Bills, Bills, Bills: What Can We Divine About House Dems’ Priorities?

Democratic priorities have been dead on arrival at the state legislature for years; Republicans have had a supermajority, or close to it, in the state House, allowing them to unilaterally advance bills and budgets and override the governor’s veto. 

But North Carolina voters flipped the tables on Tuesday, cleaving 23 House seats from Republicans. Democrats are on track to hold 71 of the 120 House seats next year. (The one unaffiliated candidate who won Tuesday, April Montgomery, told The Assembly she does not plan to caucus with either party.)

In January, Democrats will lead the House for the first time in 16 years. While the Senate remains under Republican control, there will be a more even distribution of power—26 to 24—plus a Democratic governor.

That will give likely House Speaker Robert Reives more power to advance his party’s priorities.

On Election Day, Reives told WRAL to look at “all the things we’ve been addressing with our filings all year” for a sense of what they might do in the future.

To get a better sense of what that might include, The Assembly analyzed all the bills House Democratic leadership filed in the past two years. Here are 10 that suggest their priorities.

Education

1. Private School Vouchers: North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship program launched in 2014 to help low-income families afford private education. In 2024, Republicans made the vouchers universal, no matter a family’s income.
   
   Democrats’ Voucher School Accountability Act seeks to claw back eligibility and limit funds to families with incomes below 370% of the federal poverty line, or $123,000 for a family of four. It also requires schools that receive those funds to follow the same rules about criminal background checks as their local public school district, produce annual audits, limit tuition increases, and publicly disclose their contracts with vendors.
   
   
2. Teacher Compensation: The Sound Basic Education for Every Child bill had 41 Democratic sponsors in the state House, with Deputy Democratic Leader Cynthia Ball as a primary sponsor. The legislation appropriates additional funding for teacher assistants and instructional support staff, authorizes a three-county pilot for year-round Pre-K, and establishes an Equity Office to provide feedback on the “content and delivery of educational policies, programs, and initiatives.”    

Affordability

House Democrats introduced dozens of bills focused on the cost of child care, housing, and health care. Here are a few that seem likely to reemerge in 2027:

3. Child care: Every House Democrat sponsored the Child Care Stabilization & Affordability Act. The bill redirects voucher funding for higher-income families to subsidize child care for working families within 185% to 300% of the federal poverty level. It also reinstates the state’s child tax credit, allows underutilized public facilities at places like community colleges to be used for child care, and directs the state treasurer to create a health care pool for child care workers. 

4. Housing: The Relieving Housing Bottlenecks bill has all six of the House’s highest-ranking Democrats as sponsors. The bill removes parking minimums in urban areas, which can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of new housing, but also adds new limits on how many homes corporations can own for rental, speculation, or non-owner occupation.

5. Health care: The Affordability in Healthcare Act has four of the House’s top six Democrats as sponsors, including primary sponsors Ball and Joint Caucus Chair Mary Belk. It would increase transparency in health care costs at hospitals and surgical centers by requiring quarterly reports on the most common surgical and imaging procedures. It also would create financial penalties for providers who don’t report those costs to the state’s data processor; regulate facility fees, including banning them for outpatient diagnostic services; and establish a low-cost health insurance option for the public.

Disaster Recovery

While several Helene recovery bills have passed with bipartisan support, Democratic leaders introduced others meant to help streamline processes and increase benefits:

6. HB 960, which House Democratic Chair Brandon Lofton sponsored, would increase unemployment insurance benefits up to $600 per week for the duration of a disaster declaration. 

7. The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, for which Reives is a primary sponsor, creates a default partition for families living on heirs property who face myriad challenges receiving help from federally funded relief programs due to paperwork.

Economic Development

8. The Rural and Downtown Community Economic Development Grants bill appropriates $80 million for counties, municipalities, and municipal service districts to apply for grants to improve their “overall appeal, functionality, or livability.” 


Public Safety

9. The Common Sense Gun Regulations bill would require firearms to be stored in locked containers except when carried or in transportation; require owners to carry liability insurance; and largely prohibit large-capacity magazines, bump stocks, and dozens of firearms capable of semi-automatic firing or firing multiple bullets with a single trigger pull. 
   
   
10. The Prohibition on Disclosing Booking Photos bill has Chief Democratic Whip Terrence Brown and Reives as its primary sponsors. The two-page proposal requires private websites to remove police booking photos within seven days of a written request if the individual is not convicted of the crime, and prohibits websites from charging to remove photos.