Offering on-site child care for state employees, letting private school students attend a class or two at the local public school, cracking down on loose dogs and getting tough with people who drive too slowly in the left lane are just a few of the last-minute proposals North Carolina lawmakers filed ahead of Thursday’s deadline.

House lawmakers had until 3 p.m. to file bills to be considered during the current legislative session, and more than 100 proposals flowed in under the wire. The Senate bill filing deadline has already passed.

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With both chambers finished with filing — amounting to nearly 2,000 bills total this session — a more complete picture of policy objectives is emerging.

Education was a frequent topic among the last-minute bills, particularly efforts focused on recruiting and retaining teachers. So were public safety concerns, including the effort to ramp up penalties on people whose dogs run loose, or a bill to implement new domestic violence rules.

And then there are more niche bills, like a proposal to let people pay their taxes in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin — setting the state up for potentially big future rewards, or a massive loss, depending on fluctuations in the market. It comes on the heels of a separate bill to let the State Pension Plan invest in crypto.

Many of the proposals from Democrats are unlikely to advance in the Republican-controlled legislature — such as pro-environmental proposals to take a harder stance on pollution caused by companies involved in plastics and “forever chemicals” — but a few could have a chance.

Other bills have bipartisan sponsors. Among them is Jesse’s Law, a joint effort by Wake County Reps. Erin Paré, a Republican, and Maria Cervania, a Democrat.

It’s named after a 3-year-old boy murdered by his father in 2012 in retaliation for the boy’s mother seeking a divorce. The father had custody of the toddler when he shot him while on the phone with the boy’s mother, WRAL reported at the time.

The bill would have judges, mediators and others involved in making child custody decisions take mandatory training courses on spotting signs of domestic violence or child sexual abuse. Paré said a similar bill was filed in 2023 but went nowhere in the legislature, adding that she made some changes this year to hopefully win over critics of the last version.

“Those are the innocent youth that are having to get pulled into adult problems a lot of the time,” Paré said in an interview Thursday. “And that can be a very sensitive, sensitive situation to be in.”

Other notable new bills include:

  • Gambling and booze: House Bill 921 would enact sweeping reforms of the state’s liquor laws, including allowing ABC stores to open on Sunday if local government leaders sign off. It would also loosen restrictions on raffles and game nights. House Bill 999 would legalize video poker and other digital gambling machines that have been stuck for years in a legal gray zone.
    • Emergency response: House Bill 907 would set up a new savings fund for future natural disaster response. House Bill 863, filed by Democrats from the Asheville area, would spend an extra $582 million on Hurricane Helene response.
      • Public safety: House Bill 852 would enact greater civil and criminal penalties for people whose dogs get loose and hurt or kill a person, pet or livestock. House Bill 864 would let cops ticket drivers for driving too slowly in the left lane of a highway and impeding traffic. House Bill 903 would ramp up various fines for passing a stopped school bus, increasing the maximum penalty from $2,500 to $7,000.
        • Child care: House Bill 951 would instruct state agencies and universities to study unused space that could be turned into child care centers for employees, and it would require any large new government buildings in the future to have on-site child care. House Bill 952 would pay existing child care businesses, as well as churches and other religious groups, to build new child care centers or turn a half-day center into one that’s open all day.
          • Social conservative causes: House Bill 1,000 would let people who get gender-reassignment surgery, but later regret it, sue their doctors. House Bill 844 would ban abortion after six weeks, half the current limit, and also make it easier for the government to take away people's children by terminating their parental rights.
            • Private schools: House Bill 905 would let private school or homeschool students attend public schools part-time. House Bill 918 would require the UNC System recognize test scores from not just SAT and ACT but also the Classic Learning Test, a standardized test focused on Christian philosophy that’s used by some private schools.
              • Public schools: House Bill 878 would require every public school teacher to post all their lesson plans, readings or other instructional material online for the general public to review. House Bill 875 would require an overhaul of how math is taught. House Bill 872 would create sweeping new legal protections for school employees who use force against students on campus. House Bill 985 would increase penalties for students, parents or others who assault teachers.
                • Teacher recruitment: House Bill 912 would pay public school teachers an extra $500 a month to teach in the same district they grew up in, which would help rural counties that don’t pay teachers as much as urban areas. House Bill 943 would fund a nonprofit working on similar goals for “homegrown” teachers. House Bill 910 would ramp up efforts to recruit more teachers from diverse backgrounds.
                  • Drug arrests: House Bill 868 would put stricter requirements on police to prove that people they’re arresting for drugs actually have drugs. It comes in the wake of a Raleigh Police Department scandal involving the former Officer of the Year, who in 2023 was convicted of framing people with fake heroin. Some of his victims later sued the city, claiming RPD higher-ups knew about it but didn’t stop him, and the city paid them $2 million to settle out of court.
                    • Teens and social media: House Bill 860 would ban social media companies from taking or selling teenage users’ data for purposes of advertising or creating personalized algorithms.
                      • AI and crypto: House Bill 920 would let people pay taxes in cryptocurrency and more broadly recognize cryptocurrencies as "a valid medium of exchange." House Bill 1,004 would spend $124 million on research efforts in the UNC System looking into artificial intelligence.