Latest / The SEANC View / Short Session Showdown: Budget, AI, and the Fight for State Workers

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Short Session Showdown: Budget, AI, and the Fight for State Workers · The SEANC View

0:00
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
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I'm John Owens, along with Artis Watkins and Samantha Klein.
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Today, we also have Scenic Lobbyist Flint Benson in the house to discuss the
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opening of the legislative short session. And let's get right to it.
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So Suzanne Beasley is recovering from an illness this week, but we got Flint
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Benson that stepped up to the plate.
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You're going to hit a home run for us, right? I'll just fit in wherever I can, Joe.
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So the legislature comes back to Raleigh the next week on Tuesday,
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correct? Correct. For the short session. For the supposed short session.
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And what does that mean? What is a short session?
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Traditionally, short session has meant that they were coming in to fine-tune
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the budget that they passed last year. Ever since they passed no budget last
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year, we're still operating on a budget from two years ago. So we're fine-tuning
1:00
that and trying to see if we can get an actual budget.
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And who knows where this budget will end up at and by when.
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Or if at all, right? Yeah. I really think that there's a mood to make sure there's
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a budget before they go in front of voters.
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Yeah. But as far as a timeline, you hear everything at the legislative building.
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You hear it's going to be a very quick session, that they're going to be out by July 4th.
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I think artists can verify that we've heard they were going to get out by July
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4th every year for the last 25 years.
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And it never happens. But you're a political strategist, Flint.
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Right. So if you were the political strategist for the powers that be at the
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General Assembly, would you recommend they get a budget?
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I would recommend they get a budget and that they get out before July the 4th.
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Right. I mean, that's what I'm thinking. So I could be back in the district.
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We know, as we talked about on a previous podcast, there's an anti-incumbency movement out there.
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You want to be back home campaigning, shaking hands, kissing babies,
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being in all the photo ops that you can locally.
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And touting that, buying eggs, filming that. We got you a great budget here.
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Oh, we got a new park here in Samford. We got a new whatever in Wilson.
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So, yeah, you want to be there doing that. 10% raises for state employees. Or at least 12. Yeah.
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So we're going to get down to the nuts and bolts of the issues that matter to
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our members. Those rarely ever or don't change.
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Pay, health care, retirement issues. And we're going to kind of set the scene
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going into the short session.
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But first, I want to talk a little bit about what's happening in the news this week.
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The first thing on my mind is State Treasurer Brad Briner announced that he's
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expanding AI usage at his office for his staff.
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There was a story Monday or Tuesday about that, and it was kind of a big deal
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for, I guess, maybe there was nothing else happening. So that was the big story of the week.
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There were so many AI stories. Yeah. Coming at it from every angle.
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I even saw on the BBC a big AI story the same day, and I thought, what's going on today?
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It's all related somehow. But, yes, Treasurer Briner announced that fairly huge
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initiative that the Treasurer's office has been undertaking with AI and their
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intentions moving forward with that.
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Yeah, so he said that they did a 12-week pilot program last year,
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and they saw some good results. So they're going to start implementing ChatGPT,
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Cloud, Copilot, and GitHub. So it's not just one tool.
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It's a bunch of different tools. We've talked about AI several times on this
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podcast, and we've kind of been all over the map about it.
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You love the topic. It's your favorite topic. Yeah, it is. But I think everyone's
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kind of all over the map on it right now.
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We're trying to figure out where we stand. When this first came out,
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I think there was kind of two separate reactions we could have as an organization.
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You had kind of the reaction that what about the data that they're putting into these AIs? Is it safe?
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Is it safe to do that? Yeah, I mean, that would be my question with any public
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usage of AI is if you hold sensitive information, how's that being handled? I don't think we have...
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Enough information to know right now.
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And that's what struck me. And I think Scenic Statement kind of tried to hit that point.
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We're not against progress, but we don't really know all of the things that
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potentially are issues with this.
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And one of the big concerns we'd have, especially around the health plan or
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the retirement plan, where there's a lot of sensitive information,
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is that being handed over?
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I think at the federal level with DOGE, that became a big issue.
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No one is against being efficient, but we also have to be concerned about transparency.
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Yeah. That's the biggest thing I see with AI.
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Yeah. And we were talking last night about this just in general.
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We were texting back and forth. And I think someone brought up,
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are there regulations about this?
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And if you think about it, it's really just like another software program where you put.
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Information into Excel. And
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there has to be some sort of limit to what you can put into these things.
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But even in scenic is the private sector.
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And even in the private sector, when you take into account your liability,
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when you're controlling personal identifying information, you have to consider
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anything like that you're using.
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And it determines your liability. And you to keep that liability low.
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For purposes of citizens, in this case, employees or any other citizen,
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where a state agency is involved, we have more than the liability of the state as an issue.
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We have the responsibility to keep citizens safe, even if those citizens are employees.
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And there's been kind of a push to not to regulate a lot of these AI companies
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on the federal level, and it's just interesting. I wonder if the state level
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will have to step in and do that. Yeah, I mean, well.
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That's what's been said in Washington, D.C., is let the states handle it. Yeah.
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But the same money is here in the states on behalf of AI, just like crypto.
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And there's so much money flowing in. Yeah. Yeah. The same people that want to lobby for AI in D.C.
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Will spend that money in North Carolina, too. And another angle is just more
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broadly how AI will impact workers. You know, like everyone's thinking about,
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is this going to take my job?
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You know, and as an organization that represents workers, we're going to have
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we're going to be thinking about that.
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Like, is it going to mean lots of job cuts? And how do we represent those people?
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How do we protect them and things like that?
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Well, I don't think anything just because it might take a job is a problem.
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But how much do you know about the thing you're replacing a human that can be
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supervised with artificial intelligence?
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We don't know exactly what that will look like.
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And we don't know what kind of back to liability that will leave the state with or anything else.
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It depends on the jobs. Yeah, and I can see just like with the state health
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plan, you know, being a retiree from the state myself, is my information on
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the state health plan, is that going to be confidential?
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Now we can bind an employee with a confidentiality agreement.
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Can we do that with AI? Yeah. Did you have something to say to me?
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I think the job thing is a big thing that my generation is concerned about is
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the fear of jobs being cut because there are already so many people in my generation
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who are struggling to get work, even with a four-year degree.
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But another thing that my generation is very concerned about when it comes to
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AI is the data centers and how those are going to infect our environment because
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we're still very young. And your power bill.
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We would like our environment to, you know, survive while we do.
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So we're still concerned about those things as well.
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Well, the power bill thing is, Sammy and I were talking about that already.
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It's already going up. Mine went up already.
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So they're talking about doing a data center in Sanford, where I live.
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It is. And there's no way, I mean, it's been debated to the nth degree,
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but the power company isn't picking that up.
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They're passing that along. I mean, that's good business. They have shareholders
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to report to, and they're passing that along. So coming down the pike is an
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all things AI edition of the Scenic View podcast.
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I need to find some experts to talk to us about it.
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We should have one person who is for it and one person who's against it so it
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can just be a debate and have them argue it out.
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I mean, I think that one of the pieces in the article about Treasurer Briner's
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usage, he said, you know, I haven't written a speech all year.
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Yeah. Okay, great. You know, I can see where that could be a use for artificial intelligence.
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I think, like Flint said, it's a different issue if you're talking about writing
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a speech than if you're talking about in any way being related to the management
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of very sensitive data. Yeah.
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I will say when it comes to that, though, it's also my generation sees it very
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much as disingenuous and that you just threw a prompt into something like AI
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and let them spit something back out at you instead of genuinely taking your
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time to research and figure out what you should be saying.
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I mean, I haven't been able to tell with Treasure Rider speeches,
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but I feel like in emails I can tell.
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Yeah, there are definitely ways to tell like the M dash and the words that it uses.
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It's got a certain tone to it. Yeah. But, you know, what could go wrong?
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I mean, progress is progress. I remember when the Internet came around,
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there were people worried about the Internet.
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But there's been nothing bad. Oh, nothing bad has happened. No scam. Never. Nothing.
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The question about anything is, does an increase in productivity mean an increase
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in the standard of living for people in this state or in this country?
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The fact of the matter is, since the 70s, the productivity has been off the
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charts nationally and in this
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state, but the standard of living has increased by a much tinier amount.
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So how much does this make our lives easier versus how much does it make our
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lives fuller? Like, it might make our actual jobs easier, but is it changing the standard of living?
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Yeah. The access to good health care, good schools, good anything we want for our families is,
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Probably not. And this is probably not applicable to state workers or state
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government, but who cares about productivity if no one can buy what you're producing, right?
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Because they don't have jobs and wages are so suppressed. Which we're hitting
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that tipping point, yeah. Yeah.
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Anytime I see an AI commercial, I automatically say, well, not using that because
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I don't want a computer advertising that to me.
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Right. The only other news story that I saw was that the state Supreme Court
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is going to reconsider the class action status of the late case.
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This is the case involving health care for retirees. Yes, starting in 2011.
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Yeah. So right now it's a case of 220,000 plaintiffs all in one class action suit.
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If the state Supreme Court rules that it can't be a class action,
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then each of those people would have to file separately. separate suit.
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So it basically would end that.
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You might want to explain what specifically. Yeah, explain a little bit more, I guess. Oh, okay.
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Half the people probably don't know what Lake. The Lake case came about because
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the state health plan changed for retirees back in 2011.
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Up until that point, retirees had the option of a 90-10 plan that was free for retirees.
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Well, they started charging for it in 2012.
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So this case was filed by former state Supreme court justice i've ever been
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lake jr he's deceased now and like i said it's been going on for 14 years and
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it goes through various stages but what they're trying to do is say everybody that was,
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vested and on the state health plan as a retiree as as of 2011 would go back
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to that 90 10 plan and i think the,
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co-pay them was like maybe $700. It was much cheaper than what it is now.
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And it would cost billions of dollars if they prevailed in the lawsuit as a class action.
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This story says that it would cost taxpayers $3 billion if they won. Yeah.
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So the way we've talked about this internally at Scenic with members is to be
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very honest and say, the late case is one of those situations where if you win, you lose.
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Because if the state had to pay $3 billion as a result of the late case anyway,
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you wouldn't see the kind of health plan you see, period.
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There would be tremendous changes coming. You might get, if you had paid a certain
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amount in, a little party favor on the way out the door, but the party would be over in terms of...
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Well, you can just imagine at the beginning of this year, we were talking about
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the state health plan had a $500 million deficit.
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Add $3.5 billion to that. And now we're looking at a $4 billion deficit.
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So you could see premiums skyrocket or even not even exist anymore, right?
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The plan could just be done away with, bankrupt, whatever you want to call. Yeah.
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So the oral arguments started on Tuesday morning in that case.
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And we'll just be watching what happens with it, I guess, right?
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Do you have any feeling on what?
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Should be a finding on it within the next five years. At least in the next 14, right?
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So we'll definitely be watching that. I don't have anything else newsworthy to talk about.
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I'm sure there's things out there. Do you guys have anything else before we
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jump into the short session?
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I think the story about, there was a story today. We're recording this on Wednesday, April 15th.
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Happy Tax Day. There was a story I saw today about campaign money of North Carolina
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legislative leaders and how they can use that on things like meals and,
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I guess, suits and all kinds of stuff.
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And a lot of people are really up in arms about that. But our pay for legislators
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is $14,000 a year and some change.
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And so I know the general gut reaction, knee-jerk reaction is,
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good, don't pay them squat.
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They don't, you know, I don't like them getting paid a lot, and we don't get paid much.
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But the bottom line is, for the public, it's terrible. If you don't have decent
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compensation, good compensation even, for these legislative positions,
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you will not have people that know anything about the real world in those positions
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because they can't afford.
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If they're not retired or independently wealthy, they can't afford it.
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So you're not going to get a cross-section of legislators that look like North
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Carolina. They don't. And that's where we are.
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Not to bash them, but, you know, people who can do it, who have the time to
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do it, they resource it. Yeah, there's lots of insurance, folks.
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There's lots of, used to be more attorneys than now, actually.
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You never have many young attorneys. No. You have just a smattering of those.
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Because you can't run a practice anymore and do that.
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Well, I can give a perfect example here in Raleigh. I know a chiropractor who
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has a small business who is very
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good on politics. He knows the issues and would make a great candidate.
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There's no way with a couple of kids in college or just graduating from college
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that he can give up his business to go for $13,951 a year.
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And arguably, that's exactly who you want to be making decisions because they
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know what real life is like. Yeah.
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And so that's a tough issue. And I think any time, certainly with our members
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at Scenic, we always tell them, you don't want to hold this legislative pay down.
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That's not what you want. And the last raise they received was in 1993, I believe it was.
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But I mean, because it's penny wise, pound foolish, because if you've got 170
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people is all we're talking about, let's say you paid them all 100 grand a year.
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Yeah. Yeah. So you bumped that up. OK.
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Out of the huge budget that we have, that would be a drop in the bucket.
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But again, the folks making those decisions would start to look a lot more like your neighbors.
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Yeah. How many more state employees would be willing to serve in the legislature
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if it started at $75,000, $80,000? Let's start that movement.
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Let's get this pay jacked up for legislation. We didn't prepare this,
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but do you know what other states do?
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There are full-time legislatures, right? Yeah, but we're still one of the lowest paid ones, period.
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Well, and we're what's called a citizen legislature, where the idea is you have
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a job and you very rarely have to come.
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You have to come a lot for a few months was the idea between May and July in
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the short session and between January and June.
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Yeah, May, you're right, in the long session.
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That's not what it's turned into. It's turned into a year-round thing.
17:08
There's committee meetings all year long. Well, I heard one legislator the other
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day, she said she was on 26 different committees.
17:16
Wow. So, she's going to be traveling all the time. Yeah. Being on that many
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committees. We need some efficiency.
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Maybe we could just have, like, AI legislators. Or maybe they should appoint
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a committee on efficiency, legislative. Legislative efficiency. Luge.
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Yeah. Are you going to volunteer to share it, be a guest chair from the outside?
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Yeah, that's what I didn't mean. The private citizens would be the chair and the committee.
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And they take so much grief, too. You know, I mean, it's like such a thankless job.
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I mean, I know that they probably share the responsibility for some of that grief.
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I mean, yes, they're elected officials and they signed up for this,
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But they're not getting paid for the amount of.
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No, I mean, and I honestly do sincerely believe if we're going to have what
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we call a citizen legislature, it should look like the citizens.
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And the only way for that is to pay an acceptable amount to make it worth it.
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Again, remember, most of these folks aren't from Wake County.
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They're leaving their families to come up here and do this. And especially the
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ones with young families.
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It's a massive commitment. It's a massive sacrifice. Well, no,
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one legislator was telling me that his last job before he got elected to the
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legislature, he was making over $120,000 a year.
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I'm sure. He had great union health insurance.
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And now he comes to the legislature making $13,951 a year with state health plan. Yeah. He was like.
18:37
I never knew it was like this. Right. And he's in his mid-40s,
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so. He thought he would continue to be rich. Yeah. Exactly.
18:45
All right. Well, they're state employees, so we can advocate for them too, right? 100%. Right.
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So let's jump into the short session. And like I said, we have concrete issues
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that we always are advocating for.
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First one is pay. And I know all three of these are going to deal with the budget.
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So maybe we should just start with talking about the budget a little bit.
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I know we think they're going to have one, right?
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We feel like there'll be some compensation, but the big question is,
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will it be a cost of living raise?
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Will it be a bonus? Will it be a combination of both? How much will it be?
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Yeah. And those are the things you have to look for. And same way with COLAs
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with retirees, will there be a cost of living adjustment for retirees or will they do bonuses again?
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You know they're not doing a cost of living adjustment.
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It's going to be bonuses on the retirees. Hopefully, there'll be some coals
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for active state employees.
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I feel like there's a movement towards that with the legislature.
19:44
So give me your elevator pitch. Like, say you run up on a legislator in the elevator.
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What do you say about pay? What do you tell them?
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Well, I just tell them to run. You just have to look at state government right now.
19:57
You see the vacancy rates are 25% or more in some agencies. and this is presenting
20:02
a challenge to the workforce across the state because taxpayers are not getting
20:07
what they're paying for.
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They're getting less services because
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we're not funding these jobs to be competitive with the labor market.
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And when those positions are unfilled, it increases the workload for the employees that are there.
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And, Artis brings up a good point, usually, in these discussions that the state
20:25
has grown by 2 million people since 2009, and yet there are fewer state employees, right?
20:31
Right. So, like Flint just said, if you have these employees having to do that
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much more work, that means what the public's getting is so much less.
20:38
And that impacts business, all right? That impacts the bottom line.
20:42
I can't imagine you can find a legislator who would say, yeah,
20:46
we've got enough state employees in my district.
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I don't want any more of those because the bottom line is so many communities
20:52
in North Carolina have ultimately been built around that initial investment
20:56
from the public sector. Take Morganton, such a great example.
21:00
The public sector put a lot of money into Morganton, and the private sector
21:04
proliferated around it.
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Now, Burke County is such a strong economic force because of ultimately an investment
21:12
in services that were needed, but putting them somewhere where it could grow other stuff around it.
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And I don't think any legislator would say, yeah, I wouldn't need that in my district.
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So the next question is, there's talk of job cuts because of all these vacancies.
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Oh, let's cut a lot of these jobs, and then that's how we can pay for the raise.
21:31
Let's think about that. Two million more people and your citizens to serve,
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and you're going to cut even more the people serving them, which hadn't changed since 2009?
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And then you're going to wonder why there's a line to get something done.
21:44
And then be mad at the state agencies when there's a DMV situation.
21:48
So that also impacts business, though. So at the end of the day,
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if you care about the dollars, the cost of turnover, nobody's looked at it in
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at least 10 years. It's been more than 10 years, but at least 15.
22:00
The last time somebody looked at it was the Purdue administration that I can
22:04
tell. Nobody can tell me that it's been looked at since then.
22:08
So cost of turnover during the Purdue administration was $400 million a year.
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That's when we didn't have a vacancy crisis. So what's our cost of turnover
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now? It's got to be at least a billion.
22:19
Yeah. Why wouldn't you just spend the money to have actual people serving people
22:25
rather than spending the money advertising jobs and then training people who
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walk out the door less than 12 months later,
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just from a pure business perspective and a pure perspective of having enough people.
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To go to merchants in their communities instead of losing more jobs.
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It just seems like common dadgum sense.
22:48
Sammy, I can see something's in your mind.
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I mentioned this before we started recording, but a lot of people on TikTok
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will talk about moving to North Carolina and different people will talk about it.
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And you look in the comments, and this directly relates to us not having enough services.
23:04
You look in the comments and everyone who is my age or a little bit older than
23:08
me, saying, do not move here. We are full.
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Because we don't have the services to get things done. We already have long
23:17
lines. We're already waiting for so many things.
23:19
Well, autopsies. That was in the news this week.
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Which has been, we've talked about this since COVID. This backlog for autopsies,
23:27
which affects law enforcement.
23:29
When they're trying to chase, like, was this a fentanyl death?
23:32
How did this person get the fentanyl? Cases go cold for law enforcement before
23:36
they can figure out if there was nefarious activity around a death because we
23:41
have people, deceased people, sitting in coolers forever waiting for an autopsy.
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Families waiting to know awful answers and law enforcement waiting to act.
23:53
Now, who is that helping? And that kind of thing is not going away.
23:57
Newborn screening, we talked about it multiple times because I can't think of
24:01
something more important to not delay than making sure a newborn doesn't come
24:06
up with some issues that you need to treat immediately.
24:10
And so there's so many examples like that, but the taxpayers don't know. They have no idea.
24:17
But you find out what is a problem. And that being said, why wouldn't you pay
24:21
enough to compete with the labor market and keep people in, especially after you've trained them?
24:26
When you're spending the money anyway. Exactly. I'm with you. A hundred percent.
24:29
So the other issue, of course, is the state health plan.
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We've talked about it with Thomas a few weeks ago. Thomas Friedman came on the podcast.
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What does it need from the budget or what are they asking for?
24:43
Is there any changes afoot, I guess? Well, one thing in the state health plan
24:47
that they need, and they need to try this because they never have.
24:51
In fact, I wrote a newspaper column about this a little over 20 years ago,
24:56
about how North Carolina was 48th in the nation in funding their state health
25:00
plan. And that's not changed.
25:02
Yeah. So it's underfunded no matter what party's in there, what governor you have.
25:08
Yeah. You're still underfunding the state health plan. And this piece of information is important, too.
25:14
A lot of legislators think, you're saying it's underfunded because it needs
25:18
a lot more money, and that's because you people are going to the ER with a headache
25:22
and stuff like that. It's because of the people in it.
25:24
But the data presented by the health plan showed the utilization has actually
25:29
gone, it's trending correctly. It's trending down.
25:32
The users, the members in the health plan are being much more responsible about it.
25:37
It looks good in terms of utilization, Yet the cost keeps skyrocketing.
25:41
So you can't try to put that on the members at the end of the day.
25:44
And I think that's a critical.
25:45
No, and you have many members now who go to the doctor and will not file the insurance.
25:49
Because they can get a, again, chiropractors, that's one of the biggest ones
25:54
in the state, because you can go to the chiropractor, pay a cash price,
25:59
and it's less than what you have to pay under the 80-20 or 70-30 plan.
26:02
So that never gets reported to the state health plan.
26:05
My aunt has personal insurance, and she doesn't even use that when she goes
26:09
to the chiropractor because she's like, I can pay like 35 bucks,
26:12
or I could put my insurance down and they'll charge me a crap ton more.
26:15
Yeah, but they should try funding it properly just for five years and see how that goes.
26:21
But I would say before you, quote, fund it properly, you need to know what you're
26:25
funding. Right. You need to know what you're paying.
26:27
And that's the problem the treasurer's office is trying to control by creating more market incentive.
26:34
Of course, our thing with it was, let's find out what we're paying them because
26:38
let's shame the ones who are charging us four times what they should be.
26:42
I think they thought politically that wasn't probably very viable because Treasurer
26:47
Falwell tried that and the legislature rebuffed him entirely, said absolutely not.
26:52
But it's hard to pay $785 on an employee for health care coverage and expect
26:59
to get $1,200 a month. Yeah.
27:01
Which is probably about the average for each state for state health plan employees.
27:06
So last year, premiums increased, but obviously the pay did not for employees.
27:12
And there's talk of it increasing again next year, right? There was some...
27:17
Short of significant things happening
27:20
to make the providers who are being overpaid get brought in line.
27:24
And I mean get brought in line because this is wrong. This is morally wrong,
27:30
and it's wrong financially to the taxpayers. It's wrong.
27:34
Yeah. And another thing with employees, yes, pay is important.
27:37
Pensions are important.
27:39
But that state health plan will affect you every day of your life and will sneak
27:43
up on your budget quicker than anything else.
27:46
It's the number one cause of bankruptcy health care is. In North Carolina,
27:49
it's the number one driver of bankruptcy health care costs.
27:52
And we're the most expensive state in the country for health care.
27:56
Right. It's all hand in hand, right? Yeah.
27:58
So retirement issues, what do you see coming out of this short session?
28:03
Well, the retirement will be helped a great deal if we ever got the staffing
28:07
back to 100%. Right now, we don't have enough people paying into the retirement system. Yeah.
28:12
Flint, is that not another situation where you pay now or you pay later, just like training?
28:17
Exactly, because you cannot sustain the retirement system when you've got one
28:22
person putting in for every one retiree.
28:24
Used to, it was five or six people per retiree. Now, one way to look at it is
28:30
the average pension is $22,000 a year.
28:34
Average state employee salary, let's say $60,000 a year at 6%.
28:39
That's $3,600 going into the retirement plan.
28:42
So that's $3,600 going from the active and $22,000 coming out by the retiree.
28:49
And that's how it was built to work when the system was created.
28:55
But when you had seven people to one, it worked. Yeah.
28:58
So what are the prospects of a COLA this year, cost of living adjustment for retirees?
29:03
To be honest, that is probably out of the question since the board didn't recommend
29:07
one. I don't see the legislature going against that recommendation.
29:11
So the best thing we can do at this point is work for bonuses.
29:15
Yeah. Yeah, the numbers we've seen from fiscal on the forecast,
29:20
the economic forecast, revenue forecast for the next year wouldn't even come
29:23
close to meriting enough money for a COLA. And that's the age-old problem we face.
29:28
So we're either told, oh, we haven't made enough gains in the system,
29:32
or, well, we've made enough gains, but we still not.
29:34
We've got to take a five-year look back. Yeah, it's not the right time. Yeah.
29:38
So that game has to stop, that shell game. Okay.
29:41
Are there any other issues that you're watching as the session starts?
29:45
It basically always comes down to pay pensions and help plan.
29:48
Yeah. One thing that I'll be interested to, well, I'm sure everyone will,
29:53
is what happens with Phil Berger losing the primary and any kind of power struggle down there.
30:00
The Senate, do you see? I think that could be a reason they have a short session
30:04
this time, because you're going to need some people on that side of the aisle
30:08
getting out there campaigning, and they need to be raising money so they can
30:12
give to other people in the caucus.
30:14
Yeah. And any word on who's going to be the new leader?
30:19
Narrowing it down to about six or seven at this point. I heard you're up for it. No, no, not me.
30:25
Not this year. Not this time.
30:27
Since we have you here, Flint, and you are our political guy,
30:30
guru, I know it's really early to look at the midterms, but what are you thinking right now?
30:36
Well, that'll be up to state impact on if they endorse and who they endorse.
30:41
But the main thing is we have to get scenic members, active and retirees,
30:47
to remember November 3rd, that's election day.
30:51
And we need as many people as we can to take a vacation day or that day they
30:55
can't babysit or they can't schedule doctor's appointments or anything like that.
30:59
And they need to be working the polls for the people we do endorse.
31:03
That can help us with legislators more than anything else.
31:06
If they know that if we endorse them, we've got their precincts covered on election day.
31:11
And I'm impressed, Flint, that y'all aren't just saying it. You're doing training.
31:15
You've got plans. Yeah. In fact, we confirmed this morning that there should
31:18
be a breakout session at convention where we can do poll training.
31:22
That'd be great. We do have members in all 100 counties, so we will have people
31:27
at polls probably throughout the state, right?
31:29
That is the goal, to have them in every county and active and working on November 3rd, Election Day.
31:35
And to give a shameless plug to our lobby day coming up on May 6th,
31:39
that's a good first step for you.
31:41
If you want to get out and get active in politics, you could come out to our
31:45
lobby day and we will show you around the legislature and hopefully meet your legislature.
31:51
Yeah, I think we have a lot of people signed up for it already.
31:54
I'm pleasantly surprised.
31:56
You know, it's hard for a lot of people to get off of work.
32:01
Everything's understaffed. So it's very tricky. We have heard a lot of that.
32:04
But the ones that can manage it, they're going to come down.
32:08
And I think there's no voice like their voice.
32:11
One thing I did see this week, I think it was from State Lines,
32:14
when Colin Campbell was talking about the differences between our organization
32:18
and maybe some other employee organizations and how they represent themselves to the legislature.
32:24
He was saying that we obviously take a bipartisan approach and we may be a little
32:30
more engaging than we are.
32:32
Just standing on the corner yelling. You think that serves us well at the legislature?
32:36
I think having conversations always serve you well instead of marching down
32:41
the street when they're not there.
32:42
I mean, we've done this for long enough that we can tell you there's no political
32:49
party that exists to do the right thing for state employees and retirees.
32:53
Okay? That's not going to happen.
32:54
You have people, politicians, who will believe that.
32:58
And then you try to cultivate those relationships and nurture those people so
33:03
that they can hopefully move up in the ranks and they can convince other people
33:07
that, look, this is in the best economic,
33:10
moral interest, all the good interests of our state to do the right thing. It pays off.
33:16
But that takes having some champions. And so that's why it takes all these pieces.
33:20
And you've got to have people that will talk to their legislators.
33:24
They have to know who their legislator is, and they need to talk to him in their
33:27
communities, at their churches.
33:29
There's one representative, Representative Ben Moss, from down around Moore County area.
33:34
He has never been a state employee. But then in caucus, I'm told that he speaks
33:38
up for retirees all the time because there's a group of retirees that are constantly talking to him.
33:44
And he's constantly calling me in his office, what can I help do for retirees?
33:48
Yeah. And that's just a relationship that they have got with him down there,
33:52
and he's listening to them.
33:54
And that's so much more valuable than anything a lobbyist can say.
33:58
You know, we say stuff to them, and they're like, okay, but,
34:01
you know, you're paid to talk to me about state employees and retirees.
34:04
But when a representative or senator says, I saw one of my constituents in the
34:09
drugstore the other day, and they were telling me about the state health plan.
34:12
I didn't realize y'all were paying this much for it.
34:15
That gets to them. So just back to the, you know,
34:19
bipartisan nature of Scenic, I would think that if like Scenic was seen as a
34:25
largely one party organization, that that one party really wouldn't take you
34:30
seriously either because they know they have you, right?
34:33
If you're going to be a one party organization, you better make sure that party
34:37
is in control all the time.
34:39
If not, you're going to be out when they're out. Yeah. And they could probably
34:42
take you for granted, too.
34:43
Exactly. I mean, we take a lot of guff, to be honest with you,
34:47
and that's the nature of it.
34:48
We take guff from Democrats when they think, oh, you're too cozy with Republicans.
34:52
And we take guff from Republicans when they're like, you sound like a Democrat right now.
34:56
You know, look, I think what's happening is the world's catching up with Scenic,
35:01
and Scenic's not trying to catch up with the world.
35:03
Scenic's been in this position of we're going to endorse the people who do the
35:08
right thing by state employees and retirees for years, for decades.
35:12
And it feels to me like the world, especially I'm looking at Sammy,
35:15
who's nodding, the younger folks particularly, they don't care about these political parties.
35:21
They care about who. I don't care what consonants after their name.
35:26
Which of these jokers is going to do the right thing by me?
35:29
And that's where we've been for a long time. We've been preaching that message
35:34
for a long time. For a long time.
35:36
But, you know, if we can get people in the pews, let's do it.
35:39
So if you're interested in coming to our Lobby Day on May 6th at the legislature,
35:43
we're going to meet at the state capitol at 9 a.m.
35:46
And we're going to just have a whole day. We're going to give you lunch.
35:49
And we're going to take you around and let you meet your legislator.
35:53
You can go to lobbyday, L-O-B-B-Y, day, dot scenic dot org. And we have a whole
36:01
page there that I built and I'm very proud of. So check it out.
36:05
We have a tool on there where you can look up your legislator's office so you can plan your day.
36:09
And we look forward to seeing you down there on May 6th. And Sammy's going to
36:14
be there to take your picture. A pleasure.
36:18
So I think that's all I have for the short session. We don't know what's going
36:22
to happen, but we know we'll be there to watch it, right? We'll be there. We'll be there.
36:27
Sammy, what do you have for Gen Z moment? I am so glad you asked.
36:32
I have something so positive and fun that people got to focus on for at least the past week and a half.
36:39
The Artemis 2 has officially splashed down safely, and the astronauts are home with their families.
36:47
It was so cool to watch. I could probably talk about this for hours,
36:51
but I'm just going to give you guys some of the highlights.
36:54
So one thing that I thought was cool for the state of North Carolina,
36:58
astronaut Christina Cook just became the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit. Cool.
37:06
And she is also from North Carolina.
37:09
She was raised in Jacksonville and during high school, she went to the School of Science and Math.
37:13
And she also graduated from NC State with her bachelor's and master's degree
37:18
in electrical engineering.
37:20
Go back. Both state institutions.
37:23
Yes. Solid schools. Yeah.
37:25
But it's cool to think the last time that we went to low Earth orbit,
37:29
women couldn't even open a credit card.
37:31
And now we've sent a woman there. It's cool.
37:34
I'm excited about that. Other things that happened that people found very cool.
37:39
As a Swifty, this was a fun thing for us.
37:42
Reed Weissman, the commander of the mission, at one point was showing off to the camera.
37:48
He did a little heart and showed off his little Taylor Swift inspired bracelet
37:53
to which two little lines just hit the Swifties everywhere when they said over
38:00
the intercom, copy heart, copy bracelet.
38:03
And now people are making shirts that have the path that the Artemis II took.
38:11
That is in the shape of a friendship bracelet. And it says, copy heart, copy bracelet.
38:16
And they're just really cute shirts that are like swifty things that show the
38:20
path that the Artemis II took, but also incorporates.
38:23
Well, and that's cool. That'll get attention, you know, extra attention to this
38:27
effort, which got such worldwide attention. It really was a positive thing for everybody.
38:33
But the main thing is science.
38:36
Science had a moment. And science has been kicked around a bit here lately.
38:40
And government has been kicked around.
38:42
And this wasn't a billionaire's spaceship.
38:45
No, this was the people's spaceship.
38:48
And government did that.
38:50
We were watching it. My wife was like, that's the spaceship?
38:55
Like, because they landed and it doesn't look anything like the shuttle.
38:58
You know, everyone's so used to the shuttle now.
39:01
And the shuttle has wings and it looks like an airplane.
39:05
And I was like, yeah, that's how they used to do it. But it's pretty neat to,
39:10
it's almost like we're living back in the space race days, you know,
39:14
where actually, it says here that Artemis 4 will be landing on the moon.
39:19
It's the first crew landing on the moon since 1972 with Apollo 17.
39:25
So we got a few more of these to watch. But, you know, we didn't put,
39:28
again, and not to kick the billionaires, but okay.
39:32
It wasn't a billionaire spaceship. Celebrities didn't get on the thing just
39:36
to ride around. These were scientists up there doing serious scientist stuff.
39:39
And they even said whenever they landed, they had their first press conference
39:43
where they mentioned, they were like, that was the fun part.
39:45
Now it's time for the hard work of showing you guys all the things that we learned
39:48
up there and all the different things that we are now bringing back to NASA
39:52
to further space travel.
39:55
Or improve things on Earth. That's what's always amazed me about the space program.
39:59
There's so much they learn up there that ultimately changes something here that
40:03
you wouldn't have connected. but they can actually do the research up there easier. So.
40:08
Again, another plug for public programs.
40:12
So, yay, North Carolina State University and North Carolina School of Science and Math.
40:18
I will say, just because we recognized Reed Wiseman and Christina Cook,
40:21
I want to point out that the other two people who were there,
40:24
Victor Glover, he was our pilot, and he did amazing, got them there and home safely.
40:29
And then Jeremy Hansen, who was actually from the Canadian Space Station,
40:34
he was the first Canadian to go on a mission around the moon.
40:38
Very cool. So some very fun little things that we learned about this space mission
40:43
that I, again, could talk for hours about.
40:46
And man, was that incredibly timed after the movie Project Hail Mary.
40:51
Oh, yeah, I got to see that. Oh.
40:53
I heard a lot about that. Talk about something positive. That was a feel-good thing.
41:00
My brother and his girlfriend went and saw it, but I have not seen it yet.
41:03
So it says here that, Christina, is it Coke or Cook?
41:08
Cook. Okay, because it smelled like the Coke brothers.
41:10
But she moved to Jacksonville, North Carolina in 1982 and spent her childhood there.
41:15
Yes. Yeah, she was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, according to this. Yeah.
41:20
Awesome. Just a little moon joy. So it's time for the question of the week. John Swacky.
41:31
Kind of a random one this week. What state would you like to visit?
41:35
And it can't be one that you've already visited. And I can go first.
41:39
I want to go to California, but I want to go specifically to watch The Price is Right.
41:44
It's like my dream in life. It's like since I was like a little kid,
41:49
we watched The Price is Right. And I want to be on The Price is Right.
41:54
So is your dream to watch it or to be on it? I want to go to be in the audience
41:59
and then maybe get picked, you know? Do you think you would do well? I don't know.
42:03
I mean, I'd have to watch a lot before. I would not do well. Prepare.
42:06
Because I don't know prices now of things, really. Like, you know,
42:10
because, yeah. I do. I've given this a lot of thought.
42:14
But I really want to be on the prices right. I think I could,
42:17
once you get past, like, the consumer goods, it's all crapshoot,
42:21
right? So I could win me a car, right?
42:23
Or I could play Plinko. That would be awesome, too.
42:26
So I want to go to California just to be on the prices right.
42:28
You have to pay taxes on that car. Oh, yeah.
42:34
What about you, Fleur?
42:36
I would say South Dakota. Oh. Because I'd like to go see Mount Rushmore.
42:40
Nice. Is that where, that's also where the big bike rally is,
42:44
right? Yeah, I don't care about that.
42:46
Yeah. I won't do something political, so that'd be good amount Rushmore.
42:50
South Dakota, that's a good one. That's unexpected.
42:54
What about you, Artis? Maine, I would want to go see the Puffins.
43:00
And thanks to some awesome scenic members, Jamie and Amy Robinson,
43:05
And I now know you can go see him there.
43:09
So I want to go to Maine. My wife also wants to go to Maine because she did
43:13
a project on it when she was like in third grade.
43:15
She's always been enamored with it. I think it would be beautiful.
43:18
We've looked at some cruises to Maine. Flint, you'll appreciate that. What about you, Sammy?
43:23
I feel like I got to go with Alaska.
43:26
Just because one of my goals in life is to visit every state.
43:29
And I feel like I've already made it to Hawaii and that's one of the hardest ones to get to.
43:33
Alaska is kind of second hardest to get to So let me knock that out So that
43:37
I can be able to say one day That I've been to every state If you ever go to
43:42
Alaska You'll just want to go again You've been right?
43:45
Yes My parents have been as well And that was one of the things That made me
43:49
really want to go It's also just It's a once in a lifetime experience For some
43:53
of those things If I had to tell my money I would go everywhere to Alaska Really?
43:56
Yeah What's so great about it? It was just I went in September And we were like
44:01
90 degrees in Raleigh at the time, and Alaska was 55 degrees to hold.
44:06
Everything was nice and green and took trains around and saw a lot of the landscape.
44:11
Did you see lots of animals? Yeah, so a lot of animals also went to the glacier
44:17
and saw the icebergs and what have you. That's cool. Yeah.
44:21
I will say, at least where my parents went, everything closed around 9 or 10 o'clock.
44:25
They don't have things that stay open very late there. Maybe not a great place
44:29
for young people then, right?
44:30
I mean, I'd still do the adventure stuff and be ready to go to bed by 9,
44:34
10 o'clock. Yeah, I was gonna say. Especially time changes and stuff.
44:36
But the club scene's probably rough in Juneau.
44:40
I don't know. I didn't even go to any clubs when I was in Hawaii.
44:44
I'm not a big club in person. I'm more like I want to do all the adventurous,
44:47
cool stuff during the day and then get to bed so that I can do more starting earlier. There you go.
44:54
Well, I think it was a good informative episode for the upcoming session.
44:59
Everyone enjoy your week.