NC & SC Legislatures
AGC’s top goal in both North and South Carolina continues to be helping to raise badly needed funding for the infrastructure crisis in both states for transportation, building, and water and sewer needs. Carolinas AGC monitors hundreds of bills each year in the legislatures in both states and we are closely involved with dozens of bills that affect your business.
North Carolina
The regular long session of the NC General Assembly ended early on Saturday, June 18, with Carolinas AGC having an excellent session that included legislative approval of more than $1 billion toward construction projects and failure to cap the gas tax, a move that will result in about $250 million more going more toward transportation in the two years. Other accomplishments included:
- Defeat of a bill that would have caused a nightmare on public work bidding involving military veteran participation.
- The state House did not approve a Senate-passed bill, S435, which would require the construction industry to first get a Certificate of Merit before civil action could be taken against designers, a costly and cumbersome process that would have a chilling effect on the construction industry.
- Securing an agreement for stakeholders to make recommendations on how to improve North Carolina’s underground utility safety law.
- Keeping in place the state's 6-year statute of repose for construction at a time when it is 12 years for other business and industry.
- Working with a coalition, led by the NC Chamber, which resulted in passage of legislation for workers’ comp reform, tort reform and environmental reform that will result in state rules generally not being more stringent than federal rules.
- Rejection of proposed legislation, strongly opposed by CAGC, which would have increased the force-account ceiling substantially for universities and community colleges.
- Preservation of open, competitive bidding on public work.
- Worked with the NC Department of Transportation and other industry associations to preserve and increase contract construction funding for the NCDOT. This will result in an increased construction market in transportation. The funding is significant in that all state agencies had sizable budget reductions. Increases will be realized in bridge construction, infrastructure system preservation and contract resurfacing projects.
- Helped defeat legislative efforts that would have prevented NCDOT from accepting and spending Federal Railroad Administration Grant funding of $545 million, which will provide an increased construction market for our members. Much of this grant money will be utilized to improve roadway and bridge infrastructure associated with corridor improvements between Raleigh and Charlotte.
- Worked with the engineering associations to obtain Senate passage of a bill which provides that all projects submittals made in pursuit of a design-build project are excluded from the public records act until the project is awarded by NCDOT. This bill will be eligible for consideration in the short session of 2012.
South Carolina
Carolinas AGC had a tremendous amount of success this year during the first year of the current two-year legislative session in South Carolina. Staff in Columbia was able to keep the construction industry in the forefront of several issues and ended the year with many successes, some of which are highlighted below.
- Passage of S. 431 to address the Supreme Court ruling issued in Jan impacting members Commercial General Liability Insurance.
- Passage of tort reform legislation that closes the loophole on the statute of repose by clarify that building codes violation are not considered gross negligence and cannot allow the statute of repose to be kicked by to 13 years from the 8 years the legislature approved three years ago.
- Passage of the Underground Damage Prevention legislation that brings SC laws in compliance with the rest of the laws throughout the country and avoids having the federal government from stepping in and enforcing the law. For a complete review of the legislation passed this session.
- Worked closely with members of the business community to pass an immigration bill that does not negatively impact our members businesses.
- Defeated legislation that would require synthetic liners to be placed in Construction and Demolition landfills, thus driving up the cost of doing business for our members at a time where increased business costs could be detrimental to their survival.
For complete coverage on these and other issues, read more here.
CAGC Legislative Reports
in addition to  weekly government relations reports, your lobbyists also summarize each legislative session.
NC General Assembly
SC Legislature
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