N.C. Senate budget negotiators appear to have given up on securing $638 million for the proposed NC Children’s hospital in southern Wake County.
Instead, their focus now is on securing $103.5 million for financing of the project, part of a previous authorization in 2023 to spend about $320 million.
UNC Health and Duke Health are partnering on the project, which is expected to cost about $2 billion, split between public and private sources. It has attracted support from many N.C. business leaders and State Treasurer Brad Briner.
Last week, organizers announced a $25 million donation from Charlotte bottler Coca-Cola Consolidated, marking the first significant private-sector contribution.
In talks with the House on the 2025-27 biennium, Senate budget negotiators are “not asking for any new money” beyond the $103.5 million, said Lauren Horsch, chief spokesman for Senate leader Phil Berger. The two bodies have been deadlocked for months, stalling pay increases for public school teachers and other state workers.
The $103.5 million has already surfaced once during the budget impasse, in House Bill 562. It was one of the “mini-budget” bills senators rewrote in September in hopes of getting the House to accept part of their budgetary agenda.
It cleared the Senate 47-0, but House Speaker Destin Hall pigeonholed it after it crossed to the other side of the capitol. At the time, the Senate budgeted $216.3 million of the money, on the assumption the rest would come later.
The Senate tried to up the ante last spring by raising the expected state share for N.C. Children’s to $854.7 million, with an added appropriation for the 2025-27 biennium of $638.5 million.
But Hall and other House Republicans pushed back, suggesting that UNC Health and Duke Health bear more of the cost with their ample reserves. Hall said his caucus also wants to claw back the money legislators allotted to the project in 2023.
As talks between the chambers have unfolded, “Senate budget writers have moved” off their chamber’s initial position, Horsch said.
The Senate draft had tied its request for increased spending to an otherwise unrelated issue, a potential clawback of the $500 million legislators set up in 2023 for the nonprofit NCInnovation. The agency helps professors at UNC System schools commercialize their research. House Republicans — and former Gov. Roy Cooper — have voiced skepticism about the initiative.
