
Burgin previously told The News & Observer that news of the WakeMed and Atrium merger — which emerged via a news release on a Friday afternoon in mid-May with a vote scheduled for the following Monday — should have been brought to light “months and months ago.” He said that lack of information prompted him to file the bill.
County commissioners have since delayed their decision, and WakeMed held a series of public forums on the topic. The merger will need the blessing of the Federal Trade Commission, and state Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s office says he will also review the plan, The N&O previously reported.
On Thursday, Burgin told reporters the changes to the bill are “because of the WakeMed merger. They’re so far into that. I really feel like, doing this right now, I don’t want us to put a finger on it one way or another.”
But, the bill and the merger provisions “should have already been in place. If it had been in place, I think we would have a different situation going on right now. There’d be a lot more discussion, and I think we’d have a lot more information,” he said.
The bill now does three main things:
- Caps annual CEO compensation at 400 times the pay of the lowest-paid full-time employee at nonprofit hospitals. Both WakeMed and Atrium are nonprofits.
- Provides whistleblower and employment protections for healthcare professionals, including banning noncompete clauses in hospital employment contracts.
- Exempts the state treasurer’s office — which oversees the State Health Plan, the insurance program for state employees and teachers — from Certificate of Need reviews, the state process that regulates whether new healthcare facilities or services can be built or offered.
So who wanted the merger provisions removed? Burgin said different people in the caucus and in the legislature “felt like they’re so far in this current situation that this might not be the appropriate time to do it.”
Berger later told reporters in a gaggle that he had not asked Burgin to remove the merger provisions.
- Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi
House hemp bill faces uphill battle in the Senate
A new bill pitched by the NC House banning the use of hemp and kratom for everyone under 21 appears unlikely to get a warm reception in the Senate.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because the Senate and the House, both led by the GOP, have struggled for years to come to an agreement on how to regulate the hemp, marijuana (which remains illegal both medically and recreationally in North Carolina), and tobacco industries.
On the House’s latest proposal, Berger told reporters he hoped lawmakers could “get something passed.” But: “Personally, I think we ought to just ban it all, and then if folks want to have some kind of regulatory scheme or some other authorization, let’s work from the point where it’s not legal, and then we’ll authorize certain things, as opposed to what we’re trying to do now. But we’ll see what comes over.”
On conversations about medical marijuana legalization (which the Senate has previously approved, while the House has not), Berger said, “All those things have been discussed. The issue is we seem not to be able to cobble together enough votes to pass something that either addresses the additional revenue, addresses the limits on access, all of those things.”
Another bill that appeared to draw little enthusiasm from Berger was one passed by the House to regulate crypto ATMs.
Berger said he had not discussed that proposal with Senate Republicans and did not “know enough about the crypto issue to feel well enough briefed to talk about that at all.”
- Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi
Headlines you won’t want to miss
- Top Republican wants NC Democrats ‘disciplined’ after explicit language in video
- Democratic Rep. Bryan Cohn reenters competitive NC House race
- A group formed to advise on Carolina North has some questions for UNC
- NC Gov. Josh Stein asks Congress for $10 billion for Helene relief
- ‘Jaleeyah’s Law,’ named for 13-year-old girl shot and killed in NC, passes House
Thanks for reading Under the Dome
That’s all for now! Have a great day, and we’ll see you back here on Sunday.
