In this week's political fact check, we turn our attention to the race for North Carolina governor between Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein. The headline of a press release last week from the Stein campaign said, “Mark Robinson skips Board of Education vote on teacher bonuses to hold campaign event.” Paul Specht of WRAL joins WFAE's Morning Edition host Marshall Terry for more.
Marshall Terry: Before we get into that vote, let’s look at the role of lieutenant governor. What power does Robinson have when it comes to the Board of Education?
Paul Specht: Right. He's a standing member. The lieutenant governor in this state actually has less power than in other states. But one of his primary duties is to sit on the Board of Education. There's a military committee that he also sits on. He also presides over the state Senate. Those are just a handful of other things that the lieutenant governor is responsible for.
Terry: OK, so the Board of Education meeting the press release mentioned occurred last Thursday and the board voted on teacher bonuses.
Specht: Not exactly. And that's one of the misleading parts of this headline. The Board of Education cannot give teacher bonuses. They don't have that authority. Only local school districts and the state legislature can give these bonuses. And so what the Board of Education was considering last Thursday was a study their staff at the Department of Public Instruction, DPI, looked at bonuses that had been issued the prior year.
The purpose of this is to see OK teachers get bonuses for different things and for teaching different class levels like AP courses and stuff like that. And so they do this exercise to check and see how many teachers in which county got bonuses and what classes did they teach. Just to sort of track how effective this method is of giving bonuses to the teachers for this extra work or this harder work. The staff brought this study to the board and said, 'hey, does all this look right to you? Can we send it to the state legislature?' And that was their only role — to review this report and then vote to send it to our state leaders. It did not have anything to do with whether or not teachers would get more money in their pocket.
Terry: So the press release said Robinson skipped the meeting to hold a campaign event. Where was he?
Specht: Robinson had a campaign event in Mooresville at the same time that morning, 9:00 a.m., but it's a little misleading to say that that he skipped it. He called in remotely.
Terry: So how did the Board of Education and Robinson vote on that report?
Specht: Well, it came out toward the end of the meeting and it was voted on along with a number of other items. They're on the what's known as the consent agenda. And typically those items don't receive much discussion. People review them beforehand and then there's typically an up or down vote. And in this case, there was a roll call vote. You can hear them go down the line. 'Board member so and so, how do you vote? State Treasurer Dale Falwell, how do you vote? Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, how do you vote?' And you can hear him say yay. Yes, in favor of the motion to accept those reports and send them along.
Terry: So how did you rate this claim?
Specht: We rated it mostly false and what that means is there's a certain element of truth, a kernel of truth, if you will. And in this case, that is that Robinson was not physically present at this meeting in Raleigh. He was elsewhere. But on the whole, it's inaccurate to suggest he skipped the meeting. He did participate. He did vote on the teacher bonus issue and it was not about whether teachers should get bonuses. It was about, you know, whether or not to pass this report along.
