Roy Cooper vetoes 2 more bills, but budget still on track to become law Tuesday

Cooper’s veto message said the bill attempts to take the state off a “bipartisan path to removing carbon from our electric power sector in the most cost-effective way,” to the benefit of utility company profits. A 2021 law already is pushing Duke Energy toward eliminating carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 in part by increasing solar and wind-power generation.

“North Carolina should consider all pathways to decarbonize, rather than putting a thumb on the scale in favor of building new conventional generation,” Cooper wrote.

Senate Majority Leader Paul Newton of Cabarrus County, a former Duke Energy executive and bill sponsor, said Cooper’s “hardline opposition to nuclear power is a slap in the face to North Carolina’s energy industry.” The bill, Newton said, would help create a reliable electrical grid.

As for the legislature’s annual regulatory bill, Cooper called it “a hodgepodge of bad provisions that will result in dirtier water, discriminatory permitting and threats to North Carolina’s environment.”

Environmentalists have criticized the measure for certain state permitting changes that they say could assist the approval of a proposed natural gas pipeline that would enter the state from Virginia. Another provision would adjust state law about how waste management systems for hogs and other animals on farms are permitted.

GOP Rep. Jeff Zenger of Forsyth County, a regulatory reform bill sponsor, said Cooper “sided with radical, environmentalist, job crushing bureaucrats over the people of North Carolina” with the veto.

Cooper also cited a provision in the measure that blocked administrative rules from taking effect that describe good-faith efforts to engage minority-owned businesses and others considered “historically underutilized” in state contracting.

The Governor also said he had allowed a bill to become law that will place more oversight by state education leaders upon the chief nonprofit body that manages high school sports beyond what was required in a 2021 law. The language demanding more supervision of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association was inserted into an unrelated insurance regulation bill.

Cooper called the sports-governance changes “a solution in search of a problem” and said lawmakers should have let the 2021 law remain.

The Governor signed into law a bill that will create a computer science course requirement to graduate from high school and soon demands adult age verification on websites that publish sexually explicit material.

Another bill Cooper signed will increase criminal penalties against K-12 educators who commit certain sex offenses against students and will educate children in upper grades through a video about what constitutes child abuse and neglect.

And another law with Cooper’s signature in part will make the intentional dissemination of obscenity a higher grade of felony when it is committed knowingly in a child’s presence.

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Republished with permission from The Associated Press.