News

McGrady files HB2 repeal

By Bill Moss, Published: February 23, 2017

State Rep. Chuck McGrady, plunging into the most controversial issue in North Carolina politics over the past year, joined three other legislators in filing a bill to repeal HB2, the measure that has cost the state thousands of jobs and caused sports leagues to pull high-profile games and tournaments.

“We have had partisan bills, we’ve had Republican bills and we’ve Democratic bills. This is the first bipartisan bill. I wouldn’t have filed it if I didn’t think the House would pass it.”

The other sponsors are Rep. Ted Davis, a Wilmington Republican, Rep. Marvin Lucas, a Cumberland County Democrat and Rep. Ken Goodman, a Rockingham Democrat.

Gov. Roy Cooper said HB 186 falls short of a full repeal that would win back business and sporting events that have rejected North Carolina.
“I am concerned that this legislation as written fails the basic test of restoring our reputation, removing discrimination, and bringing jobs and sports back to North Carolina,” the Democratic governor said in a news release. “I will keep working with the legislature.”
“This is going to be bipartisan bill," said McGrady, one of the top budget writers in the House. "It’s going to take a majority of the Democrats and a majority of the Republicans to pass. And for it to be bipartisan, Gov. Cooper has to have the back of the Democrats. He worked to get the Democrats off this bill. What he needs to be about is to get Democrats engaged in the discussion on it because we need to get a a majority of the Democrats and a majority of the Republicans to send a clear signal to the corporations and the various sporting events” that the Legislature is moving toward repeal. "I wouldn’t file the bill if I didn’t think this would solve the problem. It does.”

Would House Speaker Tim Moore vote for it?

“I believe he would,” McGrady said, adding that the House speaker has not been involved in the bill-drafting negotiations. “The Senate and House leadership were aware of what I was doing,” he said. “They could have told me at any point not to do it and I never got that instruction.”
McGrady said he would recommend the parties who have urged legislators to take action to repeal HB2 make their voices heard in the capital now.
“If folks are going to rally around this it has to happen fairly quickly,” he said. “The business leaders, the economic development people in Henderson County — a whole range of people have been aaking, ‘Can’t you guys compromise?’”
Although the bill does repeal HB2, it goes on to add other restrictions on what cities can do in that area.
“It starts with a repeal of HB2 and then pre-empts access to multiple-occupancy bathrooms, showers and changing facilities, meaning only the General Assembly may regulate them," he said. "That takes the bathroom issue off the table. It doesn’t prohibit cities from regulating single-occupancy bathrooms.”
“H186 is in no way, shape or form a repeal of the discrimination of #HB2,” Rep. Grier Martin, a Raleigh Democrat, said in a tweet. “Don’t believe anyone who tries to say it is.”
Goodman, one of the two Democratic sponsors, defended the bill.
“Our goal was just to move the ball and start a conversation done in a bipartisan way,” he said in a Raleigh News & Observer report. “Our hope is that we can get something that will remove the sanctions from the NCAA and ACC and some of the business people who have stayed away ... that will be a good thing.”
McGrady said it’s disappointing that both sides were finding fault with the bill within hours of its unveiling.

“This clearly reflects a compromise,” he said. There are pieces of it the right hates and there are pieces of it the left hates. The left wing views this as HB2 light. That’s not true. The left is saying it isn’t a full repeal of House Bill 2 that’s not true. On the right they don’t like a section called HB 2 repeal. There’s nothing worse than a political figure who believes his own rhetoric and unfortunately some range of people are starting to buy into that. Unfortunately, that’s not the North Carolina way. We want to get back to what the North Carolina brand is, which is not this divisive way.”