House Bill 87, a proposed constitutional amendment to strengthen North Carolina’s open-records law, is dead after Republicans in the House couldn’t marshal enough support to pass it — including from members of their own party.
GOP backers plan to reintroduce the bill Monday night as a statute rather than an amendment, a compromise likely to gain enough votes for passage.
A statutory change would be weaker than a constitutional amendment because future sessions of the General Assembly could modify it with a simple majority vote, and courts would have more leeway to tweak it, too. In contrast, an amendment would have made those rights harder for lawmakers or courts to tamper with by putting them in the state’s highest governing document.
Even so, the bill’s chief sponsor, Republican Rep. Stephen LaRoque of Lenoir County, said the shift was necessary due to concerns from both parties that amending the constitution was a bridge too far.
“Yes, it’s going to be a statute and it can be changed with a simple majority vote,” LaRoque said. “However, we’re going to run it this way and see what we can do.”
The switch from an amendment to a statute doesn’t sit well with open-government advocates. John Bussian, an attorney with the North Carolina Press Association, said that a constitutional amendment affords far more protection for the public’s right to know.
The Republican caucus in the House has 68 members, four votes short of the three-fifths majority needed to pass constitutional amendments. Bussian said that Republican sponsors had enough Democratic support to pass the amendment, but they couldn’t hold together the GOP caucus.
“We had enough Democrats willing to cross the line that if all the Republicans had lined up, it would have passed. So that’s the real story there,” Bussian said.
LaRoque said the new version would be introduced in the House Rules Committee immediately following session Monday night, and be on the House floor Tuesday.
He added that the cornerstone of the legislation — a requirement that there be a three-fifths majority vote of the General Assembly in order to weaken the open-records law — will remain intact.
David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.