Legislative Watch: Deregulation by Ambush Temporarily Blocked

Is Congress contagious? The NC General Assembly last week convened in a special session theoretically called to consider four gubernatorial vetoes; skipped discussing the vetoes; and spent most of a long day arguing about a newly revealed effort to gut environmental protection efforts. Having achieved very little, they then went home.

Sadly, the latest proposal to gut environmental protections (House Bill 162) remains alive for future consideration. The bill’s new form popped out of conference committee to the House and Senate on Thursday, and the Senate quickly approved it (with some strongly dissenting voices). However, more members of the House balked, and the bill was ultimately re-referred to the House Rules committee for future consideration.

In its new form, HB 162 became the latest package of rules “reform” designed to make it even harder to pass strong environmental protections and would have given the legislature more ways to block that progress. One of the key new provisions would block any rule which exceeded an arbitrary cost ceiling in its impacts, and require a method of calculating “costs” designed to eliminate consideration of benefits. In other words, the cost to a polluter of cleaning up their mess would count, but the benefits of cleaner water to all those downstream would not. Credit Rep. Pricey Harrison (D-Guilford) for catching and understanding the sneak maneuver and calling it to the attention of her colleagues.

Sneak attacks on our environment have become the disturbing norm from much of the leadership of this General Assembly. To combat them, we need more watchdogs like Pricey Harrison for the public’s real interests. That thought brings us to the second story for this week’s CIB.

Up next: Court issues deadline of September 1 for new legislative voting maps >>