North Carolina House Democrats on June 2 promoted a pair of public-safety bills they want folded into the still-unwritten state budget, claiming that Republicans have been feigning support for public safety without paying for it.
House Bill 1080, Public Safety Reinvestment Act, and a companion measure, House Bill 1044, Justice in Mental Health Act, would add a combined amount in recurring spending just under $1 billion. The funds would largely be allocated to pay for correctional and State Highway Patrol officers, additional court clerks and prosecutors in Wake and Mecklenburg counties, staff in juvenile justice and crime labs, and behavioral-health treatment.
The largest line item in HB 1080 is $250 million to raise pay and improve workplace safety at the NC Department of Adult Correction.
“If you are serious about public safety, you invest in that system, and that is what our caucus bill, House Bill 1080, the Public Safety Reinvestment Act, does,” said House Democratic Leader Robert Reives, D-Chatham, a primary sponsor.
He urged the majority to “stop using public safety as a prop, stop praising frontline workers in public while underfunding them behind closed doors, stop pretending that slogans can substitute for staffing.”
Rep. Phil Rubin, D-Wake, a former federal prosecutor and a bill sponsor, said the state’s prisons have been hollowed out.
“Right now, North Carolina’s starting salary for a correctional officer is the second lowest in the nation,” he said. “Nearly half of our correctional officer positions are vacant. Shifts that used to have 40 officers are now being run with more like 15.”
“It turns out that the cheapest way to run a prison is not actually the safest way to run a prison, and in the long run, it’s not even cheaper,” Rubin added.
Rep. Carolyn Logan, D-Mecklenburg, said the Highway Patrol is short hundreds of troopers. “The Highway Patrol is allotted about 1,600 members. They have 340 vacancies,” she said. “They cannot strike, they cannot rally, they cannot protest. They only need us to be their voice.”
Rep. Renee Price, D-Orange, a primary sponsor of the mental health bill, said jails have absorbed a job they were never built for.
“Detention centers and prisons have become de facto mental health institutions, yet without the necessary resources,” she said.
The bills arrive after Republican budget-writers announced their own framework in May. That agreement includes raises for law enforcement: a 17.7% average increase for the Highway Patrol and 15.4% for correctional officers, along with a 3% raise for state employees generally.
“It seems that Democrats and Republicans are largely in agreement with regard to increasing pay for Highway Patrol and correctional officers, both recognizing their importance to the criminal justice system and public safety,” said Brian Balfour, senior vice president of research at the John Locke Foundation. “They appear to disagree, however, with some of the specifics of what those pay raises look like and how they are structured.”
Rubin argued the across-the-board figure shortchanges the clerks, support staff, and others who keep the system running, and that front-loaded raises leave veteran officers “making barely more than the new recruits.”
Reives returned repeatedly to the state’s national rankings. “We’ve got to stop being happy about being in the lower 40s of every metric except business,” he said.
Balfour added that lawmakers should look beyond pay.
“It’s encouraging to see agreement on the importance of public safety, but we believe there is more to be done to reduce crime and make more neighborhoods safe,” Balfour said.
He pointed to intensive community policing — hiring more officers and making them more visible in high-crime areas — as an approach “shown to make communities safer.”
“If legislators are serious about improving public safety, they should begin having serious discussions about this concept,” he said.
Both bills were filed in late April and referred to committee, where they are unlikely to advance in the Republican-controlled chamber. Legislative leaders have not yet released the full budget text.