By Phillip Smith
North Carolina Gov. Robert McCrory (R) Thursday vetoed a welfare drug testing bill pushed through the legislature by his Republican colleagues. Drug testing welfare applicants or recipients was a “government overreach,” he said.
The bill, House Bill 392, would have required people applying for the state’s welfare and food stamp programs to undergo drug testing if social service workers determined there was reasonable suspicion they were using drugs. It would also have required county workers to ensure that applicants did not have outstanding felony warrants and were not violating probation.
“While I support the efforts to ensure that fugitive felons are not on public assistance roles, and to share information with law enforcement, other parts of the bill are unfair, fiscally irresponsible, and have potential operational problems,” McCrory said in a veto statement. “Drug testing Work First applicants as directed in this bill could lead to inconsistent application across the state’s 100 counties. That’s a recipe for government overreach and unnecessary government intrusion,” he said.
“This is not a smart way to combat drug abuse,” McCrory continued. “Similar efforts in other states have proved to be expensive for taxpayers and did little to actually help fight drug addiction. It makes no sense to repeat those mistakes in North Carolina.”
While vetoing the bill, McCrory did issue an executive order that would implement the bill’s fugitive felon provision.
The veto won praise from civil liberties and civil rights advocates.
“Our state and federal constitutions protect the privacy and dignity of all North Carolinians against unreasonable searches, and all available evidence has shown that welfare applicants are no more likely to use drugs than the general public,” Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the ACLU in North Carolina said in a statement.
The ACLU and other groups had written McCrory on July 31 urging him to veto the bill.
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