It is rare that the inside dealings of the General Assembly, its rules and its operating procedures rise to the level that they should concern the general public. But a bill that appears to be well-greased is scary in its implications.
The bill would give both the House speaker and the Senate president pro tem authority to individually exempt any elected officer of either chamber from any rule of the Legislative Services Commission, the body of lawmakers that controls how the legislature operates, according to the Insider newsletter.
And as Sen. Tom Apodaca, R-Buncombe, described the bill to a Senate committee, it gives the sergeants-at-arms of the two chambers authority to carry concealed weapons inside the legislative buildings.
This is frightening. The elected officers of the legislature are not hired on the basis of law-enforcement training or credentials. They are political appointees, chosen by the majority party and displaced when leadership of a chamber changes hands between the parties.
This authority is not needed. There is already a highly trained and very professional 21-member police force employed. And those officers aren't chosen by political ideology.
The bill gets scarier. It essentially gives the sergeants the authority to operate anywhere in the state while also giving the legislative police force that power, too. The proposed purpose is to provide a continuity of protection when the legislature meets outside Raleigh, as it sometimes does. But a legislative police force could be empowered to provide only consultative service on such occasions, thus avoiding a situation where a state police forces takes away local jurisdiction.
After a recent meeting, Sen. Linda Garrou of Winston-Salem tried to get a further explanation of the bill from the House staffer who explained the bill with Apodaca, but that staffer rudely dismissed her. He's also a political appointee and apparently does not feel compelled to answer questions from elected members of the minority party.
We have one more big question that goes beyond the current rules governing police forces and the sergeants: Does North Carolina really want its speaker and president pro tem operating with complete immunity to the rules? Apodaca says legislators will just have to learn to trust their leaders.
Excuse us? Trust legislative leaders? Doesn't Apodaca remember a fellow by the name of Jim Black, the former House speaker, who ended up in federal prison?
This bill needs to die before it scares us all to death.
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