RALEIGH – A bill that N.C. Rep. Harry Warren filed and sponsored will be returning to its original state soon, according to Warren. When he wrote H.B. 31 the bill simply changed the filing period for Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education candidates, but the bill was changed by the Senate in an attempt to make the school board a partisan race.

The bill will be returned to the House of Representatives and Senate for a vote on approving the amended version, which returns the bill to be mainly about the filing period. The partisan question was answered by putting it to the citizens of Rowan County for a referendum.

According to a newsletter sent out by Warren in June, the bill was originally titled Rowan-Salisbury Board of Educ. Filing Period but was modified to Rowan-Salisbury Board of Educ. Partisan by members of the Senate earlier this year. When the modified bill returned to the House of Representatives in June, Warren said he asked his fellow Representatives not to concur with the bill so that it would be sent to a conference committee of Senate and House members so they could hammer out a compromise.

That committee included Reps. Warren, Julia Howard and Kevin Crutchfield as well as Sen. Carl Ford. Warren was chair of the House half and Ford chaired the Senate side.

Warren hopes that the conference committee’s version of the bill, which is the filing period change and the referendum, will be on the agenda in August. That would give the legislature enough time to approve the bill and get the referendum on the ballot during this November’s election cycle. The bill is currently being rewritten so that the exact text can be approved by the committee.