NC Gov. Cooper vetoes bills to reopen gyms, amusement parks and more

Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan
·3 min read

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed three more reopening bills on Thursday that the legislature passed to lift coronavirus-related restrictions faster than the governor’s executive orders.

The vetoed bills would have reopened gyms, fitness centers, skating rinks, bowling alleys, amusement parks and entertainment venues.

Here are the vetoed bills:

Cooper said in a statement that the reopening bills would tie the hands of public health officials and called them “dangerous, especially when case counts and hospitalizations are rising.”

Debate over reopening businesses

He singled out indoor entertainment facilities in the statement, saying COVID-19 is more likely to spread in such settings.

“Bowling alleys and skating rinks exhibit many of the risk factors under the best available scientific and medical data. In these places, people gather in close proximity, are indoors with recirculating air, stay in the space for extended period of time, and engage in physical exertion,” he said.

Opening those facilities, he said, “would spread COVID-19 and endanger the state’s flexibility to open the public schools.”

SB 599 could have also increased restaurant outdoor seating and allowed outdoor seating at baseball stadiums for food service at 10% of the stadium capacity.

Cooper told reporters Wednesday during a news conference that he was more concerned with reopening schools than anything else. He delayed for a couple of weeks his announcement about how schools can reopen statewide.

During Senate debate on the bill to reopen skating rinks and bowling alleys, Sen. Vickie Sawyer, a Mooresville Republican, said that some small businesses did not trust they would be allowed to open for what at the time was a tentative plan to enter Phase Three of reopening on June 26. The businesses were right, and and Phase Three has since been delayed to July 17.

“These are businesses that are losing money,” Sen. Carl Ford, a Rowan County Republican, said during the Senate debate in June.

“It’s time to reopen. It’s time to let these people who know what to do, operate their businesses,” Ford said.

Governor says no to involving other officials

Cooper also vetoed House Bill 686, titled “Freedom to Celebrate the Fourth of July,” which would have prevented the governor or local governments from prohibiting fireworks displays and parades to celebrate Independence Day.

And he vetoed Senate Bill 105, titled “Clarify Emergency Powers,” which would require agreement from the rest of the Council of State, made up of statewide elected officials, for some orders.

“Placing additional bureaucratic and administrative obligations on the declaration of a state of emergency is a substantial change in the law, frustrates executive branch officials’ ability to quickly and efficiently respond to such an emergency by requiring the concurrence of officials with limited involvement in managing the response, and would risk diverting focus from responding to such an emergency,” Cooper said.

Senate leader Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, told The News & Observer in late June that he thinks it would be more appropriate for Cooper to be more collaborative in terms of how he approaches decisions about the executive orders.

“And that doesn’t mean that he has to do what we would suggest that he do. It’s pretty clear there’s a difference of opinion as to what the science tells us as to whether or not things can be done reasonably safely,” Berger said.

Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, a Republican who is running to unseat Cooper this fall, has sued Cooper over the executive orders not receiving concurrence from the rest of the Council of State.

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