Shutdown Deal
North Carolina politicians are beginning to weigh in on a deal to end the federal government shutdown, which won tentative approval in the U.S. Senate Sunday with a final vote expected soon. Eight Democrats in the Senate voted with every Republican to approve the deal that would begin paying federal employees again, head off flight cancellations and pay for the food stamps program known as SNAP until at least next September. The deal does nothing about subsidies for Affordable Care Act premiums, which Democrats had previously said was what was driving them to reject deals to end the shutdown. The ACA subsidies are set to expire at the end of this year. When they do, people who buy health insurance through the individual marketplace — including about 1 million North Carolinians — will see their premiums rise by thousands of dollars per year. For some, it will be thousands of dollars per month. Most Democrats want to extend the subsidies; most Republicans don’t.
Once the deal passes the Senate, it’ll head to the U.S. House of Representatives. The House has a slim Republican majority, so any vote to approve it would need near-unanimous Republican support, or else a few Democrats willing to cross party lines like some of their Senate colleagues did. WRAL reached out to all 14 members of North Carolina's U.S. House delegation to ask them how they plan to vote, and why.
A spokesperson for Republican U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, who represents northwestern parts of the state, indicated she’ll vote however House Speaker Mike Johnson asks GOP members to. Foxx is a Johnson lieutenant, serving as chairwoman of the House Rules Committee. “Chairwoman Foxx is in alignment with the Speaker,” a spokesperson for Foxx told WRAL.
On the other side of the aisle, Raleigh Democratic U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross said what Senate Democrats agreed to wasn’t worth a deal that did nothing to address the ACA subsidies. “The Senate bill is a bad deal for North Carolina,” she wrote in a statement. “It is a betrayal of the hundreds of thousands of NC families on the verge of losing their healthcare.” Ross further explained her views in an interview Monday: "We're looking at huge increases in premiums, deductibles and copays," she said. "This particularly hits people who are over the age of 50, who have been working their whole lives, paying their taxes and now are just having absolute sticker shock for basic health care. And the Republicans have rejected this at every turn."
U.S. Rep. Don Davis, who represents a competitive northeastern North Carolina district, said he’s reviewing the deal reached in the Senate before a vote in the House. “I am focused on ending the government shutdown responsibly and addressing the high cost of living families are facing,” he said in a statement. “The shutdown has made life harder for many families in eastern North Carolina and rural America, where resources are already limited.”
Davis is one of the most moderate Democrats in Congress, sometimes breaking party ranks to side with Republicans on key votes. More liberal Democrats saw little to like in the deal, including California Ro Khanna, who was in Durham Monday for a speech at Duke University and spoke with WRAL beforehand. Khanna attracted national attention for calling for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to lose his job in party leadership.
"It's just so frustrating," Khanna said. "I mean, there are people whose insurance is going to go up $2,000 a month. And if the Democrats can't stand up against hikes in health care premiums, I don't know what we can stand up for. And that's why I just think we need new leadership."
Both of the state's U.S. senators, Republicans Ted Budd and Thom Tillis, voted in favor of the deal to end the shutdown.
Former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is running to replace Tillis in the Senate next year since Tillis isn't seeking reelection, issued a statement Monday indicating that he would've opposed the deal if he had been in office. The vote in the Senate passed 60-40, the bare minimum amount of support required to break Democrats' filibuster. "Working families are struggling and any deal that lets health care costs continue to skyrocket is unacceptable," Cooper wrote.
A spokesperson for Michael Whatley, who is considered the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat, didn't respond to a request for comment.
DMV funding
Funding will be a top priority for the Division of Motor Vehicles as leaders look to reduce customer wait times, issue more licenses and onboard new examiners.
“Funding right now is a concern of mine for this year,” DMV Commissioner Paul Tine told the Joint Legislative Transportation Oversight Committee Thursday. “We are issuing more licenses, we are seeing more people, we are doing more operations. But we still have the same funding that we had before; actually less, because a lot of our lapsed salaries moved over to [the State Highway Patrol]. It’s going to create a hole there.”
The DMV has been able to be open on Saturdays at 20 locations, largely due to leftover pandemic funding set to expire in March. An average of 2,100 driver’s licenses have been issued during those expanded hours, a 50% increase from Saturdays in previous years.
“We’d love to keep them open, but we’re going to have to figure that out,” Tine said.
This is Tine’s second appearance before a General Assembly committee in a week. In a series of hearings dating back years, legislators have expressed concern over how the DMV operated during former Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration. Tine took over the beleaguered agency in May, and his efforts have largely been praised by lawmakers.
While funding is a paramount concern, Tine disagreed with a key recommendation in the 435-page report from the state auditor’s office — establishing the DMV as an autonomous agency from the Department of Transportation with control over its budget and operations.
“That’s going to create havoc internally and be distracting for the organization at a critical moment,” Tine said. “It will definitely be more expensive for us moving forward.”
The report found that the DMV has limited strategic input in its future. The department generates 30% of DOT’s overall revenue, but accounts for only 2.8% of DOT’s expenditures. The report found that only 31% of DMV’s staffing requests were included in DOT’s budget requests.
In a previous House Government Efficiency meeting, Rep. Phil Rubin, D-Wake, floated a proposed funding stream for the DMV tied to transaction costs that would increase as the population grows.
The DMV already handled one organizational change last year when the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 382. The legislation elevated the North Carolina State Highway Patrol to an individual, cabinet-level department. Sworn troopers from the DMV’s License and Theft Bureau were transferred to the State Highway Patrol. Tine said managing this shift appropriately took 20% to 30% of his day when he first took office in May.
Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick, asked what the DMV considers an average wait time for customers.
Tine said the DMV should strive for a wait time comparable to a bank visit — a 15-minute wait for both drop-in visits and appointments. The average wait time has been an hour and 19 minutes over the last month, a decrease of 40% since July.
To date, 717,000 people have visited the DMV this fiscal year — a 6% increase from the previous fiscal year. The DMW will publish a strategic roadmap in December.
Ferry funding
North Carolina’s ferry system needs a significant infusion of money to ensure its continued reliability, deal with the upkeep on its boats and update its maintenance yards, its leader says.
Ferry Division Director Jed Dixon and his staff reckon the system needs $23.5 million more a year in recurring funding, almost a 38% increase from its current state-supplied budget.
This would fund “the core needs required to keep the system running safely and sustainably,” he told members of the Joint Legislative Transportation Oversight Committee on Thursday.
Dixon also sees the need for another $69 million in one-time money to address “critical needs,” including updates to water, electrical and compressed-air systems at the Manns Harbor Shipyard in Dare County.
None of this was welcome news to senators who serve on the oversight committee.
Sen. Vickie Sawyer, R-Iredell, said the state is deeply subsidizing the ferry system even as motorists on Interstate 77 face tolls to get between her community and downtown Charlotte.
Some of those subsidies, she said, are underwriting the coastal tourist trade.
“You can see where there might be some issues with disparity in funding when you’re asking one community to pay to get to work, school and play and other folks who don’t even live in the state get a free ride for up to $230 per vehicle for the Cedar Island to Ocracoke” ferry, she said.
Sawyer co-chairs the Senate Transportation committee and the related Appropriations subcommittee.
So does Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick, who said later that the state may need to prioritize the ferries that primarily cater to residents instead of the ones that cater mainly to tourists.
“When I do the numbers, we’re subsidizing the 700 people that live on Ocracoke by $25,000 per person per year just on ferry routes and who knows what else,” he said. “Is it our job to be in charge of tourism, or someone else’s?”
Part of the issue is that the Ferry Division doesn’t bring in enough toll revenue to pay to replace its 23 boats on a regular schedule as they age out. It reckons that a new one costs between $20 million and $40 million.
The extra $23.5 million in annual recurring funds would include $10 million to put toward replacements.
Existing per-ferry replacement reserves range from $3.5 million for the Cedar Island-Ocracoke service down to $25,638 for the one from Currituck to Knotts Island.
The latter amount is so small that “you can’t even buy a jon boat with” it, Rabon said.
The Ferry Division currently charges tolls on only a few of its routes, namely the one serving Fort Fisher and some that serve Ocracoke. The rest are free.
The Senate’s budget proposal for the 2025-27 biennium called for instituting tolls on some of the other routes, including the Hatteras-to-Ocracoke crossing. It is reckoned that one alone would raise $3.7 million a year.
House members countered with a budget bill that would’ve left the tolls as is. Opposition to increases came from such members as Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort.
State officials reckon that tourism brought nearly $2.1 billion in visitor spending to Dare County alone in 2024.
The I-77 tolls Sawyer mentioned are for the highway’s express lanes, controversially added to it in the 2010s instead of a free-to-all widening. Previously existing lanes remain free of tolls, even if congested.