It’s the NC House’s turn to present its budget. Here’s what to expect, and when
The North Carolina state budget is getting closer to becoming law. The Senate passed its budget bill, and now the House is days away from revealing its version of the budget, which will help determine how to spend billions of dollars in taxpayer money and how much to raise the pay of thousands of state employees and teachers.
Here’s what you can expect will happen with the House budget over the next two weeks.
What state employees and teachers can expect on raises
House Speaker Destin Hall said that Republicans want bigger raises for both state employees and teachers than what Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, and Senate Republicans, proposed this spring. Stein proposed raises of 2.5% for state employees.
“I think we will have better raises than the governor or the Senate. On the final numbers yet, I don’t want to get ahead of our chairs,” Hall said, referring to top budget writers, “but in my opinion, we ought to do substantial raises for state employees and for teachers in this state. I think most of our caucus agrees with that.”
The Senate budget called for an average 2.3% raise for teachers the first year, and 3.3% over two years.
House wants separate Helene funding bill
Rep. Jake Johnson, an Appropriations Committee vice chair and Polk County Republican, said the House wants to have Helene funding in a bill separate from the budget, unlike the Senate. The Senate budget calls for adding $700 million to the Helene reserve fund.
Johnson said a group of lawmakers will meet next week about Helene to plan another funding package, “which is kind of a disagreement we’re having with the Senate right now. I think they put a lot of their Helene funding in the big budget.”
“We would rather keep it separate. And I think there’s a lot of advantages to that. One, it doesn’t look political when you’re negotiating a budget that you’ve got all this relief funding tied to every other policy decision being made in the budget,” he said.
“I think the timeline also — that if there’s federal funds we need to draw down, being able to move faster and be more nimble is easier when you’ve got a separate budget bill running. So we’ll work that out, I’m sure. But that’s kind of a big separation right now we’re at,” Johnson said.
When to expect the House budget committees and votes
After the House adjourned Wednesday night after passing dozens of bills over two days, not all lawmakers went home. Rep. Donny Lambeth, a top budget writer, told The News & Observer that budget writers continued their work later that night and will early next week, too, “trying to tie down all the area budgets.”
Area budgets are basically everything but the big items like salaries. House Republicans’ goal is to reveal their proposals on salaries May 19, put the entire House budget in front of the Appropriations Committee on May 20, and have the full House vote by the end of that week.
This is a change from recent years, in which the entire budget document has been revealed at once. Now, anyone who wants to know what the House plan is for funding infrastructure, technology, agriculture, education, transportation and other issues and agencies will get an earlier look.
More than that, changes can be made through amendments, Lambeth said. Then the final version of each section of the $66 billion two-year budget will be compiled into one bill.
How to have your voices heard
You can always contact your state representative to tell them what you’d like to see in the budget. Both committee meetings and floor sessions are public, so you can attend both, though there is limited public seating. The public can’t speak during a voting session, but most committee meetings do allow for some public comments.
The General Assembly website lists members’ names and their districts, as well as the daily legislative calendar, including committee meetings and locations. If you are unsure of your legislators, your voter information on the State Board of Elections website includes which districts you reside in.
Republicans control both the House and Senate, so they write the budget and have enough votes to send it to Stein without any Democratic support. But Democrats may offer amendments during committee meetings, debate on the floor and advocate for their priorities anytime.
Every year, at least a handle of Democrats have voted for Republican-written budgets, and that has sometimes led to them having a seat at final negotiating tables. Four Democrats voted for the Senate’s budget, with an aim to influence the final budget bill.
Things can change on budget timing
Hall told reporters Wednesday night that the planned timeline to vote the budget out by May 23 is still a “maybe.”
“That’s the goal, to have it out before Memorial Day. And I think we’ll do that,” Hall said. He said Republicans have already agreed on major spending in the budget, but would not make it public yet.
The House plans to take a break the week of May 26.
This story was originally published May 9, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "It’s the NC House’s turn to present its budget. Here’s what to expect, and when."
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