RALEIGH — North Carolina’s gubernatorial veto came in with a bang, in a statewide referendum a few years ago to amend the state constitution. Now, with only the second veto in history, it’s generating more than a few whimpers.
Gov. Mike Easley took the occasion of last weekend to veto an immensely popular bill to do away with a requirement that teachers submit portfolios of their work to obtain certification. The governor said he agreed with the gist of the bill but was concerned about a subsection that would, he suggested, strip the State Board of Education of its proper role over teacher certification.
The bill’s sponsors held a press conference Tuesday to respond. Sen. Fern Shubert, a Union County Republican, and Rep. Alex Warner, a Cumberland Democrat, were particularly spirited in their denuciation of Easley’s surprise Sunday veto. Shubert challenged the governor’s assertion that the problematic provision wasn’t central to the bill. Without it, she said, the State Board of Education could act to reinstate the very objectionable rule the legislation was designed to junk.
Warner agreed, observing that overwhelming majorities of both houses had voted not only for the bill but consciously to include the provision in question.
“We soundly defeated a measure that would take Section 4 out of it,” Warner said. “It completely dumbfounded me that this would be a bill he would veto.”
This is one of those disputes that, at first glance, seems petty and unimportant. Perhaps both sides have a point, one might conclude, and are just having trouble communicating with each other.
Only, that’s the problem with Easley’s position. Why didn’t he communicate his serious concerns about the provision ahead of time? There does not appear to have been a clear veto threat from the governor’s staff, certainly not during legislative debate on the bill.
There are a couple of possibilities. The Easley administration could have realized belatedly that there was a technical problem with the bill. If so, however, there was no reason to spring a surprise veto on the legislative sponsors. He could have gone to them, explained his reasons, and then vetoed it with a stated willingness to sign a subsequent, amended version. Perhaps there is a legitimate argument that the provision, or the entire bill, is an encroachment on executive-branch responsibilities to oversee the education system. But why wasn’t this argument made more clearly, and more publicly, before things got to this point?
Another possibility is that the governor just wanted to veto something, and decided to pick this bill because the stakes were fairly low and because, as is now apparent, his appointees on the State Board of Education were capable of ending the portfolio requirement on their own. This would be politically pathetic — a sort of “I’m still here, don’t forget me” episode.
Finally, it could be that the governor, like some state education officials, opposes the core idea of getting rid of the teacher-portfolio requirement. Sounds like a debatable idea to me — though virtually every state lawmaker, of both parties, disagrees — but that’s not what the governor is saying. If he believes in the portfolio system, but is afraid to offer his belief as a justification for his veto, then there is a larger issue of
honesty and leadership here.
None of these explanations puts the governor in a good light.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.