NC Senate passes deal to fund private school vouchers, require cooperation with ICE

North Carolina Senate Republicans approved hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding for private school vouchers and voted to require local sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials as part of a $1.1-billion budget agreement with the House.

The deal — which would eliminate a wait list of more than 50,000 students for the vouchers, known as Opportunity Scholarship — comes months after lawmakers ended their regular session without an updated budget, despite broad agreement among the Republican majorities in both chambers to make adjustments to the two-year budget passed in 2023.

The legislation, House Bill 10, passed 27-to-17 along party lines on Monday, with all Republicans supporting the measure and all Democrats voting against it.

The House is scheduled to vote Wednesday on the measure, which faces a near-certain veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper over the vouchers and the immigration provision.

Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said any veto override attempt, if it comes to that, is likely to be in November, after the general election.

House Republicans previously pushed for other priorities, including additional raises for public school teachers, as part of a larger budget agreement. They were not included. Nor were Senate priorities such as medical marijuana.

Berger said a conversation he had last month with state Rep. Destin Hall, who is likely to be the next House speaker, jumpstarted the push to get something done on items that had passed both chambers.

"'Aren't there some things that we agree on that we can get passed?'" Berger said after the vote Monday. "That was kind of the genesis of where things are. The idea was that if there are things that have passed both the House and the Senate, but we haven't been able get them in one deal let's see which of those things we can get taken care of."

School vouchers

Lawmakers last year removed an income cap on family eligibility and allowed all current private school students to be eligible for the vouchers. Applications swelled, and the nearly $293.5 million allocated for the program in the last budget didn't meet the demand. The bill that was passed Monday includes an additional $285 million for this year to clear the backlog and $215.5 million more for next year.

In addition to the $463.5 million for vouchers and $24.7 million for vouchers for students with disabilities, the agreements includes $64 million for community college enrollment growth, $95 million for K-12 enrollment increases, $377 million for Medicaid, $55.1 million for infrastructure improvements in Chatham County and $150 million for transportation improvements at a Randolph County megasite.

Most NC adults don't support private school voucher expansion, new WRAL poll shows

Cooper and his fellow Democrats have fought against voucher expansion, claiming the money would be better spent on the state’s public schools instead of giving it to higher-income families for tuition vouchers. Democrats argue that private schools don't have to meet the same standards or accept the same students as public schools. And that the benefits will go largely to students in Wake and Mecklenburg counties at the expense of smaller, rural counties.

“It’s a brazen attempt to subsidize the education of the wealthy at the expense of our most vulnerable children,” said Sen. Michael Garrett, D-Guilford. “It’s Robin Hood, but in reverse.”

During a news conference opposing the voucher funding expansion, Rosemary San Nicolas, a mother of Hoke County Schools students, said the few private schools in her area don’t accept vouchers.

The expansion of private school vouchers doesn’t help the teachers at her children’s school who work multiple jobs to make ends meet or hire bus drivers during a shortage at their school, she said.

“It doesn’t support our students. It doesn’t support our teachers,” said San Nicolas, who lives in Raeford. “It’s not benefitting any of us.”

Statewide, about one-third of private schools didn’t receive any voucher money last year, and they’re not required to accept students with vouchers or participate in the voucher program.

Berger said the Democrats have used the same rhetoric about a number of parents' rights bills that Republicans have passed in recent years.

"The emphasis that we have placed on Opportunity Scholarships is in giving parents more of a say in their child's education," Berger said.

He added: "They seem to be more inclined to be supportive of bureaucracies as opposed to parents and students," he said. "I think that, to me, is the way I would rationalize the difference in the vote."

An exclusive WRAL News Poll, conducted before the agreement to put more funding in the program, found that most people were opposed to increased funding for the vouchers. Only 16% people said more money should be spent on the program, with 21% saying the $300 million was the right amount, 19% saying the state should spend less and 22% saying the state shouldn't spend any money on private school vouchers. About one-fifth of respondents said they were not sure.

ICE cooperation

Also in the measure was a provision requiring local sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

The debate over immigration largely centers around what should happen when someone suspected of being in the country illegally is arrested and taken to a local county jail, which in North Carolina are run by sheriffs. In 2018, Democratic sheriffs swept the races in all of the state's biggest counties for the first time in years with many of them campaigning explicitly on a promise of non-cooperation with ICE amid the politically polarizing immigration policies of then-President Donald Trump.

ICE can send the sheriffs what are called "detention requests" — a request for the sheriff to continue holding suspected undocumented immigrants in jail even after they're ordered to be released. People can be released from jail because their charges were dismissed, they made bail or they had been given a jail sentence but finished serving their sentence.

“This bill does not round folks up who are not charged with crimes,” said Sen. Danny Britt, R-Robeson. “This bill does not send law enforcement into homes of folks who are not charged with crimes. What this does is it says if an individual is locked up for certain enumerated violent crimes — violent felonies and violent misdemeanors — that individual must be held by their sheriff for at least 48 hours prior to being released.”

Some sheriffs who oppose those ICE detainers say there are troubling constitutional issues with the concept of holding someone in jail after they should've been let go, particularly since the vast majority of people in jail have not been convicted of anything. Other sheriffs who oppose the ICE detainers say it's important to do so to build trust with local Hispanic residents, and that if they don't have that trust, it's harder to solve crimes because people won't work with law enforcement.

"The sheriffs that you're talking about are sheriffs in some of the most populous counties in the state, counties that have the most illegal residents that have been let across the border by the Biden-Harris administration," Berger said. "Their failure to look at that aspect of public safety is something that makes everybody less safe."

Since the agreement is a conference report — that is negotiated between Senate and House committees appointed to work out disagreements between the chambers on certain bills — no amendments were allowed.

"North Carolina’s budget process is broken," said Alexandra Sirota, executive director of the NC Budget & Tax Center, in a statement before the vote. "It excludes the voices of the very people who contribute to fund our future, gives tax breaks and subsidies to the wealthy and profitable corporations, and is pushed through the legislature without opportunities for debate from the majority of the state’s elected legislators.

"Rather than getting serious about putting our public money to the people’s priorities this summer and actually passing a budget," she continued, "legislative leaders are coming back this week to waste limited resources on a high-cost proposal to require local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration policies that aren’t going to keep our communities safe and are going to force local governments to take on more costs and more responsibilities while lowering public trust.”

Veto overrides

Sen. Bob Brinson, a Republican appointed to finish the term of Sen. Jim Perry, was formally seated Monday. He provided a critical vote on five successful overrides of Cooper vetoes.

The chamber voted 27-17 — just above the 60% threshold of present Senators — to override vetoes on Senate Bill 166, House Bill 155, House Bill 556, House Bill 690 and Senate Bill 445.