Will the NCHSAA be dissolved? Senators, leaders begin talks on organization’s future.

Republican lawmakers said Wednesday their two-hour meeting with representatives from the North Carolina High School Athletic Association was productive and indicated that legislation to make changes to the association is still needed but conversations will continue.

The closed meeting with NCHSAA Commissioner Que Tucker and other staff members, attorneys and board members of the association came just days after the rapid advancement of House Bill 91 through the state Senate. The legislation, introduced last week by Sen. Todd Johnson, a Republican from Union County, would replace the NCHSAA with a new athletics commission whose members would be appointed by the governor and legislative leaders. The NCHSAA has governed high school athletics since 1913.

GOP senators, including Vickie Sawyer of Iredell County and Tom McInnis of Anson County, in addition to Johnson, had been holding talks with the NCHSAA over several months about changes they have said are necessary to instill transparency and accountability into the association’s management of more than a dozen varsity sports.

“From the beginning House Bill 91 was really a path of last resort because we weren’t getting feedback,” Johnson said Wednesday referring to the legislation.

Johnson, who has been leading a months-long inquiry into the NCHSAA’s finances and governance of high school sports, said Wednesday’s meeting was “the first step in some potential teamwork and working together” on legislation, which will continue to move forward. “But having them at the table with us is a good step,” he said.

Bobby Wilkins, president of the NCHSAA’s board of directors, said both sides “got a lot accomplished and everybody’s in a better place now.” He declined to offer specific points that the association and lawmakers agreed on, and also did not say if the association brought up House Bill 91, which it previously decried as a “full-scale attack.”

Asked whether the NCHSAA will be dissolved, as lawmakers proposed last week, Wilkins said “I certainly hope not.”

Early last week, it appeared lawmakers had decided talks with the NCHSAA weren’t going anywhere and were prepared to move forward with a revamped version of House Bill 91, which quickly cleared the Senate Education and Finance Committees on July 21 and 22. But at the end of the Senate Education Committee meeting on July 21, lawmakers signaled a willingness to meet with NCHSAA representatives.

“If this legislation is what it takes to get the (NC) High School Athletics Association to work with us and make desperately needed changes, then great, then this has been a great success,” Johnson told The News & Observer last week.

Could legislation save NC schools money?

Among the concerns lawmakers have expressed is the NCHSAA’s accumulation of assets, which they’ve said is greater than several other state organizations combined. As of 2020, the association held roughly $41 million in total assets, according to the most recent financial audit it provided to lawmakers earlier this year.

During last week’s meeting of the Senate Finance Committee, Sawyer said the NCHSAA’s more than 420 member schools could save up to $8,000 under the proposed N.C. Interscholastic Athletics Commission, which she said wouldn’t spend money on lobbying fees, pension plans, asset management fees, conference travel and other expenditures that “would not be transferred to this new association.”

The association’s finances have come under scrutiny as lawmakers say they’ve heard from some of its cash-strapped member schools that can’t afford the fines the NCHSAA issues for rules violations, or the expensive vendors it requires schools to purchase equipment from. One of those fines is a $400 penalty for filming or streaming games by non-participating schools without the approval of the teams competing — an issue lawmakers said became more salient during the pandemic as parents tried streaming games on social media.

Lawmakers have also pushed for a more independent appeals process for decisions NCHSAA makes regarding games. Under the current process, “the judge and the prosecutor are on the same team,” Sawyer said in an interview on Tuesday.

Wednesday’s meeting marked the first time Tucker has met with lawmakers since she was questioned for more than two hours by a panel of House and Senate members in April, after the legislature’s joint oversight committee voted to launch a formal investigation into the NCHSAA.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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