WILSON, N.C. – After learning state lawmakers will return to Raleigh Sunday night for another legislative session, Congressman G. K. Butterfield (NC-01) urged North Carolinians to contact their local representatives and senators to voice their opposition to a number of controversial proposals that the state legislature may consider tomorrow. According to media reports, state lawmakers plan to take up proposals to: cap the state’s gas tax; change North Carolina’s gambling laws to allow live-dealer games in state casinos; amend the Racial Justice Act; consider off-shore oil drilling and; repeal the veto on the state voter identification bill, among others.
“This is a cunning move by the state GOP to surreptitiously call a legislative session late Sunday night in order to consider some of the most contentious proposals put forth this year,” said Butterfield. “Due to the extreme importance of these issues, it deserves to be considered in the light of the day, not in the dark of the night.”
Butterfield said that he will call on his Democratic congressional colleagues to alert their constituents of the legislative session and how each of the proposed bills would affect them. Butterfield has already contacted the state’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a number of other organizations regarding the legislature’s intent to pass a voter identification law.
“I am particularly appalled that state Republican lawmakers will, once again, attempt to disenfranchise thousands of voters by seeking to overturn Governor Beverly Purdue’s veto of a voter identification bill. This guileful attempt is not about safeguarding elections, it is about safeguarding their Republican majority through handicapping a half million citizens, most of which vote Democratic. ”