Legislators finally adjourned for the 2014 short session on Wednesday, August 20th which is almost seven weeks after originally anticipated. You may recall my Week 12 update where I claimed that week was a wrap but it did come with a catch. Legislators wanted time to decide if they needed to come back in November for a special Medicaid and/or Coal Ash Session as well as take up any number of other provisions. By law, legislators had to continue meeting every four days while leadership decided what to do. Legislators held skeleton (or no vote) sessions until they came back on Thursday, August 14th to really wrap up the short session.
Relevant bills with action
After a few committee meetings, Senators created 3 adjournment bills hoping the House would pass at least one of them:
House Joint Resolution 182 Adjournment Resolution: a bill that would end session but come back in November for a special Medicaid Reform short session.
House Joint Resolution 901 Adjournment Resolution: a bill that would end session but come back in November to discuss Medicaid Reform, conference committee reports, and a few other measures.
House Joint Resolution 1276 Adjournment: the winning bill that ended session with no plans to return in November. Unless the Governor calls legislators back for a special session, we won’t see legislators passing bills again until the 2015 long session which will start in January.
Legislators also wrapped up a few bills that were awaiting concurrence. Of interest to social workers:
House Bill 369 Criminal Law Changes was passed by both the House and the Senate and presented to the Governor for signature. The bill makes several changes to various criminal laws. Most pressing, section four of the bill directs the North Carolina Human Trafficking Commission to work with various organizations, including NASW-NC, to study and develop age appropriate sexual abuse education to be taught in schools to students and educators.
Now that session is truly done for the short session, NASW-NC will now focus on work with our Political Action for Candidate Endorsement Committee (NC PACE) on endorsing candidates that support the social work profession. Through these endorsements, we hope to elect social work friendly candidates that can help advance our profession and support the clients we serve.
