Under the Dome: Group that organized bourbon distillery trip for lawmakers responds
Good morning! ☀️ Here’s what you need to know in North Carolina politics today.
There’s a lot going on at the General Assembly: the ICE-cooperation bill we’ve been tracking will continue to be the main subject of debate, as the Senate Rules Committee meets at 9 a.m. to take up the bill and tee up a likely floor vote on Thursday.
The bill was amended in committee yesterday, so it’ll have to return to the House for another vote before it can be sent to Gov. Roy Cooper.
Cooper, meanwhile, will visit Wake STEM Early College High School in Cary to talk about “the importance of public education and the clean energy industry in North Carolina,” per his office.
Both the House and Senate are expected to convene for votes this evening.
And before that, a Senate appropriations committee will meet at 2 p.m. to take up legislation that Republicans say would eliminate the waitlist for the Opportunity Scholarship private school voucher program. — Avi Bajpai
Here’s more, from correspondent Stephanie Loder and me.
REENTRY ADVOCATES PUSH FOR LAWMAKERS TO TAKE UP ‘SECOND CHANCE’ INITIATIVES
As part of their legislative lobby day, advocates from the NC Second Chance Alliance joined Democratic Sen. Julie Mayfield and Rep. Terry Brown on Tuesday to call for the passage of several bills to help people with life after prison.
One of the biggest issues advocates are hoping lawmakers will address is automatic expungements of criminal records.
Lawmakers opened the door to automatic expungements in most cases where prosecutors have dismissed charges against someone with the Second Chance Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Roy Cooper in 2020.
Automatic expungements were subsequently paused, after courts became overwhelmed and other technical issues arose with the implementation of the new program.
“The promise of the Second Chance Act has now been on hold for nearly two years,” said Whitley Carpenter, the senior criminal justice counsel and policy manager at Forward Justice.
After lawmakers together with law enforcement officials and criminal justice and reentry advocates formed a working group to figure out how to solve the issue, many of those ideas were inserted into a bipartisan bill whose sponsors include Sen. Danny Britt, a chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Senate Bill 565 passed the upper chamber unanimously last April, but hasn’t so far been taken up by the House.
Other bills advocates want lawmakers to pass would:
▪ Stop private companies from obtaining someone’s mugshot and then charging them to take it down.
▪ End debt-based driver’s license suspensions that present a barrier to employment for people living in rural areas.
“We know that our communities are safer when we’re able to move past our mistakes, our communities are safer when we have access to the resources and opportunities that we need, our communities are safer when we can take care of ourselves, and our loved ones,” Carpenter said. — Avi Bajpai
REPUBLICAN AT FUNDRAISER DIDN’T HEAR ANY ‘COMPLAINTS’
Greater Carolina acknowledged on Tuesday it organized the recent trip to a Kentucky distillery attended by North Carolina state legislators who were later accused in an anonymous post on social media of being drunk and unruly at their destination.
Republican operative Jonathan Felts, who served as a spokesman for Greater Carolina, a conservative, free market group from Mooresville, wrote in a news release that attendees were in Kentucky as the organization was holding a fundraising event. No taxpayer dollars were used, Felts wrote.
N.C. Rep. Jason Saine also confirmed on Tuesday to The News & Observer that he attended the event. On Monday, Saine had replied via text message that “I don’t respond to anonymous posts on the internet.”
Saine, a Republican from Lincolnton who serves on the Alcoholic Beverage Control Committee, said in a text Tuesday that he knew of “no complaints from anywhere on the trip we visited. This sounds like a disgruntled employee.”
The social media post, which appeared this weekend on Reddit, was authored by someone who identified themselves only as a representative of a Kentucky distillery. The author claimed 33 people from North Carolina, including government officials, were drunk and disruptive when they arrived at the distillery.
Get the full story from Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan and Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi here.
CAMPUS PROTESTERS DETAINED AT UNC-CHAPEL HILL
UNC-Chapel Hill police charged 36 pro-Palestinian protesters Tuesday morning after they failed to obey orders to leave the encampment they had created. University officials said:
▪ Thirty people — 10 students, 20 not affiliated with the university — were cited for trespassing and released on site.
▪ Six others were taken to the jail for booking and then released.
The encampment, established Friday at Polk Place, had drawn hundreds of people by Tuesday morning, who included students from UNC, N.C. State and Duke universities, as well as other people who were not students.
UNC System spokesman Andy Wallace said officers from other UNC campuses provided assistance.
There’s much, much more from Korie Dean, Tammy Grubb and Chantal Allam here and here.
That’s all for today. Check your inbox tomorrow for more #ncpol news.
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