State lawmakers say they’ve made progress this week on a budget agreement. But they’ve postponed votes on veto overrides and other issues for another week.
House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters that he’s been meeting with Senate leader Phil Berger to address remaining disagreements over state spending. The two were scheduled to meet Thursday and possibly again Friday.
"We’ve culled that list down some, there’s still probably 100 or 120-some-odd items," he said Thursday. "That’s not many – it’s a $30 billion budget guys! It started off as more. That’s what you call progress, right?"
With agreements recently reached on income tax cuts and how much money to set aside as savings, budget committee chairs from both chambers could meet as soon as next week to hash out which spending projects will make the final cut.
Moore says he’s still hopeful the overdue budget could be passed by the end of the month. But he says it won’t be ready when the House returns on Aug. 15 to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of restrictions on transgender health care and athletic competition.
That and other override votes had previously been scheduled for next week, but Moore says too many lawmakers are still on vacation. Berger says the Senate likely won't hold votes until the House passes overrides, since for most of the pending vetoes, the House has to act first.
Assuming the House sticks to the Aug. 15 date to restart a session that's been on hold since early July, other action could include committee hearings on proposed election law changes and a "regulatory reform" measure, the speaker said.
Berger says the final budget bill could include a proposal to open up to four casinos in rural counties. He says the idea likely has enough support to pass the Senate, but Moore said the Republican caucus in his chamber hasn't yet discussed the proposal. Moore typically doesn't move legislation forward unless at least half of the GOP caucus supports it.
Berger said that if the two chambers agree on the details, it would likely be attached to the budget rather than move as a standalone bill. That process would mean virtually no opportunity for legislators to make amendments once the budget bill is released.
Democrats continue to criticize the delayed budget, which means state employees have been waiting on raises since July 1.
"This never-ending budget bickering is doing nothing to keep North Carolina a state where families want to live and companies want to do business," Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat running for governor, said in a news release this week.
