RALEIGH, N.C. — A bill to compensate people who were sterilized against their will won't become a political pawn in the budget process, the House speaker vowed Thursday after a senator said he feared that would happen.
House Speaker Thom Tillis said he doesn't want the bill, which has bipartisan support and would make North Carolina the first state to compensate such victims, to be tarnished by political games.
"Because anybody who would do that needs to be recognized for what they are, and I don't believe there's anybody in the House or Senate that would behave that way," Tillis said at a news conference.
He was responding to Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham, who said he had some colleagues say they were considering putting the compensation into the budget bill. The fear is that the bill would become of the political bargaining that occurs as legislators agree on a budget.
"If efforts are made to incorporate it into the budget bill, I think that could be problematic for many who may not want to support the budget bill but feel strongly about this eugenics issue," McKissick said.
The compensation bill will continue as stand-alone legislation, Tillis said.
"You know better than I do that the budget negotiations will have all sorts of things going on," Tillis said. "This is not going to be one of them."
The news conference followed a vote in the House finance committee to recommend the bill to the appropriations committee. It was the second favorable committee vote this week for the bill, which Tillis said he expects to move to the Senate within the next week or so.
The bill would provide $50,000 to victims of forced sterilization who were alive on March 1, 2010. A task force has reported that 1,500 to 2,000 of the victims may still be alive The state has verified 132 victims, of whom 118 are still living.
By the early 20th century, most U.S. states had eugenics programs, and more than 30 enacted laws mandating surgical sterilization for certain classes of individuals, often those considered feeble-minded. In reality, legislators have said, the North Carolina program was aimed at poor people.
North Carolina was one of more than 30 states to have eugenics programs and several have apologized. If the bill passes, North Carolina would be the only state to compensate victims. Some counties had their own programs, but the law wouldn't cover those victims, McKissick said.
Tillis said he couldn't advise whether other states should consider compensation, because North Carolina was an outlier, ramping up the sterilizations after World War II while others ramped down.
"I would suggest that any state, if they had a pattern similar to what we had there, they should absolutely consider this and move quickly and decisively ... " Tillis said.
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Martha Waggoner can be reached at http://twitter.com/mjwaggonernc