Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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your support for the third hour here News Talk eleven,
ten ninety nine to three WBT. Let's welcome back to
the program. AP Dylan. You can read her work at
the North State Journal NSJ online. Also, she has her
substack AP Dylan dot substack dot com. AP. Thanks for
joining me. How are you today, I'm doing well.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: All set for the long session in Raleigh.
Speaker 2: Well, I've had assurances from both Senate leader Burger House
Speaker Dustin Hall that they would like to see us
out by June. And if I could take to the bank.
How many times a leadership has said that they wanted
to be out by June. H I would be a
rich person by now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it tends to run long. Even the short
sessions run long nowadays, it seems.
Speaker 2: Yes they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So you have been tracking what has
been filed so far, and I think the number, the
last number I saw you had was three hundred and
ten bills filed so far in the General Assembly. Is
that I'm assuming week at the.
Speaker 2: End of last week. I haven't looked this morning to
see what, okay to the.
Speaker 1: File, right, I assume it's going to.
Speaker 2: Be more Oh, yeah, it's going to be more.
Speaker 1: Right and so all right, So first off, there are
some deadlines here for when these bills have to get fired.
I'm a filed rather and I'm not going to go
through all of the specific deadlines, but there is the
big day that everybody focuses on, which is crossover day. Right,
This is what May eighth, and that's when all the
bills that get filed in the House have to cross
over to the Senate if they're going to move and
get approved, and the Senate bills go the other direction.
So they call it crossover day.
Speaker 2: So I think that excludes local bills I think are
excluded from that, and a couple other types. But the
majority of the public bills have to be passed by
one of the by that chamber in order to be
considered during crossover.
Speaker 1: Right and local bills are important. Just for noting here
that these are specific for smaller areas, Like if it's
something about I think Mecklenburg County just saw something about
their transit sales tax referendum, so that would be a
local bill you don't need the entire state to vote on.
I'm assuming it's a local bill, you don't need the
whole state to vote on that.
Speaker 2: Right, that's correct. You'll see a lot of education bills
that are also local bills, which is honestly, this is
one thing that has piqued my interest in the last
few years. The number of bills filed in the House
and then the Senate lately asking for school calendar flexibility
has increased quite a bit over the last couple of years.
I wrote about this a couple of years ago for
Nurse State, and I was looking at it this year,
and as of last week, there were fifteen calendar bills
that were filed for various districts and two standalone bills.
One was Senate built one o three in the Otherland's
House built one twenty one and those two bills are
nearly identical, and they basically want all districts to have
calendar flexibility of when they opened close, right.
Speaker 1: And this makes sense in a state that's got the
you know, weather diversity and geographic diversity, topographical diversity from
mountains to the coast, right, you had different areas that
that may not need to be in school for the
exact same length. I mean they have to make the
same they have to hit a minimum number of instructional days,
but where those days are allocated it seems like might
be better a decided at the local level. But I
think this is still a remnant of the power of
the tourism industry, right. They want they want to be
able for everybody to be off at the same time,
so all the tourism flocks down to the coast. That's
how I understood the issue.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, the tourism lobby is pretty strong on us.
The current K twelve calendar law in our state, it
requires a minimum of one hundred and eighty five days
or one twenty five hours of instruction, and under that law,
the school start date can be no earlier than the
Monday closest to August twenty sixth and the end date
no later than the Friday closest to June eleventh. So
that puts, you know, districts in a buying like for example,
we kind of just had three school days missed for
you know, the snowstorm that we had here, and they
don't have any more bank days, so they can't push
out their end date which is close to June eleventh
or on June eleventh, and so they had to claw
back the teacher worked through the teacher work based for
the traditional calendar kids and some of the year around
calendar kids are having to go to school for three
hours on a Saturday. So I mean, it's a little weird.
But the Senate has had no appetite for changing the
calendar law. The last time I interviewed Senate Leader Berger
was I believe two years ago on this issue, and
at that point he said he saw no reason to
change to change it around. But here we have fifteen
plus two standalone bills, one Senate, one in the House
asking for such a change. I don't wonder if it's
going to see a little bit more conversation this time around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we do know if Medicaid expansion was any
indication Senator Burger can have a change of heart and
mind on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Medicaid's about to have some issues though. I mean,
the Fed sort of promised us, you know, the ninety
percent reimbursement rate, but I just don't see that happening. No.
And I also think that, well, you know, and it's
into our Medicaid expansion that if they don't make that
ninety percent, then they can start slashing back the funding
or basically rescinding the expansion. And whether or not the
lawmakers will have the guts to actually do that remains
to be seen. But you know, that's that's an interesting
piece that I don't wonder if that might get addressed
a little bit. I saw a couple of bills in
here that have to do with health care. Let's see,
let me scroll down Senate Bell twenty four. It's talking
about addressing increasing health care costs because according to a
couple of different outlantes, I think Forbes was one of them,
where the we're the most expensive state in the nation
for health care. So they want to drive down costs
that are driven by quote, government mandated health insurance as
well as any new legislation with health benefit mandates has
to repeal an equal number of zigozzing mandates and have
the equal impact and funding, so you can't put something
new in without taking something old out that costs the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think those are called pay forwards, like you
got to show how are you going to pay for it?
So yeah, if you and I'm okay with that idea
as a concept. Sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's almost identical measure in the House. That's housebal
forty six. So sent a bill twenty four in Houspital
forty six on that one.
Speaker 1: Have you seen anything or heard anything regarding the certificate
of need laws.
Speaker 2: No, but I did attend an event a week or
so back that had healthcare folks there who came and
talked to legislators and lawmakers. It was It was an
event by North Carolina Partnership for Reform. They had Scott
Jennings from CNN as their lead speaker at the luncheon part,
but earlier on they had a healthcare guy in there
who was talking about how healthcare costs have surpassed college
tuition for cost that's impressive. Yeah, there were some interesting things.
I'm going to have an article driving at North State
this week out that event. And there will be a
nugget in there about the healthcare pieces that were in there.
Speaker 1: Right because and I also saw some stories within the
last week, I want to say, of some certificate of
need proposal, and there was like some there were people
complaining about I guess it like a public hearing or something.
And for people who don't know, this is a stupid
law that the government has to approve whether or not
a new medical facility opens in any given area, and
they have to issue this certificate of need after the
government determines that there is a need for this service,
which is asinine because the government is not the expert
in this the medical facilities.
Speaker 2: And it's a barrier to entry for one, for certain things,
it's a jacks up costs for another thing. It's a
little bit of rent seeking behavior on the government's part,
you know. And it's also a protectionist and the part
of the bigger providers out there. Yeah, I mean, it's
all around. It's not a good thing. And the expert
that spoke at the event that I went to called
North Carolina's con laws the worst in the nation of
all states that still have these kind of laws. And
I think there's only about a dozen of them left,
and I.
Speaker 1: Don't even hear a defense of the laws on their value,
you know, Like all I hear is like, well, I
don't know if there's an appetite to vote them away yet,
Like that kind of a thing. I never hear, like
a definitive case made in support of these types of laws.
You know, they make claims that they do things that
they obviously do not, like rate like lower costs, and
they definitely don't do that.
Speaker 2: It keeps for the public from being able to shop
around for the best deal, right you know. I mean
we can we can do anything we want, and we
can customize pretty much anything we want, from like our
phone to our fruit loops. But we can't customize our
healthcare right for you know, to find the best deal
out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember there was a colonoscopy I think clinic
that wanted to open on the county line Buncom and
Henderson County about a decade ago, and there were people
showing up from the community that were just like, I
don't think we need this, Like, well, that's not your
call to make, Like why do I care what some
random person showing up at a hearing is saying you're
not an expert in the Have you run a market
analysis on this, No, so it just limits competition and
options for the consumer. Yep, yeah, well you can read that.
There are way more bills, obviously three hundred of them.
Now AP doesn't go through all of them, but she
goes through a bunch over at North State Journal n
sjonline dot com headline, legislative session opens with more than
two hundred bills, and then on her substack she's added
even more. That's AP Dylan dot substack dot com. AP.
Thanks for your time. I appreciate it. We'll talk with
you next week.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Thanks Pete, all right.
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who you are. Visit creative video dot com. In her
substack piece called over three hundred bills filed so far
at NCGA, she highlights a number of different bills and
in the North State Journal article as well, but for example,
Republicans have filed some bills she says that mirror Trump
administration agenda items like ending DEI, protecting farmland from foreign ownership,
as well as no tax on tips. Democrats have been
filing the same type of bills that they file every year.
On marriage equality and altering the state constitution by removing
the provision recognizing marriage as between one man and one
woman that was a constitutional amendment if I recall correctly
Amendment one as it was called. And then there's this,
a bill filed in the Senate would protect arrest mugshots
from being published and would make them non public records,
meaning nobody could obtain them even through a public records request.
Senate Bill one twenty nine was filed by Senator Tim Moffatt,
who I know. He was a representative in bunkhom County,
Ashville area, or he was a state representative, I should say.
He then lost to Brian Turner, and then he moved
down to Henderson County and is now a state senator
from Henderson County. There are no other sponsors listed on
the bill as of AP's post. The bill, she says,
as a parent and a tax paying citizen, is not
only alarming, it represents the protection of criminals at the
expense of public safety in the public's right to information.
As a reporter, this is an anti transparency bill. It
blocks access to information that the public pays for and
has a right too. So this is one of those
it's one of those issues I can I can make
the argument either way, because there are websites that scrape
the mugshot. Well, you know pool if you will, and
they get all of these photos from various you know,
law enforcement entities around the country, and they then post
the mug shots. I mean think there's even like a magazine.
I think it was like I remember there being like
a little you know, it looks like the Penny Trader
or something. It was at gas stations in the Asheville
area years ago. I don't know if they still do it,
and it would publish like all of these mug shots
and names and charges that were filed against various people. Now,
keep in mind, simply being arrested and charged does not
mean that you are guilty at that step, right, So
that's one aspect of it. And when you have, you know,
somebody a neighbor gets arrested for indecent liberties with a minor,
you want to know who they are, what they look like.
You know, it's an easy way to be informed about
a potential threat in your neighborhood. So I understand the
argument that AP lays out here. There's also there's also
another sort of permutation of the magazine with all the mugshots,
which is essentially a scam operation where if you've ever
been arrested then these people, these organizations will get your
information and they will they will charge you money. They'll
try to get money out of you to erase your
mugshot or push it down in the search results and
all of that. And so there's this, and they are
oftentimes the very ones who are promoting your mugshot. And
sometimes they put your mugshot onto a website with charges
that you actually never were charged with. And so you
see this and it's like, wait, I got arrested for
a you know, open container as a twenty year old
or something at an off campus college party. Right, So
you get arrested, and then they take your mug shot
and it's five ten years later, and they've attached something
else to it and now some other charge to it,
and now you want to get that removed, and lo
and behold, you can go to them and pay them
that posted it. You could pay them a bunch of
money and have it removed. So there is this, I
would say, you know, highly unethical, if not a criminal,
enterprise that has emerged around this. Now. I don't know
what the exact rationale is for this bill, but that
is one of them. There is also uh too, where
is it she's got a whole list of them here
at the North State Journal. Oh yes, the DMV. The DMV,
which do you remember, Like ten years ago Pat McCrory
got elected. He was like, we're gonna overhaul the DMV
and we're gonna make it more customer friendly. Customer service
needs to be something we really focus on. Remember all
of that. I guess they you know, Pat lost his reelection,
so I guess we just abandoned all of that. And yeah,
because like I had to take a day off of
work and drive almost one hundred miles to get to
a DMV for an appointment so I can get my
license renewed, which was weird because I had just gotten
the real ID license about a year prior, but they
didn't count that as a renewal. They counted it as
a duplicate, even though it was not a duplicate. It
was an upgrade to the real ID where I had
to show them all of the information, but I didn't
get the eye test, so it didn't count. Yeah, all right,
if you're listening to this show, you know I try
to keep up with all sorts of current events, and
I know you do too, and you've probably heard me say,
get your news from multiple sources. Why, Well, because it's
how you detect media bias, which is why I've been
so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's
a website and it combines news from around the world
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You can check it out at check dot ground, dot
news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast
description too. I started using ground News a few months
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my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they
make the media landscape more transparent. Senate Bill sixty three
would create a board of motor vehicles. I know there's
a joke there about being bored with motor vehicles that
I won't make it anyway, He would have nine members,
and there would be a study for potentially creating a
Motor Vehicle Authority to replace the North Carolina Division of
Motor Vehicles. The study is due by January one, twenty
twenty six. The bill's primary sponsors or one of them
is Michael Lazara, Republican from Onslow County. He has been
vocal about wanting to privatize the DMV. The agency and
its chief, Wayne Goodwin, Democrat, were questioned by lawmakers Way
Goodwin by the Way's former Democrat Party State Party Executive Director.
I believe they were questioned by lawmakers on various issues
during three oversight hearings last year. So the creation of
this Board of Motor Vehicles with nine members to do
the study as to whether or not to create a
Motor Vehicle Authority which would then hire some private company
to run the DMV, which in this case, at this point,
like I'm ill, I cry uncle with the DMV, Like
I don't think, I don't think it's repairable. I don't understand.
I don't understand, Like did you hire the entire Obamacare
web development team to do your DMV site? It's oh,
it's so bad, it's so bad, and like trying to
schedule DMV appointments and like, oh, well you can walk in, Like, yeah,
you might be able to walk in if you're out
in the middle of nowhere. Try to walk in and
see somebody in West Charlotte. That's it's not gonna happen.
The line is out the door, like through the parking
lot around the building. It's awful. And there aren't any appointments.
You can't even see appointments. You can't schedule appointments that
are more than like thirty days out or something, so
you can't even look like, Okay, I know my license
is expiring in six months and I have to go in.
You're requiring me to go in, so I'd like to
make an appointment. Oh sorry, there are no appointments at
this DMV office. Okay, Well how about in the in
month two? No, sorry, we don't even open that calendar
for you. You can't even look at that. Okay, Well
how about if is there another appointment somewhere in my vicinity. Well,
here's a list of every single DMV office alphabetically, and
you can pull from the list, like what, I don't
know where some of these offices are and then you
got to open up the individual office and you've got
to punch in the dates and you've got to find out, okay,
do you have any appointments available?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: It takes so long, it's so not user friendly. How
is this possible? How do you not have somebody that
can set up some sort of calendar system. There are
literally free programs that are available for scheduling meetings and
making schedules, making appointments. We deal with them all the
time on apps and such. Don't tell me that this
is technology that is so beyond the capability of the DMV.
Ugh Stan says. You can only call something customer service
if it's something that you're purchasing where you're not obligated
to do so. With government, you are obligated. So therefore
they don't care if you wait in line or not,
and they never will since you're required to deal with
them regardless. Yeah, now I get it, But I mean,
but you can you can set up a sort of
you know, an internal culture that prioritizes that, and you know,
you can offer incentives for employees to behave in customer
friendly ways, and you can design your website to be
more user friendly. And this is. This is not just DMV,
by the way, this happens all the time in the
private sector too, where it's like they never talk to
their users to find out what the user wants. They
just think it'd be cool to offer this and that
and this bell and those whistles, and the user doesn't
actually want any of that stuff. A smart company will
look at that, look at the metrics and say, oh,
I see nobody is actually using these bells and whistles
that we put on the site, So why don't we
get rid of them? Right? But don't know if there's
an incentive for DMV to do it, it's just ugh, yeah,
it's not good. There's also House Bill sixty four, which
proposes a constitutional amendment which we would then get to
vote on, which would require the governor to obtain majority
approval from both houses of the General Assembly for any
clemency grants so reprieves commutations and pardons, So the governor
would no longer have carte blanche authority to just pardon
a whole bunch of people. They would have the governor
would have to get a majority vote on the pardons
and the commutations and such from each house in the legislature.
Constitutional amendment bills are not subject to gubernatorial vetos, and
so if it is passed out of the General Assembly,
it would then just go to us the voters for
a vote come November. But I mean it's got to
clear the House and Senate first before we ever get
a chance to vote on it. Okay, let me talk
to Charlie. Charlie, welcome to the program.
Speaker 3: Hey, Pete's take an awful lot of sense there on
this DMV. I'm right up the alley on that. I've
been working on it for six months. You know what
we need to do.
Speaker 1: What's that.
Speaker 3: We need to make it so your tag is permanent
with your vehicle unless you trade it or junk it.
There's no use renewing a dad burned tag every year
and have somebody tracked at and waste time out of
your life and simplify people's dag dum situation on their vehicles.
Speaker 1: So the I will say that the DMV, So all right,
the the tag isn't being renewed, well, the registration is
being renewed, and then the taxes have to get paid, right,
so that's how they do that. And then the inspection
in Mecklenburg County, but not all counties I think have
to do the inspections and so.
Speaker 3: Not all but not all, not all states make you
renew your tag. You're paying a tag fee too. Ah, yeah,
some one's getting paid the track.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's truly. So like if you want to
do the inspection and you want to you know, uh,
charge the taxes, the property taxes, which go to Mecklenburg County,
right uh. And I think the state maybe as well
on that. But but yeah, there is a tag renewal
and I don't know if they're making money on that
or if that's just to cover the cost of the
administration of it. But yeah, they did do away with
it because you used to have to get the two
stickers and now at least they're down to just one sticker,
one for the inspection. Right. You get the little the
little sticker when you have your car inspected, and then
the state is alerted by the inspection shop and then
you get the sticker in the mail when you pay
your taxes.
Speaker 3: Right, but you know, the inspections are route. They don't
do anything if your cars ten years or older last
they just they just put it competer and check every
thing out and give you a stick er. They don't
do anything there.
Speaker 1: No, they always tell me I need new tires. No,
they say I need new tires. Yeah, yeah, right, Charlie.
I appreciate the call, Sarah, thank you. Yeah. Well, and
you know, break light is out, headlight is out, those
kinds of things. But yeah, I mean it's it's like
if you go to a shop and they do you know,
a multi point inspection anyway, like you're gonna get the
same kind of stuff you know when you bring it
in there for that. Now, the key there is like
the emissions tests, I think where you've like we're in
a in an urban zone and so we have to
have the emissions tests. I don't know if that's a
state law, if that came down from the EPA or not.
I forget. I think there's something to do with like
population size and density that require certain areas to have
the the emissions tests as part of the annual inspections.
But I don't remember. I'm just interested in exploring the
idea of making the DMV something other than it is,
which is in its current state pretty awful. That's it. So,
and you know, maybe more offices you know self, serve
kiosks and stuff like that. Maybe I don't know. I'm
just spitballing here. I'm not on the board, so but
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memories that'll last a lifetime. Okay, so I do have
some messages though. This is from Lee, who says, FYI
a quick check on nearly ninety eight DMV. The driver's
license offices show only nag's head office as having availability
for an appointment in the next ninety days. Oh wait
a minute, hang on update Update. When I click on
that site, it shows no availability. A right, That's what
I mean. Like you get these false you get false
hope when you're on the DMV side, like oh, there's
a there's an office, it's kind of availability, and then
you click on it and it's gone. It was never
there to begin with. Maybe, or am I to believe
that somebody happened to be confirming their appointment just as
I was looking. It's just awful, So maybe we'll see
some improvement there with this state legislation. What else, House
Bill five and Senate Bill fifty would allow individuals to
be able to carry a concealed handgun without a permit. Notably,
Senate Leader Phil Berger has given is backing as co
sponsor of the Senate version. Ap Dyllon at North State
Journal reports, in line with the US Houses Protecting Privacy
and Purchases Act, House Bill thirty eight would prohibit credit
card companies from using any kind of coding for firearms. So,
because this was happening, credit card companies were adding codes
and then not allowing you to use a credit card
to purchase a firearm. It's like, well, how do I
get my miles?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: Right, I want my miles, but you shouldn't be. So
that would prohibit the card companies from creating the codes
and using anything like that to tag and track purchases,
as well as from discriminating against firearms purchasers and vendors.
And then there would be a civil penalty of up
to ten thousand dollars per violation in the bill. There's
another bill that would shorten the early voting peer to
just one week and oh. Also, Senate Bill fifty five,
along with House Bill eighty seven, both target cell phone
use in K twelve schools. That is a topic for
another day, but I do intend to do I've been
collecting show prep on that topic and we'll tackle it
at some point here. Now that we've got legislation filed,
I'll take a look at those bills too, and we'll
hash it out. All right. That'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
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