Closer Looks at Two Late Special Sessions

By: Sarah Johnson

This year North Carolina and Georgia convened for late special sessions surrounding budgetary issues relating to natural disasters. Special sessions are not unique occurrences, but this late into the year is something a bit out of the ordinary. Let’s take a brief look at what special sessions are, what is happening in North Carolina and Georgia and a bit more about special sessions in all 50 states.

General Information on Special Sessions

Special sessions, also known as extraordinary sessions, are times when the legislative body convenes outside of the normal legislative session (these normal sessions are very different state by state, check out Ballotpedia for more on that). Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution gives the President the ability to “on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses or either of them.” States have also passed their own statutes that allow for them to call for special sessions as well. A special or extraordinary session is called either by the governor or the legislature, these rules vary among the states.

Special sessions are usually called to allow unfinished tasks for the year to be addressed, the scope of the session is usually limited to the issues outlined in the notice calling for the special session. Most of the time these sessions address the budget (which can be delayed by conflict between political parties or for economic or societal reasons). They may also be called if an economic downturn occurs and the budget needs to be addressed. The other main reasons to convene special sessions are emergencies like war or natural disasters, redistricting, the economy or other issues pertaining to party control of the legislature or governor’s office.

Why is North Carolina in a Special Session?

It seems like it is becoming increasingly popular for states to call special sessions due to natural disasters, mostly because the amount of disasters we have been experiencing that really damage our societies (like extreme weather, wildfires, floods, etc) are increasing. Here is a graph depicting the type and number of reported natural disasters on a global level from Our World in Data over the last 47 years. It is no different for North Carolina, or Georgia, who were hit this year hard by Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael.

The North Carolina General Assembly convened a special session October 2 to discuss their response efforts relating to Hurricane Florence. The Governor, Roy Cooper, initially called for the session to convene October 9 but lawmakers asked the governor to move up the date. The Wall Street Journal stated that in the beginning of October, 300,000 people applied for state and federal assistance and 104,000 registered for relief with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for assistance with damaged homes. This obviously meant North Carolina had to act fast to ensure all of the funding and support needed for its residents was allocated, approved and ready as soon as possible.

During this special session, the NC General Assembly passed three major bills. First were NC S2 and NC H4 and addressed some of the various issues which can come up as a result of natural disasters. First, the Senate bill allowed for schools in 28 counties to miss up to 20 instructional school days and still meet state requirements and said public school employees should be compensated for school days missed due to Hurricane Florence, even if the school days are not made up. The House bill created the Hurricane Florence Disaster Recovery Fund to “provide necessary and appropriate relief and assistance from the effects of Hurricane Florence.” This bill appropriated $56.5 million for the 2018-2019 fiscal year to the fund and allocated the funds. Finally, the state also passed S3, the 2018 Hurricane Florence Disaster
Recovery Act. This act allocated $400 million for immediate recovery efforts and set aside another $450 million for future purposes, pulling the funds came from North Carolina’s emergency reserve funds.

North Carolina had previously called a special session July 24-August 4, 2018 to address the process for choosing ballot titles for the six constitutional amendments certified for the ballot on November 6, 2018. Republicans were concerned that the three-member Constitutional Amendments Publication Commission, controlled by Democrats in 2018, was under pressure to politicize the titles and wanted to transfer writing responsibility to the Republican-majority legislature. Ballotpedia has a great section detailing these sessions.

Why is Georgia in a Special Session?

Georgia convened a special session on November 13 have Governor Nathan Deal called for one. Hurricane Michael reached Georgia October 10, becoming the first Category 3 hurricane to reach the state since 1898. Deal specified two purposes for the session: amending the state budget to include emergency funding for state agencies and local government in response to Hurricane Michael (done by passing HB 1EX), and ratifying an executive order suspending the collection of a sales and use tax on jet fuel after state legislators removed tax exemption, which would have provided a tax break to Delta Airlines (address by passing  HB 5EX).

It was estimated that Hurricane Michael did $1.6 billion in damage to crops and $762 million in timber losses. HB 1EX added $270 million to help with cleanup and repair efforts within Georgia. The bill allocated $55 million to farmers with destroyed crops and $20 million for commercial timber owners. HB 4EX, also passed in this special session, provided tax credits to help commercial timber owners replant trees in areas the storm hit.

Ballotpedia also has a great section detailing these sessions.

State Specific Special Session Information

Thanks to the NCSL, here is some more specific information about who can call special sessions and how they are called in each state. Check out how your state could call a special session below.

ONLY GOVERNOR CAN CALL SPECIAL SESSION

Alabama	Indiana	Mississippi	Texas
Arkansas	Kentucky	North Dakota	Utah
California	Michigan	Rhode Island
Idaho	Minnesota	South Carolina

 

SPECIAL SESSION CAN BE CALLED BY GOVERNOR OR LEGISLATURE

Alaska	Iowa	Nevada	Pennsylvania
Arizona	Kansas	New Hampshire	South Dakota
Colorado	Louisiana	New Jersey	Tennessee
Connecticut	Maine	New Mexico	Virginia
Delaware	Maryland	New York	Washington
Florida	Massachusetts	North Carolina	West Virginia
Georgia	Missouri	Ohio	Wisconsin
Hawaii	Montana	Oklahoma	Wyoming
Illinois	Nebraska	Oregon

Find out how your state calls a special session below.