North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein vetoed three bills Wednesday that would allow people to carry guns at private schools, give protections to businesses that work with puppy mills, and keep secret the identities of nonprofit donors.
The Democratic governor said the proposals, approved by the state’s Republican-led General Assembly, would harm public safety and animal welfare, and could help facilitate tax fraud.
The donor privacy bill, Stein said, also appears intended to help wealthy people and businesses influence political races without being publicly associated with those efforts.
“Our democracy works best when people are well-informed,” Stein said in vetoing Senate Bill 416. “This bill reduces transparency and creates more opportunity for dark money in our politics, especially relating to candidates’ legal funds. Furthermore, it makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the Department of Revenue to identify and crack down on certain types of tax fraud.”
Tyler Voight, who leads the conservative, pro-business political group Americans For Prosperty in North Carolina, pushed hard for the bill’s passage and expressed confidence that the legislature would be able to override Stein’s veto. Most Democrats voted against it. But a few supported it, as did all Republicans.
“With this veto, Gov. Stein has chosen to stand in the way of common sense policy that protects North Carolinians,” Voight told WRAL. “We’d like to remind the governor that transparency is for the government. Privacy is for the people.”
Conservative groups have been pushing for the changes for years. In 2021, WRAL reported, supporters of the idea said it would help stop “cancel culture” by preventing people from being exposed for contributing to certain groups or causes.
Stein also vetoed House Bill 96, which began as a bill intended to make it easier for people to get rid of squatters. It passed the state House almost unanimously but was held up for months in the state Senate, where GOP leaders indicated they’d only support it if the House agreed to an unrelated provision that would ban cities and counties from passing any regulations related to pet stores. It came after activists pressed Raleigh City Council to ban pet shops in downtown, citing some they claimed are associated with puppy mills.
The bill with its combined anti-squatter, pro-pet-store rules ultimately passed with broad bipartisan support. But despite its apparent veto-proof backing, Stein said he wanted to send a message by vetoing it.
“This bill would facilitate inhumane puppy mills in North Carolina,” he said. “Without this provision, I would sign the legislation. With it, I cannot support it.”
One Democratic supporter of the bill said the squatter crackdown was worth the trade Republicans demanded for the pet store protections.
“I love my dog, but this is part of the squatters bill, and I’d rather live in my house,” Rep. Carla Cunningham, D-Mecklenburg, said during debate over the bill. “This is about people coming in, taking over your property, staying in your property for months at a time, and you can’t get them out. So I’m going to vote for this bill, and I’ll worry about the pets later.”
The third bill Stein vetoed, House Bill 193, would allow private school leaders to authorize teachers, parents or other volunteers to carry guns on campus during school hours, to act as security guards. Private schools are already allowed to hire professional security guards, but many either can’t afford it or would rather spend their money on other issues. Supporters cited recent school shootings, including some at private schools, as motivating their push for this bill.
“We have children in these private and Christian schools who are vulnerable to any demented individual who has a violent intent to come in there and start shooting or start killing,” Rev. Mark Creech, a lobbyist and former pastor who pushed for the bill, told WRAL in an interview earlier this year. “And they have no means of defense in these schools. … They can’t afford their own security.”
It passed with all Republicans, as well as a small number of Democrats, in favor. But Stein said it will create more risks to childrens’ safety, not fewer.
“Law enforcement officers receive more than 800 hours of public safety education, including firearms training,” Stein wrote. “On top of that, School Resource Officers receive additional training to know how to respond to crises and how to deescalate conflicts, a requirement I supported when I was Attorney General. We cannot substitute the protection offered by well-trained law enforcement officers by asking teachers and school volunteers to step in and respond to crises while armed. Just last year, an employee at a religious school in Goldsboro left a gun in a bathroom that was later found by an elementary school student.”
The group North Carolinians Against Gun Violence praised Stein’s veto, writing: “We have seen time and again that more guns in schools harm everyone—teachers are not trained to handle firearm-related crises like law enforcement, loaded guns can accidentally discharge, and students can find unsecured weapons in the classroom.”
But Stein wasn’t fully opposed to the legislature’s work. Also on Monday he signed a number of other bills into law, including new criminal law revisions, reforms to pharmacuetical rules, and more.
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