Bill
HB 859
Bills prohibits NC counties/cities from enacting or enforcing guaranteed income programs unless authorized by law, banning unconditional cash payments by local governments.
Status & timeline (from provided record)
- Introduced: Filed Nov 12, 2024 (record entries also show activity in early–mid 2025).
- Committee referrals: bill was referred to relevant committees (Commerce & Economic Development; State & Local Government; Rules — see bill history).
- Current procedural status in the provided materials: Special Message Sent To Senate (per the header).
- Effective date: “This act is effective when it becomes law.” (text of the bill)
Purpose
- Prohibits North Carolina counties and cities from adopting or enforcing local laws, ordinances, resolutions, or policies that create or implement “guaranteed income programs,” unless the jurisdiction is expressly authorized to do so by general or local law. The stated aim is to restrict local governments from establishing unconditional cash-transfer programs.
Key provisions
- New statutory prohibitions:
- Adds G.S. 153A-145.13 (counties) and G.S. 160A-205.8 (cities).
- Each provision forbids a county or city from adopting or enforcing any ordinance, resolution, or policy that “has the purpose or effect of making a payment to an individual under a guaranteed income program,” unless expressly authorized by general or local law.
- Definition of “guaranteed income program”:
- A program under which an individual is issued an unconditional cash payment on a regular basis to be used for any purpose by the individual.
- Explicit exclusion: programs that condition payments on reemployment, performance of work, or attendance at training are not considered “guaranteed income programs” for purposes of the prohibition.
Who is affected
- Directly regulated: all North Carolina counties and municipalities (their legislative bodies and administrators).
- Indirectly affected:
- Residents who might be recipients of city- or county-run unconditional cash-payment pilots or programs.
- Local governments that had planned or wished to pilot basic income / guaranteed income initiatives.
- Local social-service planning and budgeting; potential impacts on partnerships between governments and local service providers or nonprofit-run pilots that rely on local government authority.
- Not restricted: private or nonprofit unconditional cash programs that do not rely on a county or city adopting/enforcing a local ordinance/policy may not be directly prohibited by this text (the bill forbids local government action, not private activity).
Potential impacts and issues
- Prevents municipal and county-level guaranteed-basic-income pilots or permanent programs unless a higher-level (state) authorization exists.
- Preserves local ability to provide conditional cash assistance (work, training, reemployment requirements).
- Raises questions about preemption, local experimentation, and whether localities could still support or fund private/unconditional cash pilots indirectly (depends on legal/contractual mechanisms and subsequent interpretation).
- Fiscal impact on local governments is a reduction in authority rather than a direct budgetary change; economic impacts would flow from preventing locally designed cash assistance initiatives.
Notes
- The bill text is narrowly framed to local governmental actions; authorization could be provided later by the General Assembly (the prohibition is “unless expressly authorized by general or local law”).
- Similar or identically numbered bills appear in other states with different subjects; this summary focuses on the North Carolina “Local Govts/Guaranteed Income Programs” version included in the materials.
Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.
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