Nikolai Mather: Thank you for making time for us, sir. So we've previously reported on this PFAS liability bill. Rep. Ted Davis was the main author behind it, but you were among the four primary sponsors. And I know y'all have tried to pass this bill a couple times now. Why do you think you were successful this past session?
Frank Iler: It's been narrowly tailored so that it fits Chemours – and the subsidiaries, obviously, of DuPont, or whatever it is – and it's tailored so that it's got to be a manufacturer of PFAS, not just a user. Somebody's got to make PFAS, and that fits Chemours. Other people use PFAS and don't necessarily dump the residuals in the river. You got to manufacture PFAS. It's got to get into a public water system. It's got to be proven. And water system's got to spend money, and they'll get reimbursed from the polluter.
NM: So how is this bill going to impact Brunswick County, specifically?
FI: Well, Brunswick County is spending $150 million. That's a pretty good, pretty strong impact [laughs].
NM: And that would be reimbursed to the ratepayers?
FI: That's supposed to be reimbursed. If the public utility is reimbursed, they're supposed to disperse that to the ratepayers paying in.
NM: Yes, gotcha. So this bill is now going to the Senate. But obviously, it's not the only bill you worked on this session. You also had the homeowners association reform bill. What happened there?
FI: Okay, well, House Bill 444 did not cross over, but a senate bill is coming over. We'll be taking a hard look at that and seeing if it's got in it what we would like to have in it based on what we said in 444, and then the Senate can concur or not concur after that. So we'll be examining the Senate bill and seeing what we need to do to it to get it more perfect... That's bad English. But get it a little more perfect [laughs].
NM: That's all right. What all did you put in the House version of this bill?
FI: So transparency, that… foreclosure limit, annual budget publication. Lobbyists never – they want us to do nothing. CAI, in particular.
NM: That's the Community Association Institute, that's a pro-HOA lobbyist organization.
FI: It defies logic. We can do nothing to HOAs at this point. Their friends get away with murder. Not literally. Their friends get away with doing what they want, and they figure out a way to let them do it. But that's just part of the issue. It's 14,000 HOAs and the CAI said, 'Oh, 95% of them, people love the HOA.' Well, take 5% – the remaining 5% of 14,000 and you've got 700 HOAs with lots of people in them that are not satisfied. And so that's not, that's not what we're looking for. Just do nothing.
NM: So we'll keep an eye out for how the House handles that bill. Were there any other bills you worked on that you wanted to spotlight? I saw that you were also involved with the Parents Protection Act – that would make it so foster and adoptive parents could raise trans children as their "biological sex" without being subject to child abuse petitions. The House's version of that bill didn't pass, but I believe the Senate's version did. Is there anything to share there?
FI: I know I'm not a primary. I co-sponsored it. My name appears in the cosponsor list, and almost everybody else I know is a primary. I mean, it's four primaries, and everybody else is a cosponsor.
But one of my biggest ones that got through was having a flounder and red snapper season that's not 'zero' like 2024. We got the most restrictive rules on the marine fisheries in North Carolina of any state, from Maine to Texas. So we're just trying to sort of save an industry that the bureaucrats don't seem to care about. They don't get it. 'Oh, they're recreational, they're having fun drinking beer.' No, that's some serious people. I mean, you know, some of the folks that sit in Raleigh don't get it.
NM: That was Rep. Frank Iler of Brunswick County talking about some of the legislation that came through the General Assembly this past week.
Read more:
- North Carolina House passes Rep. Ted Davis's PFAS liability bill
