The Republican Power Plays at the Heart of N.C. Politics
by Jeffrey C. Billman 12/11/2017Read full article at IndyWeek: “The Republican Power Plays at the Heart of N.C. Politics“
I’ve started working on the INDY’s Year in Review issue (due out December 27), and it’s occurred to me that one of the prevailing themes of 2017 is the aftermath of Republican efforts to consolidate their power after Governor Cooper defeated Pat McCrory last year. There’s the ongoing imbroglio with the elections board, as well as lawsuits challenging the legislature’s decisions to block Cooper from appointing Court of Appeals judges and members of the N.C. Industrial Commission. The legislature also stripped much of the control of the state’s schools from the State Board of Education, who are appointed by the state’s governor to eight-year terms, and gave it to the new Superintendent of Public Instruction, Mark Johnson, a Republican who defeated a longtime Democratic incumbent last year. Now, that move is headed to the N.C. Supreme Court.
- “The State Board of Education is appealing a lower court ruling in July that upheld a state law that shifts more control over public education operations to State Schools Superintendent Mark Johnson. In an order released Friday, the N.C. Supreme Court agreed to the state board’s request to bypass the state Court of Appeals to hear the case now. … Last December, state lawmakers passed a law that shifts some of the powers of the state board to Johnson, including control of high-level hiring and spending at the Department of Public Instruction. In its lawsuit, the board said the legislature was trying to take away responsibilities conferred by the state constitution.”
- “In a court filing, the state board said the new law ‘will move the entire $10 billion public school system under the control of a single individual for the first time in North Carolina history.’ The board also said the law empowered Johnson ‘to take drastic action,’ such as unilaterally firing more than 1,000 employees at the state Department of Public Instruction. Johnson accused the state board of making ‘unsupported and exaggerated representations’ in its court filing.”
- In something of a similar vein, the N&O also has a story this morningon the Republican senators who want to remake the state’s court system in their image—specifically, by giving them more and voters less of a say in who sits on the bench: “North Carolina lawmakers have spent much of the past year focused on the courts. They have made all judicial races partisan, from the state’s highest court to the district courts, which handle traffic cases, child custody issues andmisdemeanors, but decided to do away with the partisan primaries in May that typically would narrow the field of candidates. The lawmakers are weighing vast changes to election districts that have determined the state’s 272 district court judges, 109 superior court judges andelected district attorneys. As that issue remains unresolved, Berger’s chief of staff has been floating the possibility of lawmakers asking voters whether the state should abandon the election of judges and move toward an appointment process to decide who sits on the bench.”
- “North Carolina lawyer associations have advocated for years changing how judges become judges, with many supporting an appointment system based on ‘merit-selection.’ Many of the same organizations, though, have been hesitant to support changes being discussed in the legislature.”
- “At the Senate select committee this week, Sen. Ralph Hise, a Spruce Pine Republican, questioned why lawmakers in the General Assembly were not in a better position than the governor to appoint judges.”
- Alicia Bannon, senior counsel at the New York University Brennan Center for Justice, “who was interrupted many times during her presentation with questions from lawmakers, advocated for a merit system that would leave the ultimate task of appointing judges to a governor who is elected on a statewide ballot and can be held accountable to a public that votes him or her in or out of power. ‘When you look at the three branches of governance, there is only one branch of governance that designs, writes and ratifies law,’ Hise said during Bannon’s presentation highlighting problems in South Carolina, Virginia and Rhode Island, where lawmakers appointed the judges who decide whether their laws pass constitutional muster. ‘… When you’re coming to a matter of what does a law mean or what does a law stand for or how is a law drafted or what does a law say, is it not the drafter of the law … that would be the most defining expert of the law itself? As we create it, wrote it, draft it, passed it among two chambers and placed it out, why would it be the role of the government whose sole authority is to execute that law to have that kind of balance of power shifted to them?’”
WHAT IT MEANS: That Hise quote is something—and it also gives away the game a little. Basically, he’s saying he wants to pick the people who decide whether what he’s doing is constitutional, like the home team selecting a favorite referee. More than that, though, this is a power play: judges have struck down any number of GOP initiatives over the last few years, so the GOP wants control of who those judges are. (Not for nothing, Hise is also again diminishing Cooper’s office—“whose sole authority is to execute that law”—as if Cooper’s election were illegitimate.) The same dynamic is at play in the school system case. With a Republican in power, fellow Republicans sought to maximize their control of the system and minimize the Board of Education; this was not a concern for them when a Democrat was superintendent. And that gets at the core issue, at least for me: beyond what they’re trying to do, the naked political motives behind those moves are jarring. Like, they’re not even trying to hide it behind some mumbo-jumbo about good government. This is all about power, and making sure Democrats don’t have it, even if voters elect them.
Read full article at IndyWeek: “The Republican Power Plays at the Heart of N.C. Politics“
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