• Shorter legislative sessions are part of North Carolina’s citizen-legislature tradition and benefit both legislators and taxpayers
  • The North Carolina General Assembly has experienced lengthening sessions over the past decade
  • A constitutional amendment imposing flexible session limits would help the General Assembly return to its citizen-legislature roots

This is the second of a four-part series covering our findings in “Reforming North Carolina’s General Assembly.” Part One covered legislative pay, Part Three will deal with legislative leadership term limits, and Part Four will propose greater transparency at the General Assembly.

The North Carolina General Assembly has suffered from “session creep” over the past decade, with sessions often continuing well past their traditional length. That pulls legislators out of their home districts for too long and imposes an additional burden on taxpayers. Legislative sessions used to be shorter; they can and should be again.

Shorter Sessions Benefit Legislators and the People

North Carolina has long had a strong legislative system. One balance to that is that the General Assembly is also the closest branch of state government to the people.

The governor and other statewide elected officials are in Raleigh full-time, with occasional forays into the rest of the state. Members of the state Supreme Court are supposed to maintain dispassionate distance to render fair judgments and are at least somewhat insulated from the public through their eight-year terms of office and the tradition of not making policy pronouncements in judicial campaigns.

On the other hand, members of the General Assembly are supposed to return to their districts regularly and interact with their constituents, both formally as legislators and informally as fellow citizens living and working in their communities. Long and irregular sessions disrupt that relationship, however. Every day that legislators are in Raleigh is one less day they are in the communities that elected them. Such sessions also limit who can serve in the General Assembly to those who do not need to work regularly to support their families.

Long and irregular sessions also warp the power dynamics within legislatures. A study of state legislators in all 50 states found that legislative leaders spent significantly more time in the legislature than rank-and-file members. Leadership has an advantage of strategic patience over regular members. A legislator interviewed for our report noted that problem: “As long as the people in power need to get something they can’t get any other way than to stretch the session out, there’s no end in sight.”

Shorter sessions benefit taxpayers. In 2015, each day the General Assembly was in session cost taxpayers an estimated $50,000. Adjusted for inflation, that is $65,827 per day today. So, a 140-day biennial legislative session would save taxpayers $6.7 million compared to a 240-day session.

General Assembly Sessions Have Become Too Long and Unpredictable

The current North Carolina State Constitution, ratified in 1970, states that the General Assembly “shall meet in regular session in 1973 and every two years thereafter on the day prescribed by law.” Those biennial sessions are divided into longer sessions in odd-numbered years, creatively called the “long session,” and “short sessions” in even-numbered years. Most legislative business, including the biennial state budget, is done during the long session, while the short session handles business carried over from the long session, adjustments to the budget, and emerging business.

For most of the time since 1973 until the past decade, the General Assembly met for fewer than 200 legislative days (the days each chamber meets) spread over fewer than 300 calendar days per biennium. Many times the General Assembly met for fewer than 150 legislative days. There were exceptions, such as a spike in the 2001–02 biennium to deal with redistricting.

The chart below shows that session lengths have been creeping upward over the past decade. The 2021–22 biennium lasted 245 legislative days in the House over 475 calendar days, and the Senate’s session lasted 246 legislative days over the same period.

North Carolina General Assembly Biennium Session Length in Legislative and Calendar Days, 1973–2022. (Mean legislative days are the averages of House and Senate legislative days.)

Source: North Carolina General Assembly Library

Sessions are also unnecessarily irregular. This year, the General Assembly returned to Raleigh several times after the main session ended in July.

As previously noted, such long and irregular sessions keep legislators out of their home districts longer, depriving citizens of access to their legislators and legislators of access to their work and families. They also cost taxpayers money and concentrate more power on a handful of legislative leaders.

North Carolina Should Rightsize General Assembly Sessions

Limiting the length of legislative sessions has clear advantages, but making sessions too short can also be dangerous.

Former state Rep. Paul “Skip” Stam (who also serves on the board of the John Locke Foundation) pointed out that shorter sessions can cause legislation to be pushed through hastily (potentially causing more provisions to be voted on without sufficient deliberation), shift power from the legislature to the governor, and give more influence over legislation to lobbyists who can stay on top of fast-moving legislation.

So, the goal is not to make sessions as short as possible. As we noted in our report on reforming the General Assembly, North Carolina should aim to find a reasonable balance that provides the benefits of session limits while mitigating the downsides of imposing shorter sessions.

The good news is that we have a natural point to set an end to regular legislative sessions.

The General Assembly’s single most significant task is making the state budget. North Carolina’s fiscal year begins on July 1, so June 30 would be a natural date for the General Assembly to conclude its business. Considering the start date of regular sessions, a June 30 end date would make long sessions roughly 90 legislative days and short sessions about 35 legislative days.

As the table below shows, most states with session limits impose them through their constitutions. North Carolina should do the same. A constitutional amendment to limit session lengths should provide some flexibility to allow the General Assembly to come back into session for veto override votes or in response to declared emergencies or court rulings requiring legislative action. Those sessions should be brief and only deal with the matter at hand, however.

Summary of States’ Biennial Session Length Limits and the Methods Used for Limiting Session Lengths

Source: National Conference of State Legislatures

Flexible, constitutionally imposed session limits would save taxpayers money and help legislators spend more time in their home districts. This would help restore the General Assembly’s traditional role as a citizen-legislature without jeopardizing its place as North Carolina’s strongest branch of government.