As legislature adjourns, Democrats fear a 'lame-duck' session
State lawmakers left Raleigh Thursday and don't plan to return until after November's election. That's prompting worries among Democrats about a possible lame-duck session if Republicans lose seats.
Legislative leaders say their next voting session will begin Nov. 16, after lawmakers spend the next few months campaigning in their districts. They have a few brief sessions listed on their calendar in September and October, but aren't planning to hold any votes then unless unexpected circumstances arise.
The majority of House Democrats voted against a resolution setting that schedule. House Democratic Leader Robert Reives says he thinks Republicans could use November to pass power-grabbing legislation if they lose veto-proof majorities in 2027.
"I'm not a fan of lame duck sessions, and it's not about who's in power or who's not in power, but to me, in November the electorate speaks, and so if you don't like what the electorate's saying, then coming in November and December and thwarting what they're trying to do, I just don't agree with," he told reporters. "I don't think that's good government." He pointed to a 2016 session when Republicans stripped power from then-incoming Gov. Roy Cooper and then-incoming Attorney General Josh Stein, who saw jobs cut from his office.
"I thought that was the meanest thing I had seen somebody do … making him fire people before he even got in office," Reives said. "So yeah, it'll get bad. It will be bad if a lot of Democrats win in November."
House Speaker Destin Hall dismissed those concerns about the November plan. "Since I've been here, we've come back in November one way or the other, whether we're going to maintain a supermajority after that January or not," he told reporters. "Members of this body are elected for two years, and that runs through December, and so we'll take advantage of that entire term."
Republicans say they'll hold veto override votes during this November's session, after they didn't have enough attendance to get the required three-fifths majority during the last few weeks of session.
The House has two vetoes remaining on its calendar. One would repeal the state's concealed carry handgun permit requirement, but that veto override hasn't had enough GOP support because two Republicans — Reps. Ted Davis and William Brisson— oppose the change.
A more recent veto from Gov. Stein could result in an override, as the bill garnered support from five Democrats and two former Democrats who are now unaffiliated. That bill would ban homeless camping and sleeping in public spaces across the state, unless local governments create designated camping areas. The Senate also plans to hold November override votes on a bill that would ban diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and programs in state government.
Data Center
Steel skeletons of two-story buildings jut from the landscape strewn with building supplies, the site of a $10 billion Amazon data center touted as the largest economic development project in state history. Yet many residents vehemently oppose it. Richmond County officials secretly crafted the deal, which includes significant tax breaks for Amazon, then sprung it on an area already encumbered by pollution.
Sources in the county include two rock quarries, an asphalt plant, a company that processes wood pellets, a facility that turns railroad and landscaping ties into biochar, a poultry slaughterhouse and a natural gas power plant. On top of that, there’s a Superfund site about five miles west of Hamlet where a company in the early 1980s discharged contaminants associated with antifreeze and oil into tributaries of the Pee Dee River, a drinking water supply.
When the Amazon project is finished, it will include 21 buildings, each of them 200,000 square feet. Each will have its own 12,000-gallon bulk storage tank to hold low-sulfur diesel fuel to power 592 emergency generators that could emit hundreds of tons of pollution each year, according to Amazon’s draft air permit.
“We rely on the utility grid to power our data centers and serve our customers,” an Amazon spokesperson told Inside Climate News. “To ensure uninterrupted service for critical customers including hospitals, schools, and emergency services, our data centers include backup generators in case of rare power disruptions.”
Duke Energy, the electric utility serving the Amazon site, has applied to the state to operate another 57 diesel generators that would temporarily power the data center until a transmission line is built. The utility’s generators could add several hundred tons of pollutants to the air, as well as 70,000 tons of greenhouse gases in one year.
Shortly before the state’s recent public hearing on the proposed air permits, dozens of residents rallied in the cool breezeway of Richmond Community College’s business school in downtown Rockingham.
Many residents, even those living close to the site, say no one ever told them a data center would be their new neighbor. Lee Quick lives across the road from the southern part of the Amazon property. “I don’t recall any public hearing,” Quick told state environmental regulators at the recent meeting. “No one informed me that it was coming.”
Only a select few county officials, among them County Manager Bryan Land, knew the identity of the company behind Project Blue Marlin, which was named after a prized fish. Land did not return email and phone messages from Inside Climate News.
A review of the county commissioners’ meetings and minutes reveals how the deal unfolded, but only in vague terms. Over three months in the spring of 2025, commissioners held the legally required public hearings on the rezoning and the land sales. No one from the public spoke. However, no public documents or commission discussions disclosed that the land would become a data center, so Richmond County residents would not have known what the commission was actually deliberating.
Public records show that county officials drafted a confidential purchase agreement with Project Blue Marlin on March 19, 2025, for a 646-acre forest and a moribund chicken farm owned by the county. The terms of the agreement required the county to rezone the old chicken farm to heavy industrial. The commissioners did so two weeks later.
A confidential agreement dated April 3, 2025, detailed the incentives for Project Blue Marlin: a 50 percent property tax break on the buildings and a 65 percent reduction on machinery and equipment over 20 years. The incentives were contingent upon the then-unnamed company spending $1 billion in capital investments and creating 50 full-time jobs, including contractors, by 2030. After the deal became public two months later, Amazon announced it would create 500 jobs once the site is fully built out. Amazon would also receive state sales tax exemptions on certain equipment, the value of which can legally be kept secret. Energy and water usage would also be confidential.
Harbor Plan
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is pushing forward its proposal to deepen the Wilmington Harbor by an additional 5 feet and widen segments of the shipping lane up the Cape Fear River. The Corps-prepared final Wilmington Harbor 403 environmental impact statement, or EIS, sticks with a plan to extend the entrance of the federal navigation channel by about 9 miles, deepen the channel from 42 feet to 47 feet and widen portions of it from the river mouth about 28 miles to the Wilmington port. The construction, which is projected to begin in 2030 and take about six years to complete, is estimated to cost more than $1.3 billion. The North Carolina State Ports Authority says the project is needed to accommodate larger, deep-draft container vessels at the Wilmington port in U.S. East Coast-Asia trade. Deepening the shipping channel would attract more import and export business and boost job growth in the state, ports officials say. The Port of Wilmington is the 67th largest port in the nation when measured by total cargo tonnage. In 2022, about 7.6 million tons of cargo, including 6.6 million tons of largely containerized foreign cargo, and 1 million tons of domestic cargo was shipped through the Wilmington Harbor, according to the Corp’s Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center.
Ferry Tolls
The busiest, most popular route in North Carolina’s vehicle ferry system — the first and, until recently, the largest system in the country — has been between Hatteras and Ocracoke islands on the Outer Banks. Until the state budget was signed into law last month, no proposal to toll the only vehicle access to Ocracoke Island had made it to the governor’s desk. Now it’s part of a provision in a bill that requires tolls be established and implemented for the state’s four free vehicle ferry routes.
The law provided barely six months to develop a plan, identify funding, build the physical and digital infrastructure and inform the public. Immediately, requests were made to extend the Jan. 1 deadline; letters were written, amendments were offered. And during last week’s North Carolina General Assembly sessions to adjust the budget bill, legislators who pushed the tolling provision refused to budge.
“There’s no way,” said Sen. Bobby Hanig, a Currituck County Republican, in response to Coastal Review’s questions regarding the majority’s refusal to consider an extension. “Everyone involved is working their tail off to make this happen … but it’s going to be impossible.”
As Hanig sees it, legislative leaders insisting on the accelerated schedule for tolling show they are “agenda driven” because so little thought has been put into addressing the impacts on the people who use the ferries, or even on the complexity of tolling the sprawling system that serves diverse needs and populations.
For instance, school buses were exempted at the last minute, he said, but what about state-owned vehicles, student drivers, emergency workers, waste management trucks, delivery drivers, essential workers?
“You can tell it’s agenda-driven by how it’s probably the worst-drafted provision in the budget,” said Hanig, adding that he had drafted seven amendments to address the deficiencies, including the implementation date for tolling, but legislators at last week’s session wouldn’t hear any of them.
Even the purported reason for tolling doesn’t measure up, he said.
“You know they’re doing this under the ruse of putting it toward new ferry purchases. Well, the best-case scenario, from talking to people that are working on this is, ‘Probably the best we will net is $5 million a year.’ Well, you know, a sound class ferry costs $60 (million). So do the math.”
Telephone messages and emails to Sen. Vickie Sawyer, R-Iredell, and Sen. Mike Lazzara, R-Onslow, both proponents of the tolling measure and its Jan. 1 implementation, yielded no reply.
At the very least, Hanig said, it makes sense to wait for the state auditor to complete the audit of the Ferry Division that is underway and is expected to be presented to the legislature at the start of the 2027 session in January.
Signed by Gov. Josh Stein on July 7, the budget bill’s ferry provision requires tolls be set to fund vessel replacement and upgrades as specified by the Ferry Division’s schedule. The tolling infrastructure and technology must be covered by funds in the division’s operational budget. In addition, the law included an annual systemwide pass for residents and active-duty military to be set at $150 per vehicle, but provided no exemptions or discounts. Also, Stein noted after signing the bill that he had found the ferry toll provision problematic.
“North Carolina’s ferries for many are not a luxury; they’re an essential part of our state’s transportation system that residents rely on for daily life,” the governor said in a statement. “In many cases, ferries are the only practical way for families to access jobs, schools and health care.”
The Ocracoke Access Alliance, which advocates for the ferries, had sent a letter to legislators asking for the tolling to be delayed for a year to provide a more realistic timeframe to set up a program.