Gastonia Times

A recent one-day special session of the North Carolina General Assembly failed to muster enough support to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a teacher pay-raise bill.

In a vote that played out along party lines, Senate Bill 354 failed to register the level of super-majority support needed to override Cooper’s action.

Regulatory reform bill 553 also suffered the same fate, and a pending override vote on Cooper’s veto of the 2019 budget bill, HB 966–2019 Appropriations Act, never saw the light of day.

After being a hot-button topic for much of the year, Senate Bill 315, also known as the North Carolina Farm Act of 2019, was also never acted on. Many in the law enforcement community have joined to demand that lawmakers act to ban the use of smokable hemp in North Carolina, with local law enforcement leaders arguing that the failure to ban smokable hemp will lead to the de facto legalization of marijuana across the state.

With SB 315 still eligible for consideration, the North Carolina General Assembly is slated to return to Raleigh on April 28 to convene the 2020 “short” legislative session.