The honorables convened in Raleigh last January — eons ago, even by legislative standards — and stayed. And stayed. And stayed. And stayed. By the time the record-long session finally ended last week, it had spanned every month of 2001.
But just because the session was the longest ever doesn’t mean it was the most productive. Quite the contrary. Several crucial state issues weren’t acted upon at all by lawmakers or got too little attention. Oh, legislators did pass a budget, and they finally got around to legislative and congressional redistricting — as if they had a choice on either matter. But campaign reform, as always, wasn’t seriously considered. Lawmakers thumbed their noses at North Carolina’s environment by shunting the Clean Smokestacks Bill off to a study commission, despite mounting evidence that our air quality is rapidly worsening. They failed to address court reform. They took no action on a bill to suspend executions until a study of how the death penalty is administered could be conducted. (Well, to be honest, that bill never had a chance of passage.) Those are just a few of the matters that legislators didn’t get around to facing.
The lack of productivity is not entirely the fault of legislative leaders. One is also left to wonder where Gov. Mike Easley spent the year. It certainly wasn’t in the bully pulpit formerly occupied by Easley’s predecessor, Jim Hunt. The governor was MIA.
There were a couple of interesting local angles to the session. One was redistricting. All of Moore County was left in the 6th Congressional District of Republican Rep. Howard Coble. But the county, all but one precinct of which is now in Republican state Rep. Richard Morgan’s 31st House District, will be divided between two districts. Morgan’s new district will include parts of three counties.. And Moore, all of which is now in the 16th Senate District of Democratic of Sens. Howard Lee and Ellie Kinnaird, will be carved up among three Senate Districts and five senators. That’s right, five. That’s 10 percent of the membership of the Senate.
The session saw Morgan’s fall from grace with the House Republican leadership. Morgan, who in recent years has been chairman of the Rules Committee and House minority leader, is now a dissident within GOP ranks and isn’t on speaking terms with Minority Leader Rep. Leo Daughtry and Minority Whip Frank Mitchell. Morgan accuses the House leadership of caring more about personal political ambitions than public policy. Mitchell says Morgan’s own ambitions are the problem. He says Morgan curried favor with Democratic House Speaker Jim Black in order to obtain for himself a new district that includes precincts in Randolph County. Morgan wanted those precincts, Mitchell says, because they are in the 6th Congressional District, and Morgan wants to run for Congress when Coble steps down.
In any case, legislators gave North Carolinians a Christmas present when they adjourned. Raleigh will be legislator-free until next summer’s “short session,” when it starts all over. Lawmakers have now scattered to their places of residence and gone back to their real jobs — those that have one. The return to reality means legislators for the next several months won’t be wined and dined on a nightly basis by lobbyists and won’t be constantly kowtowed to by state agency heads. They’re probably already homesick for Raleigh.
BCS: What a Mess
The Bowl Championship series, the system by which a national college football champion was to be annually selected, was made a farce by LSU’s upset victory over Tennessee on Saturday. And if undeserving Nebraska beats Miami in the Rose Bowl, thus taking the championship trophy, the BCS will be rendered even more ridiculous.
The situation should put the NCAA and its member schools on notice that it’s way past time to institute a post-season playoff for college football. The national championship should be determined on the field, not by committee or by computer.
