Session of NC legislature for 2026 winds down. 5 takeaways.

While North Carolina lawmakers can meet anytime throughout the year, leaders have signaled that after this week, they’re taking a break until after the general election. Typically, even years are shorter sessions, designed primarily to make any needed budgetary amendments. However, since lawmakers missed their budget deadline in 2025, the bulk of the budget work moved to the 2026 session. 

Fewer laws this session

Lawmakers had passed 54 bills into law during the 2026 legislative session, as of Aug. 3. 

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That continues a downward trend in policymaking throughout the past several decades. In 2024, lawmakers passed 58 bills. In 2022, they made 75 new laws. A decade ago, 123 bills made it into statute. 

Many of the bills that do pass include more than one policy change, however. Lawmakers have developed a tendency to group policy ideas together by general theme. But sometimes they also combine ideas with little to no connection. 

Local control

The word of the session may have been annexation, or the process of adding or removing particular property from municipal boundaries. 

Southport, Yadkinville, Kannapolis, Morehead, Washington, Kernersville, Red Oak and Vass are a few of the dozens of municipalities that lost property to deannexations. 

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers proposed a bill that would have created a standard process for municipalities or property owners themselves to initiate deannexation without requiring lawmakers to take on each one individually. The process could require public buy-in if 25% of registered voters in the proposed deannexation area signed a petition asking for a referendum on the deannexation. 

Thus far, the Senate hasn’t shown much interest. Annexations and deannexations aren’t the only area where the General Assembly exercised its authority as a Dillon Rule state this session. As a Dillon Rule state, North Carolina municipalities operate at the pleasure of state lawmakers, with no authority other than that explicitly granted to them by the state or otherwise required to operate. As a result, there is a constant tension between local and state control.

One example is a property tax reappraisal moratorium established in a series of counties including Anson, Bladen, Chowan, Davidson, Guilford, Onslow, Pamlico and Pender counties. 

The moratorium would bar those counties from implementing their 2026 property tax reappraisal for tax purposes until 2027 while lawmakers brainstorm how to relieve rising property tax burdens on North Carolinians. Counties must use the figures from the previous reappraisal instead. 

Another example are a series of tourism-related bills that provide Currituck County, Jacksonville, several New Hanover coastal towns the power to use part of their occupancy tax revenue for tourism-related expenses, and create a special Rocky Mount district that can levy a 2% occupancy tax for tourism purposes. 

Other session laws:

Not all of these changes were requested by the local governments impacted, which has led to some dissent, mostly from Democrats. 

Power shifts during the session

Several high-profile lawmakers were defeated in their March primary elections, which means they won’t return to Raleigh in January 2027. However, they still may serve out the remainder of their term. 

Republican Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, narrowly lost to Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page, but still seemingly maintained significant leverage in budgetary discussions. Berger managed to secure funding for a children’s hospital in the Triangle area and keep the personal income tax rate on a downward trajectory, albeit more slowly than Senate Republicans originally wanted.

On the Democratic side, Mecklenburg State House Reps. Nasif Majeed and Carla Cunningham and Rep. Shelly Willingham, D-Edgecombe,  lost their primaries after a history of voting with Republicans to override vetoes on certain controversial legislation, including a bill that removed an interim carbon reduction goal for Duke Energy. 

Majeed and Cunningham have since switched their affiliation from Democratic to unaffiliated. Willingham and Cunningham have continued to use their power as occasional swing voters to override a series of vetoes, including bills cracking down on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts  in public education and within state agencies, as well as requiring state law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE.

Voters aren’t the only ones behind power shifts in the legislature this year. Republican lawmakers consistently included provisions in the budget and other bills that shifted power away from the governor and attorney general, both Democrats. 

Over the course of the session, an already-weak Democratic Gov. Josh Stein lost dozens of appointments to various commissions and groups, and offices like the State Board of Elections and State Treasurer were permitted to use private counsel instead of Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson in litigation. 

Focus on elections, public safety 

While lawmakers covered a variety of issues in their time in Raleigh, elections and public safety  emerged as priorities. 

Several bills changed local election structures, including moving contests from odd to even years, nonpartisan to partisan, extending term lengths for mayors and other local officials and reconfiguring districts. 

Several proposed constitutional amendments will appear on the ballot after this session, including an amendment capping property tax levies and the personal income tax rate. 

The long-awaited election omnibus was the most significant piece of election legislation, though. While it is not law yet, it’s anticipated to pass in some form before the upcoming November election. 

In current versions of election bills, lawmakers would cut the primary early voting period from 17 to 10 days, extend deadlines for counting and curing certain ballots and require the Division of Motor Vehicles to hand over full Social Security numbers to the State Board of Elections. 

Lawmakers honed in on public safety and crime issues this session, too. Jaleeyah’s Law would enact a series of policies to increase criminal penalties for and enhance enforcement of criminal gang activity. House Bill 1104 would require various studies on how to improve the involuntary commitment process, particularly in the midst of staffing shortages and a “revolving door” problem. House Bill 83 would strengthen training surrounding human trafficking and penalties for disseminating obscenity to minors. 

What’s left? 

While House lawmakers are in town this week, the Senate is likely gone until November. That means most of what hasn’t been done already will have to wait until after the election, if it gets done at all. 

One pending bill is House Bill 437, which would ban public camping or sleeping for homeless people, while allowing local governments to establish a zone for public camping and sleeping for up to a year that meets certain safety and health standards. The bill would also create a new crime of selling drugs in designated drug-free homeless service zones. 

Gov. Stein recently vetoed the bill, calling it an “unfunded mandate” that would make it harder to get homeless people safe, affordable housing. However,  the House put it on its calendar for an override vote Tuesday. The Senate would have to return to override the veto too, if it passed the House a second time. 

Two election bills still need to be passed by the House after the Senate made changes. That’s also likely to happen this week. 

There’s one remaining veto that hasn’t been overridden: Senate Bill 50, which would lower the age to own a firearm from 21 to 18 and remove the permit requirement to concealed carry. It is unlikely to move forward, as both Democrats and some Republicans have expressed concerns over the bill. 

Finally, the House is determined to get the Senate to act on House Bill 328, which would regulate the sale of intoxicating hemp products, including raising the legal purchase age to 21. As it stands, the Senate does not appear to be in a rush to get it done. 

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