[Update: Since press, the House voted 72-46 to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of SB 382. Rep. Ted Davis, Rep. Mark Pless, Rep. Karl Gillespie, and Rep. Mike Clampitt voted in favor of the override. The original piece and headline has been updated to reflect the changes.]
NEW HANOVER COUNTY — A local Republican representative expressed concerns about some provisions within a GOP-backed bill containing expansive changes to the state government before joining House Republicans in a vote to override the governor’s veto.
READ MORE: New bill casts doubt on local governments’ ability to implement flood ordinance changes
SB 382, “Disaster Relief-3/Budget/Various Law Changes,” is a 131-page legislation and includes changes beyond Hurricane Helene relief, as it’s been pitched. For example, it restructures of the executive branch of the state government and amends elections processes, prohibits the governor from increasing unemployment insurance during emergencies, and allows industrial hog waste producers to receive renewable energy credits for creating biogas facilities.
Rep. Ted Davis (R-New Hanover) told Port City Daily Tuesday he was still evaluating the ramifications of SB 382’s wide-ranging provisions before deciding whether or not to vote on the override.
“It’s unfortunate that a bill of that magnitude was put out without time for people to look at it and review it before the initial vote was taken,” he said.
Originally, SB 382 was a six-page bill on dental practice reforms. A conference committee of Republican lawmakers — including Sen. Bill Rabon (R-Brunswick) — revised it into a conference report that bypasses the normal committee process and cannot be amended.
The final document was unveiled an hour before the House held a contentious debate and voted to pass it 63-46 on Nov. 19. Gov. Roy Cooper described the bill as a “sham” in his veto a week later; his reasoning included the absence of immediate Helene relief funding, stripping appointment authority from Democrats in several departments, blocking the extension of unemployment benefits in disasters, and weakening the authority of newly elected Democratic officials.
The Senate overrode Cooper’s veto in a 30-19 last week. House Republicans, including three members who first voted against the bill, finalized the override with a 72-46 vote Wednesday afternoon.
Speaker Tim Moore said each party agreed to hold a brief, time-limited debate on the bill before voting. Hours before, he said he believed SB 382 would enhance election integrity and prevent the Attorney General from representing the state in “woke” national lawsuits during an interview with Steve Bannon.
“This action item today is going to be critical in making sure North Carolina continues to be able to do what it can to deliver victories for Republicans up and down the ticket and move this country in the right direction,” Moore told Bannon.
House Democratic leader Rep. Robert Reives (Chatham) disputed Moore’s depiction of mutually agreed-upon time constraints for debate before the vote and said other lawmakers wanted to speak.
“We get told what we’re going to do and that’s kind of what we have to do,” he said.
“I would have loved for us to use this as an opportunity to put everything about our politics aside,” Reives said. “And maybe even show the country that the right thing to do is worry about the people.”
Rep. Destin Hall (R-Caldwell) — who will replace Moore as House Speaker in January — rejected criticisms that the bill insufficiently focused on Helene victims. He said he was working on the issue with national officials and anticipated a multi-billion federal relief package for western North Carolina within the next month.
“[There’s] nothing unusual about the way this body has handled this particular storm relief,” he said. “Which is why it’s so disappointing to see the arguments that some have made that this body is not taking care of our folks who have dealt with disaster.”
GOP supporters have advertised SB 382 as a Hurricane Helene recovery bill, but three Republican lawmakers representing western North Carolina — Rep. Mike Clampitt (R-Swain), Rep. Mark Pless (R-Haywood), Rep. Karl Gillespie (R-Graham) — voted against it.
“First I intend to talk to those three representatives to see if they still object to the bill and why,” Davis said Tuesday. “I know we’re going to get together as a Republican caucus and discuss the bill [Wednesday]. So I’m just keeping an open mind until I’ve talked to those three and have the caucus meeting to see how everybody feels about it.”
PCD reached out to local representatives and the three lawmakers who voted against SB 382 but did not receive responses by press. Pless expressed disappointment about the bill in an interview with The Assembly last week. While SB 382 transfers $227 million from the state’s savings reserve to its Helene fund, the resources will remain unspent until further review by the General Assembly. Pless said western North Carolinians wouldn’t be able to receive the support until February.
“The disaster portion of it doesn’t do anything,” Pless told The Assembly.
The House has 72 Republican members and 48 Democrats. If the chamber is in full attendance and the Democrats uniformly vote against the bill, a single Republican vote in opposition would be sufficient to stifle the three-fifths majority necessary for an override.
“I’m getting all kinds of emails about it,” Davis said. “To be perfectly honest, I would say more emails I’ve received are against it than I’ve received that support it.”
Davis said he also planned to speak with local government officials regarding concerns, including election timeline changes — Brunswick Board of Elections director Sara Lavere recently described the proposed ballot-counting requirements as “logistically impossible” — and a zoning provision on the last page of the bill.
The North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association, the League of Municipalities, and several local elected officials raised concerns the downzoning provision could cause expansive limitations to municipal zoning authority, hinder flood ordinance protections, and undermine long-term planning strategies.
S.B. 382 expands the definition of downzoning to include ordinances that create any type of nonconformity for land that is not in a residential zoning district. Nonconformities refer to land uses — such as structures or lots — that were present before the current zoning of the property, yet don’t match contemporary standards. The bill would require local governments to acquire written consent from property owners before reducing development density, permitted uses for a property, or creating nonconformities.
New Hanover County Planning Director Rebecca Roth wrote in a Dec. 3 email to commissioners:
“The County updated parking, buffer, and landscaping standards in recent years that would have potentially meant properties were no longer compliant with our standards. It is difficult to know the scope of the impact, though, as a full determination of the number of properties that would have been impacted was not something that was a component of the review and vetting process for those amendments.”
Davis has broken with his Republican caucus before. In June, he spoke out against an amended version of the Second Chance Act that would have eliminated automatic expunctions for dismissed charges.
The lawmaker said he had received some emails in support of SB 382 as well. He noted a provision expanding the Multiple Employer Welfare Arrangement regarding health insurance access for small businesses as a positive. The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce cited the provision as its reason for urging lawmakers to override the governor’s veto.
“That’s the problem you have when you have a multi-issue bill,” he said. “For instance, let’s say you have 10 things, and you love eight of them, but you hate two of them. So what do you do? You vote against the bill because you hate two of them, or do you vote for the bill because you love the eight? It happens quite frequently. You have to sit there and weigh the pros and cons and then do what you think is best overall. It can be a difficult decision.”
Read all of PCD’s articles on SB 382:
- Disaster recovery bill packs in hog waste biogas incentives, utility authority overhaul
- New Hanover County election confusion not to happen again, per new state law
- New bill casts doubt on local governments’ ability to implement flood ordinance changes
- ‘Destroys the will of the voters’: Protesters react to NC Senate’s override of SB 382 veto
- Helene recovery bill would fund lawsuit blocking coastal protection rules
- Helene recovery bill prohibits governor from increasing unemployment insurance during emergencies
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