Submitted by admin on March 7, 2011 – 6:30 pm No Comment
RALEIGH — The hottest action in the General Assembly this week will be in the North Carolina House as it takes up a bill to remove the cap on the number of charter schools in the state. The House also will start laying the groundwork for the regulatory requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and perhaps move forward with an attempt to override Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto of the bill exempting North Carolinians from the mandate included in that federal law. The Senate is scheduled for a final vote on an annexation moratorium.
“If you have parents who for various and sundry reasons are not interested in their child’s education, that child is at a double disadvantage. No help from home and now no help from society,” said Rep. Marvin Lucas, D-Cumberland. The former principal-turned-legislator spoke out last week against Senate Bill 8 .
The bill would remove the statewide cap on the number of charter schools, now fixed at 100. It also would move the oversight of charter schools to a new commission and make more money available to them.
The bill passed the Senate largely along party lines at the end of February. Perdue has indicated she has concerns about the bill. Charter school advocates say parents are begging for choice.
“We want more options for parents,” said Darrell Allison, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina. “When we have 20,000 children on waiting lists and charter schools are only available in 47 counties, it is high time for us to get moving.”
The bill is scheduled for its first hearing in the House Education Committee on Tuesday.
The House also will discuss House Bill 115 , a bill beginning the implementation of the federal health care reform by creating the health benefit exchanges mandated in the law. States must setup the exchanges by 2014 or the federal government will institute its own exchange in the state.
Rep. Jerry Dockham, R-Davidson, chairman of the House Insurance Committee, introduced the bill last month. “We think we know what’s best for North Carolina better than what the federal government does,” Dockham said. The bill will be heard in the Health and Human Services Committee.
A competing bill was filed by Rep. Verla Insko, D-Orange. The main difference revolves around the composition of the membership of the exchange boards. House Bill 126 would not require insurance industry employees to be on the board, unlike H.B. 115.
“This board will be regulating the insurers,” Insko said. “It doesn’t make sense for the people to be regulated to actually be writing the regulations.” The hearing also is scheduled for Tuesday.
Meantime, Perdue vetoed House Bill 2 , Protect Healthcare Freedom, Saturday. The legislation would exempt North Carolinians from ObamaCare’s requirement to purchase health insurance from a federally authorized provider and compel Attorney General Roy Cooper to join a multistate lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law.
In late February, Cooper opined that the state bill was unconstitutional and unenforceable and could cause the state to forfeit some federal funding. Backers of H.B. 2, General Assembly staff lawyers , and several legal and constitutional scholars said Cooper was wrong .
House Majority Leader Paul “Skip” Stam, R-Wake, points out that the House would need to get only four Democrats to join all Republicans to override the veto, and that two Democrats voted for the initial legislation. The Senate passed the bill by a veto-proof margin.
The Senate is expected to take its final vote on Senate Bill 27 . It would institute a moratorium on forced annexations in the state until July 1, 2012. Republican legislators are expected to use that time to rewrite the state’s annexations laws.
Currently, towns and cities in North Carolina can annex unincorporated areas outside town limits without the consent of the property owners being annexed. Opponents of involuntary annexations say the process burdens them with additional taxes and forces property owners to use city services they don’t need.
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