RALEIGH, N.C. _ North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore says there is no plan to expand the state Supreme Court during the special session that started Tuesday to respond to natural disasters that have buffeted the state this year.
Amid speculation about what they might do while in Raleigh, state lawmakers began considering the governor's request for about $200 million in disaster relief funds for the victims of flooding and wildfires.
Lawmakers unveiled an eight-page proposal Tuesday morning that spells out how the money will be spent. The House appropriations and finance committees are scheduled to discuss it in detail during afternoon meetings. The Disaster Recovery Act of 2016 would then go to the full House, followed by Senate committees and then the full Senate.
Gov. Pat McCrory called the legislature back into session to approve the recovery financing, but he also left the door open for lawmakers to take up any other issues they deem appropriate.
Ever since the election of Democrat Mike Morgan to the N.C. Supreme Court last month, giving Democrats a 4-3 advantage, liberal advocacy groups have accused Republicans of planning to tip the balance on the court, expanding it by two justices who could be appointed by the governor.
That is one of about a dozen rumors circulating on what else the GOP-controlled General Assembly might do this week.
But if Republican leaders were planning something, they hadn't tipped their hand by midday Tuesday. And Moore said he opposes the idea of a "court-packing" plan.
"The only people discussing a Supreme Court bill are the Democrats. That's not something we're discussing," said Moore, a Kings Mountain Republican. "I don't believe we ought to do it. I've made that clear from day one. That's not something we're looking at."
Before the session, Senate Democratic Leader Dan Blue of Raleigh and Sen. Ben Clark of Raeford held a news conference to complain that Republican leaders have kept them in the dark about what is in store this week. They warned the GOP to limit the session to disaster relief.
They singled out the "court-packing" rumor as something the General Assembly should avoid. Blue said legislation expanding the court in this session would be "unethical, immoral and uses people who need immediate assistance as political pawns."
Several hundred protesters from the NAACP, Progress N.C. Action and Voters for Clean Elections also held a news conference and filled the galleries in both chambers to emphasize their opposition to expanding the Supreme Court.
"Court-packing is the white elephant in every room in the General Assembly this morning," said Gerrick Brenner of Progress N.C. Action.
Both chambers adopted rules that are meant to speed up the bill-approval process in order to keep the session short. An adjournment resolution doesn't specify when the session will end, but legislative leaders have said it will go for two or three days.
