As is usually the case in the closing days of a session of the General Assembly, some legislators are mixing up some sausage. It seems palatable at first glance. There’s a proposal to build a cancer research center at UNC-Chapel Hill, another for three highway bypasses that would cost $650 million, and another for a new ferry service from Currituck to Corolla.
All these measures, which were introduced in the Senate, could well merit enactment by the legislature. The problem is the way in which they are being steered to passage. The cancer center is folded into a bill to correct technical problems in state laws. The highway bypasses are tucked into a bill related to commercial driver licenses. The ferry service is attached to a road-maintenance bill. All three initiatives were quietly added as riders to the larger bills in the last few days, with the legislature poised to adjourn as early as today.
Eleventh-hour sausage making is standard procedure in our legislature. Such riders are usually the work of the legislative powers that be, and these are no exception. Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, D-Dare, is behind the cancer center and the ferry service, which would benefit his district. The highway passes are the pork-barrel projects of Sens. Dan Clodfelter, David Hoyle and Walter Dalton.
These lawmakers could have pushed their projects through the legislative process earlier in the session. The problem with that may have been that the conventional approach would have subjected the measures to closer scrutiny and public attention. That could have meant extended debate and opposition.
The amendments should be dispatched to committee and held over for consideration during next year’s short session of the General Assembly. That way, they would get the full scrutiny and debate that are needed for such costly appropriations of the taxpayers’ money.
To prevent last-minute, covert lawmaking in the future, the Senate and House should amend their rules to prohibit the attachment of amendments that are not germane to main bills. If that were done, sausage would continue to be made on Jones Street, but at least the end product would be more sanitary.
