RALEIGH – North Carolina politics is about to experience a week of high drama the likes of which haven’t been seen in a long while.
On Tuesday, the state legislature will convene in a special session that is scheduled to last for six days. Lawmakers have been ordered by Johnston County trial judge Knox Jenkins to draw and deliver new House and Senate maps to him by noon on Monday, May 20. Although I am certain there have already been a number of private deals cut, and various alternative maps circulated throughout the Democratic establishment, my sense is that no one really knows what will happen over the next few days.
As a nearby report from David Rice of The Winston-Salem Journal reveals, House Speaker Jim Black is promising to generate new districts, possibly with the help of several Republicans looking for safe seats of their own, that will retain a Democratic edge in the November elections. As long as he lives within the rules set out by the N.C. Supreme Court two weeks ago, that is not only his right but, as leader of his party, his job. Whether he will be able, even with GOP dissidents, to cobble together 61 votes for a map likely to pit some of his own caucus against fellow Democrats in new single-member districts remains to be seen.
More importantly, there is this little issue of the rules. The districts must not only protect minority voting rights while splitting as few counties as possible, but they must now be “compact” according to the Supreme Court decision. Does that mean that Jenkins may think an alternative respecting the same minority rights and county boundaries but offering more compactness must be the default map, that if the legislature won’t approve such a map he has the authority and responsibility to do so?
Keep in mind, too, that most of the General Assembly will be irrelevant during the first few days of the special session. They’ll be in town, and probably meet in committees to begin work on the other major issues facing the state this year. That means appropriations meetings on the budget situation, possibly some jawboning about the Clean Smokestacks fiasco that now has a new lease on life, and a few other stray issues here and there.
Also this week, Gov. Mike Easley is expected to release his budget proposal for FY 2002-03. He is widely predicted to include a state lottery in his numbers, thus assuming a more aggressive timetable that most think practical. And he now seems intent on pushing the idea of another half-cent sales tax, which the state would allow localities to begin collecting this summer rather than a year from now as originally scheduled. The tax would become a state revenue source because localities would simultaneously lose all or most of their tax reimbursements from Raleigh. In effect, as I understand it, North Carolina would levy a 7 percent sales tax rate for at least a year (the half-cent state tax passed last year is scheduled to expire in 2003). That, my friends, is a $400 million tax hike – in an election year. Will the legislature really go along with that?
Special sessions, redistricting, court fights, tax increases, lotteries – what more could a political junkie possibly want?
P.S. For those of you in the Triangle area, I’m going to speak about these and other upcoming legislative issues on Monday at noon at the Locke Foundation’s offices in Raleigh. Come over for lunch ($6 a head) and some political talk if you can.