By Cassie Gavin
Senior Director of Government Relations
This week, N.C. legislators continued to work on a budget behind closed doors and voted on a variety of bills, but didn’t take up significant environmental proposals. Legislative leaders continue to say that they want to wrap up the session in early July, but there’s still no budget bill publicly available. In even-numbered years like this, the legislature’s primary job is to make budget adjustments to the budget passed in the previous year. The rush for a short session will mean that hundreds of bills awaiting action will not get taken up by committees.
Opportunity for Action
Please ask your House Representative to oppose H 991, “ALJ Authority to Void Rules,” because it would put important state environmental rules at risk. The bill was assigned to the House Committee on Judiciary 2, which hasn't yet taken up the bill but could do so at any time.
Environmental rulemaking under attack
H 991 would make agency environmental rulemaking even more complicated than it already is and potentially void environmental protections. The legislation would allow the Chief Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) at the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) to strike down whole sets of rules if an aggrieved party challenges a rule and wins. Currently, if a stakeholder wins a rule challenge the judge can void the specific part of a rule as it applies to that stakeholder. This change would give too much power to the Chief ALJ and would place an obstacle in the path of state environmental rules.
The OAH is a somewhat obscure government body but it’s a very important arbiter of state environmental laws because it’s the first place where administrative law challenges are heard. The current Chief ALJ is Secretary Don van der Vaart, who as secretary of North Carolina's Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) opposed key federal environmental rules proposed by the Obama administration such as the Clean Power Plan.
PFAS Update
The helpful polluter accountability bill that was rolled out at a House Judiciary Committee last week - H 1095, "PFAS Pollution and Polluter Liability," was not taken up by a committee or voted on this week. The legislation would hold polluters liable for PFAS pollution by making them pay for local water treatment upgrades that may be needed to filter out PFAS pollution. H 1095 was referred to the House Environment Committee, chaired by Reps. Pat McElraft (R - Carteret, Jones) and Larry Yarborough (R -Granville, Person). It’s up to these chairs as to whether and when the bill will be brought before the committee for a vote.
As part of an effort to promote the PFAS bill and other agency actions to address PFAS chemical pollution, DEQ Secretary Biser and Governor Cooper spoke at an event on Tuesday in Wilmington where they shared DEQ’s new plan to address PFAS chemical pollution. The 11-page plan, “North Carolina DEQ Action Strategy for PFAS,” appears to be designed to go along with the EPA's PFAS Strategic Roadmap released last year.