Medical marijuana, anti-LGBT proposals, odds on gambling :: WRAL.com

Good afternoon, Welcome to the weekly edition of the Rap. I’m laura Leslie WRL Capital Bureau Chief and I’m Travis feign WRL Statehouse Reporter. Um and I’m sorry I missed last week, had some was out sick for a little bit, but I guess they were on spring break this week, so there wasn’t all that much stuff happening in the Legislature, although they still managed to get up to quite a bit. Um certainly kept us busy this week with a filing deadline in the Senate this week. You just saw all sorts of things hit and then not a lot of people available to talk to about them, so you kind of just have to take each bill at face value. But I think a lot of these things, you know, I I don’t know how quickly they’re going to move if they’re going to move at all. And that’s the thing that probably our listeners understand. But people who may consume less state legislative content Don’t necessarily see, you know, just because somebody files a bill, anybody can file a bill as long as they’re one of 170 people, Right? But we did see some interesting bills filed this week by members of the leadership in the Senate, which is usually an indication that somebody is interested in it. One of those bills is a medical marijuana bill that that you notice was filed by Senator Bill Robin, the rules Chair. Yeah, that’s right. And it’s kind of along the lines of bills that we had seen some democrats file that we didn’t necessarily think, you know, we’re not not following that one too closely, but, you know, the rules chairman gets involved and you you really perk up. It’s got bipartisan support to republicans to democrats, sets up 13 pages of regulatory structure to legalize medical marijuana for debilitating conditions. There’s a list, but it also says in other debilitating conditions like it. But I mean I. M. S. Is one epilepsy is one cancer AIDS was on there and any anything where it is debilitating, in part at least because of severe pain. Crohn’s disease was another one on there. Mm. Um That’s interesting. So I you know, that I you know, we were talking earlier this week about whether or not we thought any medical marijuana bill might actually make it through this year or not. It was funny because Matt, our editor kind of said no and I said, you know, I’m not ready to say no, just because there’s some of the states that have been doing this and all of a sudden this pops up, so maybe this will be the year that will actually see it get debated on the floor of at least one chamber, even if it doesn’t become law. Yes. Some of the folks advocating for medical marijuana in general were at the Legislature the week before, and burger, Senator Phil Berger leader in the Senate was asked about those bills at that point. They were in the house, raven had not filed his bill yet and Berger said, you know, there’s really more support for decriminalization as opposed to legalization, whether it be recreational or medicinal. He, so he was kind of uh, you know, down on the idea, but you know, he certainly didn’t close the door all the way either. As you know, you know how senator burger speaks, you know, we’re going to talk about it whether or not he knew that Ravens bill was coming at that point, I don’t know, but as we said, it kind of changes the calculus when, when somebody that that high up is back in the bill. We also saw a trio of bill’s kinda aimed at transgender and LGBT. Q. People filed. Uh Well we already had one that was filed in the House and that’s the one that would ban transgender girls from girls sports in high school and college. And then um this week in the Senate we had two bills filed that, one of which would ban transgender therapy or treatment for uh anyone under 21 which is really pretty draconian. Um And and would also require teachers or school staff to notify parents in writing if they see a child acting in a way that they feel does not comport with that child’s biological sex. I’m not real sure exactly how you would define or enforce that one. Um um And then another bill that would allow any health care provider and we’re talking anything from like a surgeon or a hospital system all the way down to say an E. M. T. Or a nursing home aide that would be allowed to refuse to treat somebody who is LGBT Q. On the basis of of conscience conscientious objection to that. Those two bills both were filed at the number one sponsor was ralph Eyes, who is definitely a member of leadership, but we have not heard anything from Senator Berger’s office about the likelihood of those two bills going anywhere either. Yeah. I mean you’ve heard me kind of go on about about social issue bills and the math hasn’t changed. You know, I feel like we got passed House Bill two and the repeal of that. And then there really wasn’t a ton of discussion. We had the born alive abortion bill a year or two ago, which is back as we mentioned in a minute here. But other than that, you know, there hasn’t been a ton of debate about these this sort of thing, that this really divisive thing because you know, the governor is gonna veto it, you would think if it moves through the Legislature. Um so do republicans really want that fight? You know, do they really see this as an issue where they want to move these bills along? Have the fight, Have the debate get the national press that comes along with it? Because this thing where a teacher or a state employee would have to tell someone’s parents if they think they might be transgender. That generated a ton of interest on the twitter. I mean, and it’s not even if they think they’re transgender, it’s if they see them, for example, like a girl hugging a girl or you know, something that doesn’t comport with their behavior and there’s a lot of L. G. B. T. Q. Kids that are not out at home. And this could have, I mean I talked to one of the top doctors today in the US about who deals with transgender teens and the treatment that they need. You know, um and she said this bill could be deadly. I mean literally deadly to some LGBTQ kids. Um And it could also, you know, they cut off treatment for kids who are currently in hormone therapy. It could, you know, it’ll destabilize them if they have to stop hormone treatment and they could lead to an increase in suicides. And so you know, it’s it’s hard to understand kind of where these bills come out of sometimes, especially when the sponsors don’t want to talk about them. Um And it’s uh you know, as you say, there’s a lot of social bills this year. I think perhaps it was that last year they weren’t filing them because of Covid. So there’s a lot of maybe appetite built up for that. But I’m really curious to see whether or not that translates into some of the big social debates that we’ve seen in years past. And I don’t remember which build is. One of them is targeted at sports right? Like basically making sure boys who are transgender girls do not participate in girls’ sports. And uh that’s a house bill that is up. It’s going to be in the house Judiciary Committee Wednesday at noon. So we’ll be watching that one. But that is um for discussion only at this point at least according to the agenda over at N. C. Health news. Hannah Critchfield did a Great story on this where she got a hold of the North Carolina High School Sports Association um and asked them how many people had submitted waivers to do this and it was fewer than 10 in the past two years. So clearly this is not something that’s happening a whole lot out of like 687,000 high school kids. It’s one of these things where either there is no problem or the problem is so infant essentially small. I mean, I don’t know. I always ask myself what juices worth, what squeeze and you know, I don’t know that you want to smoke that comes with this just to watch to be vetoed at the end of the day. But Yeah, I mean after HB, especially after HB two, you would think that, you know, we might, The state might have gotten the clue that perhaps this is not a Great Avenue to be traveling down, especially when you already have 30 or 40 major corporations coming out against similar proposals in other states. So, I mean, you know, this looks like it’s shaping up to be another big fight, but at least this time there are other states, like Arkansas, for example, who are, who are already passing this kind of legislation. So it wouldn’t be just north Carolina this time. If you’re Republican can sell this to parents, right, You can sell the fear and uh, some people are gonna be all for it. But anyway, I, I think we’ve already done what I don’t want to do, which is spend time talking about bills. I don’t think you’re ever going to be law in north Carolina, but that’s what social bills do that. They drive the passion. And I mean, yeah, you don’t wanna ignore anything. But I want to talk about tax policy laura, well, I want to talk about gambling. Yeah. Speaking of lives, speaking of bills that may or may not become law. So a couple of bills filed this week um by um actually Senator Perry I think was one of the main sponsors and senator low. So as a bipartisan bills, um one would allow horse racing and gambling in north Carolina and the other one would basically allow sports betting overall, uh and put that money into sort of your lottery pile to pay for education. And that’s been another, you know, we’ve seen member of Senator Gun, they called him senator fun for years because he would always put these bills into allow batting and things like that. But um, so I don’t know if that’s the case, but you know, and I don’t know what the odds of this bill. Sorry, no pun intended there are going to be, but, but it’s certainly interesting. Well, and, you know, talking to some of the people working the bill, they’ve got a lot of confidence that they can move it through the state Senate. Um, we’ll see if that comes to pass, you know, like the lobbying core at the State House, you know, often does not lack for confidence in there in their proposals, but this has got a lot of money behind it. That’s the thing, right? I mean, it’s money, money, money, state revenue, and and I think the bill uses some of the money, at least for school construction. My right about that. And then there’s another bill, VLT, is that stand for video lottery Terminal? Yeah, that’s one of the things that the lottery commission has sort of been kicking around for a while. So, you know, as you say, this is all stuff that has been under discussion for some time. Yeah, but that’s the way these things go, right. It’s like, you know, first you introduce it and everybody scoffs and says that will never go and then you keep introducing, yeah, and then it just bam, you know, it just, it slides on through um as a Cullen Browder had a story a week or two ago for us here at W. R. E. L. Where he got his hands on a report that the lottery, the state lottery had commissioned about, and basically the 160 whatever how many pages is basically just, you know, boil down, he all a lot of money, a lot a lot of money. Um so I think, I think they actually printed the report on $100 bills. That doesn’t seem like a smart move, but, you know, um no, of course not. And uh but yeah, let’s see if if we get some wagering going here. Um Also um good news. Uh Senator Thom Tillis had uh surgery this week for his prostate cancer. Um It seems to be uh said he was recovering well at home here in north Carolina. So uh congratulations Senator Tillis. And please get well soon. Yeah. Said he called it early too as a man approaching these ages uh won’t hurt you to get your prostate checked. No and this was one of those blood scans that they do looking for P. S. A. I think that’s what it’s called, looking for A. Level of a hormone in the blood. So yeah it’s one of those one of those one of those scanning tests that you know, a lot of people don’t really think too much about until it finds something. So anyway, congratulations to him for that. Um Today the governor signed uh, the summer school bill which has been sitting on his desk for a little bit I guess now, but he went ahead and signed that into law and also the, the excellent public Schools Act of the year, which um, primarily had to do with focusing on phonics for third grade reading, I guess it was um, as opposed to whole language or whole word reading. Both of those signed as well as another bill and unusually congratulatory message from senator burger thinking the governor for signing those bills. Yeah, the era of good feelings continues here and uh, you know, I think that bill was nearly unanimously passed. He signed a trio of education bills, had a camera what the third one was, but like you said, the summer school one and the overhaul of the state’s reading curriculum is what it ultimately well amount to with the phonics bill. Um I guess I have run out of things to say about that. Well, yes, but you are going to talk about tax policy because this is a question that we have gotten from a lot of folks, which is okay. So we all know that the I. R. S. Has pushed off its deadline for taxes this year until May 17th. Thank Urs. However, there were a lot of questions. Has the state pushed off this deadline as well? Well, yes and no, the state has moved the deadline for filing, but the state, the state Department of Revenue can’t just decide not to charge you interest on anything you don’t pay before april 15th and that or by april 15th. And that is something the Legislature is going to have to get on pretty darn quick when they come back to town next week and I think they will talk to represent Julia Howard today, Chairwoman in Finance. I mean, anything like this is going to move in the House is going to go through her. She said that you expect that to happen or start happening next week um where they forgive that interest. And this is another thing where like it’s written in the state law, so the legislature has to get involved. And you remember last year when they were talking about delaying, you know, the requirement for D. M. V. Registrations because of a 19, like, oh well we got to pass a law to do that. So, I mean, a lot of these things are written into the law, The Department of revenue can waive penalties if you don’t pay by April 15, they can’t waive the interest, even though tax day has been moved to May 17. So they’re gonna they’re gonna do that, they’re going to waive the interest. What they’re not going to do is conform with federal policy on unemployment. So if you file for unemployment you’re gonna have to pay taxes. State taxes for that. The state could conform with the Feds who are forgiving the 1st $10,200 of unemployment income. 13 states have not done that. Most of most states have done that or they don’t have state income tax, we’re not going to do it. Apparently I asked Howard represented Howard and others doesn’t look like we’re going to do that. The governor has not asked to do that. Um And I just heard from Revenue and the Department Division of Employment Security today of the 10 950,090 nines that they sent out. So you know, roughly a million people who got unemployment benefits in 2020 530,000 of them did not have state taxes withheld. So they’re gonna potentially, oh no, we’ve got high standard deductions here. I mean, there’s a big zero bracket where you don’t pay any taxes, so I don’t know how many. But I mean, I think a lot of people are about to get a rude awakening here because they did not have that withholding done and the state has declined to offer them this tax benefit that the feds are doing in a bunch of other states are doing. But and I then I’ll wrap up on tax policy after this. After I get this off my chest. We are going to conform with federal policy on P. P. P. Loans. These are the Paycheck Protection program, loans. Forgivable loans were going to allow businesses as I leave, the federal government is going to do to deduct the expenses that were paid with those loans, lower their tax, their tax burden. That’s gonna cost the state $367 million. So I think there’s a comparison to be made there where we’re doing this for businesses, but we’re not doing it for people who are unemployed last year. I’m sure we’ll hear a lot about that comparison on the floor when this bill comes up. Um Well, I only have one other thing to add. Um and that is um We were talking today to some of the governor’s folks about the state of the state. You know, that’s the address. The governor usually does an odd number years. Um And it hasn’t happened this year, mostly because of the challenges of trying to get everybody into a chamber to do the state of the state with covid, of course. But we’re told we’re going to hear something along those lines coming up next week about when that might be scheduled. Of course, a lot of people have already gotten their shots. I got my second one yesterday. I hope to drive us of you. I got the johnson and johnson, so I was one time and go. So yes, a lot of folks are getting their shots. So, so that may be coming up soon on the horizon. We should know something about it here soon. Yeah. And also next week, keep it on ted bud. Uh he may jump into the U. S. Senate race. He sent something out to supporters saying, you know, one of those things are sign up here, you’ll be the first to know. I don’t think that’s quite accurate, but that is indicative of a decision coming soon. Um uh Former Chief Justice Beasley, we kind of expect her to get into this on the Democratic side, the U. S. Senate race, but that’s going to be, I think later this month, april. And we should note Beaufort Mayor Rhett Newton just got in this week. He’s running for the U. S. Senate. He’s a democrat. He’s got a pretty good looking website. Uh, he was a pilot, uh kind of got an interesting story. So, you know, if you’re Interlight in the 2022 Senate race at this point, could check that out. It’s getting busy already, yep, yep. All right, well, we will of course be keeping an eye on things. We expect things to get off to a quick start on monday and Tuesday as folks come back from spring break. So we will catch you up on everything that happened tomorrow, I should say next week on the rap. Thanks for watching and listening.