Republican Gov. Pat McCrory finally signed House Bill 17, which is the second half of a flagrantly undemocratic Republican power grab following the governor’s loss to Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper in the 2016 elections. The new law dramatically limits the authority of the governor to independently staff the executive branch, giving much of that power to the Republican-dominated legislature itself.
North Carolina's governor has the ability to appoint the heads of key departments concerning transportation, natural resources, the environment, and more. However, this new law requires that these posts be subject to state Senate approval. Since the legislature is hopelessly gerrymandered to produce a Republican majority, that simply means Republicans will institutionalize a veto over any Democratic appointees.
Similarly, in this same law, Republicans slashed the number of executive branch appointees from roughly 1,500 to 425. After McCrory took over from Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue in 2013, the Republican legislature dramatically increased the number of these appointments, meaning this reversal is yet another transparently cynical ploy to retain power. That leaves Republican officials in charge of key regulatory decisions. To give you a sense of the kinds of things the GOP targeted, the legislature even tacked on a measure to abolish car-emissions testing requirements to this package.
Republicans also completely eliminated the governor’s authority to appoint members of the state Board of Education and to the University of North Carolina system’s board of trustees, a move that could subject the UNC system to serious sanctions by accrediting authorities. Instead, the GOP’s changes give the legislature itself the authority to appoint board members and transfer other powers to the superintendent of public instruction—a Republican elected official. Under McCrory, Republicans have tried to eviscerate public education so that they can privatize and profiteer off of it, so this is very much in keeping with the GOP’s past behavior.
This law and the related one that took away Cooper’s control over the state and county boards of elections represent a stunning repudiation of democracy itself. A legislature that owes its existence to an unconstitutional gerrymander is trying to usurp the powers of a governor who was chosen by the people, despite the GOP's best efforts to suppress the vote of minorities. Republicans have deemed any attempt at governance by the Democratic Party as illegitimate and are taking extreme actions—any that they can—to prevent Democrats from exercising any political power.
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