Some House bond proceeds would require counties to put up matching funds, particularly for getting a portion of the $500 million in K-12 construction funds. The North Carolina NAACP had scheduled a press conference on Friday at their offices in Durham urging McCrory to veto the monuments bill and end the sale of the Confederate license plates.
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The additional pages are indicative of a long-running philosophical difference between the House and Senate. McCrory said nothing publicly Thursday about the two bills. The House plan, which McCrory supports, leaves it to networks led by regional hospitals and local doctors. Mickey Michaux and Paul Luebke, Democrats all, joined some of the chamber’s most conservative Republicans in voting against the package on Wednesday.
Locally, the UNC-related provisions of the House bill would channel $7.5 million to N.C. Central University to pay for a renovation of the Taylor building, which houses the Department of Psychology.
Most of the projects on the House list are short- or medium-term priorities for the UNC system’s Board of Governors. Death penalty opponents fought against a bill allowing the state to expedite changing which drugs can be used in lethal injections without much public review.
House Speaker Tim Moore and other chamber leaders unveiled late Monday an alternative plan to McCrory’s $2.9 billion in debt offering split between transportation and government infrastructure projects.
“We’ll need to make a little more progress in those areas in order to ensure that we are covering the needs of the state”, Dollar said. Rep. Ken Goodman, D-Richmond, said sometimes debt is a good, responsible action to take.
Although the governor touted low interests rates as a reason to put the borrowing referendum on the November ballot, Senate Republicans expressed skepticism at McCrory’s promises that the state would be able to pay back the bonds without raising taxes.
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Nothing at the General Assembly happens in a vacuum, so the House bond proposal now becomes part of the budget and adjournment mix as the session moves forward.
