Senate Bill 962, titled the “Investing in North Carolina Act,” is a broad compensation bill that would raise pay for a wide range of public-sector workers and provide retirement cost-of-living relief if the regular state budget does not become law. The bill is structured in two layers: first, it sets out salary and benefit changes for the 2026-2027 fiscal year if the Current Operations Appropriations Act fails; second, it creates a continuation framework for future years that would automatically apply a 5% increase to certain state and school salary schedules if a budget is again not enacted. The measure is designed as a fallback compensation plan rather than a standard appropriations act.
For teachers, the bill establishes a new monthly salary schedule based on years of experience, with additional supplements for National Board certification, advanced degrees, school nurses, counselors, psychologists, speech pathologists, and audiologists. It also appropriates recurring General Fund money to the Department of Public Instruction to fund the teacher raises. In addition, the bill treats instructional support personnel as teachers for salary purposes and preserves certain longevity-related protections by ensuring affected teachers receive the greater of the new schedule or specified prior-law compensation benchmarks.
The bill also provides a 6% across-the-board salary increase for many state-funded employees, including community college personnel and certain UNC employees, while excluding some categories such as local school employees, local community college employees, and UNC employees from that specific legislative increase because they are covered elsewhere in the bill. It creates or updates experience-based salary schedules for correctional officers, juvenile justice staff, probation and parole officers, state law enforcement officers, and Highway Patrol officers. It also converts references from “longevity” pay to “retention” pay in Chapter 126 and increases retention-pay percentages, while authorizing two rounds of retention bonuses for eligible employees who remain continuously employed during specified periods.
For higher education and retirees, the bill directs the State Board of Community Colleges to provide a 6% salary increase and sets minimum faculty salaries by education level. It allows the UNC Board of Governors to distribute compensation increases for EHRA employees under its policies and requires reporting on those funds. The bill also grants a 2% cost-of-living increase to retirees in the Teachers’ and State Employees’ Retirement System, the Consolidated Judicial Retirement System, and the Legislative Retirement System, plus a one-time 1% supplemental payment for eligible retirees, and it specifies that these supplemental payments do not create vested rights to future supplements.
The bill’s overall impact on state law would be substantial: it would amend salary-setting statutes, retirement statutes, and budget-continuation provisions, while appropriating more than $1.2 billion combined in recurring and nonrecurring funds for compensation increases and related benefits. Because no committee discussion or votes are provided, there is no recorded legislative sentiment in the materials; however, the bill’s structure suggests a pro-employee, pro-public-service compensation approach. Likely points of contention include the fiscal cost, the size and distribution of raises, the exclusion and separate treatment of certain employee groups, and the bill’s automatic 5% salary increase mechanism in years when a budget is not enacted.
The bill would amend multiple provisions of the General Statutes governing state employee compensation, teacher pay, retirement benefits, and budget-continuation procedures. It would establish new salary schedules and supplements for teachers and certain school-based professionals, set across-the-board raises and retention bonuses for many state employees, create new minimum salaries for community college faculty, authorize UNC compensation policies, and increase retirement allowances and supplemental payments for several state retirement systems. It also appropriates recurring and nonrecurring General Fund money to support these changes and revises the budget-continuation statute to provide automatic 5% salary-schedule increases for state and school employees if a future Current Operations Appropriations Act is not enacted.
No committee transcripts or vote records are provided, so there is no direct evidence of debate, support, or opposition in the available materials. Based on the bill text alone, the measure is clearly framed as a broad compensation and retention package for teachers, state workers, higher education employees, and retirees, indicating a generally favorable posture toward public employee pay and benefits. The absence of recorded votes or discussion prevents a more specific assessment of legislative sentiment.
The main likely points of contention are fiscal and structural. The bill would require substantial appropriations and creates recurring obligations, which could draw concern from lawmakers focused on budget impact, reserve levels, or long-term affordability. Another possible issue is the bill’s differential treatment of employee groups: some workers receive a 6% increase, others are covered by separate schedules, and some categories are excluded from the general increase because they are addressed elsewhere. The automatic 5% salary increase that would apply in future years without a budget could also be controversial because it limits legislative discretion and could be viewed as a pressure mechanism in budget negotiations.