NC Democrats hold 'bill funeral' for legislation that died without hearings

Democrats at the state legislature held what they called a "bill funeral" Tuesday for their proposals that won't move forward this year.

Last week marked a legislative "crossover" deadline, where bills that haven't passed either the House or Senate are considered dead. More than 700 of those bills were filed by Democrats — and they listed all of them on a chart during a news conference.

Sen. Natalie Murdock, D-Durham, says those dead bills mean the millions of North Carolina voters who elected Democrats aren't represented.

"Democracy loses when, session after session after session, the ideas and perspectives of duly elected legislators are not seriously considered for a single committee vote," she said. "We are mourning the loss of our ability to truly do the jobs that we were elected to do, mourning the loss of policies that could have saved millions of lives, mourning the loss of the democracy the people of North Carolina deserve to have."

Colin Campbell

/

WUNC

Democrats used the bill funeral event to highlight some of that legislation. Those bills would have:

• Allowed people to renew their driver's licenses online more frequently, an idea aimed at reducing long waits at the DMV.
• Increased the minimum wage for public school employees to $17 per hour and restored additional teacher pay for longevity and master's degrees
• Required guns to be stored more safely around children and strengthened background checks for gun purchases
• Required more transparency from private schools receiving Opportunity Scholarship vouchers
• Reinstated the child tax credit and gradually increased the minimum wage to $15

The majority party in the legislature controls whether bills get added to committee agendas or get floor votes, and bills without GOP support routinely get ignored after they're filed.

This year, House Majority Leader Brenden Jones, R-Columbus, has taken to criticizing some of Democrats' bills on X, formerly Twitter. He's been mocking bills to encourage more diversity in pickleball and to restrict restaurants from automatically providing disposable utensils with takeout orders.

House Democratic Leader Robert Reives, D-Chatham, says lawmakers from the two parties shouldn't be judging legislation based on their opinions of who filed it.

"There's some things that we can sit down and fight about, and there's some things that are just good policy that we ought to pass, and we shouldn't hold bills hostage because we're having a policy fight about some other issue that has nothing to do with these bills," he said.

First-term Rep. Dante Pittman, D-Wilson, says he's still hopeful some of the Democrats' ideas might resurface in another form later in the session.

"I would offer for them to take these good ideas — I would not be offended — and include them in the budget, because what we're trying to do here in North Carolina is make sure that our children have the opportunities that they need, and our families are secure," Pittman said.