Dozens of changes and fixes to the state budget, as well as brand new policy, passed the state Senate on Wednesday — including new power grabs targeting Democratic Gov. Josh Stein backed by the Republican-led legislature, and tens of millions of new taxpayer spending on sporting events.
One of two bills framed as containing technical corrections to the state budget that passed Wednesday included $40 million, spread over the next four years, to pay the PGA Tour if the golf association agrees to keep its longtime tournament in Greensboro, the Wyndham Championship. Specifically, the money would go to the Piedmont Triad Charitable Foundation, which operates the tournament. It would then be in charge of either inking a deal with the PGA or returning the money to the state if the tournament falls through.
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It would also put as much as $25 million toward the Military World Games, to be held in Charlotte next summer, as long as organizers can show that at least 50 nations are participating in the competition.
The provisions targeting Stein include a new law that could force some of his picks to lead state agencies to quit their jobs if the state Senate doesn’t give its approval to them. Another provision makes tweaks to the Local Government Commission — a group in charge of overseeing cities and counties across the state, approving or denying their requests for loans to take on big projects, and which has the power to shut down city governments entirely in extreme cases.
It eliminates two of the governor’s three political appointees to the commission, giving those seats to Republican political appointees instead, and also kicks Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, a Democrat, off the commission and replaces her with a Republican political appointee.
Marshall told WRAL there was no good reason to kick her off the commission, just politics.
“The Secretary of State has been a member of the Local Government Commission since its inception in the earliest days of the Great Depression,” she said. “I have fulfilled this obligation faithfully, fully, and with great rigor during my 8 terms. Almost 30 years of valuable input and institutional knowledge was superseded by a purely political power grab.”
No Republicans defended or explained the decision before voting to approve it in votes Tuesday and Wednesday.
When asked about it by reporters after Tuesday’s vote, state Senate leader Phil Berger said he didn’t know the details of why Marshall is being replaced with a political appointee whom Berger will now personally choose.
Marshall added: “As the first woman elected to statewide executive branch office, it’s not lost that a strong woman leader has been forced off the Commission.”
The first corrections bill the Senate approved Wednesday, House Bill 268, fixed errors the legislature made in the new state budget passed earlier this month. The second corrections bill the Senate also passed Wednesday, House Bill 562, fixed errors the legislature made in House Bill 268.
The Senate also voted down a third budget corrections bill, Senate Bill 177, with Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, explaining it contained provisions that were no longer needed.