fracking fluid. you can drink it. you just can t say what s in it. joining me now is north carolina state representative pricey harrison. representative harrison, how did this bill come about? who s pushing this bill? it s hard know because there wasn t a lot of transparency. it sailed through the senate with two unnoticed committee meetings and then to the senate floor and then it came to the house with to unnoticed committee meetings and then went to the floor without any public notice. so it s difficult to know who was pushing it, but it does seem to be a republican priority. what do you mean by unnoticed? when you say unnoticed committee hearings. when you issue a notice you re going to have a committee hearing you usually say what s on the agenda, what bill s being heard and never was it publicly noticed the fracking bill would be up in any of the house or senate committees and it never went to an environment committee either. it never went through an environment committ
it normally you don t vote on the bill in committee and send it straight to the floor, especially a bill as controversial as a fracking bill, and that s what happened yesterday. straight from finance to the floor. the process was bad, and the substance was horrible. the substance also it s unclear to me that it is even constitutional under the first amendment. i mean, we re at the case that say one of our producers or i or one of my colleagues were to find out what s in the fluid and publish it in the newspaper, it seems to me there s a pretty strong first amendment claim that they cannot put me in jail, right? it seems to be the case. but they are trying to criminalize disclosure for sure. they tried to move it from a felony to misdemeanor but you can still end up in jail. in the original draft it was felony and they moved it back to misdemeanor as a compromise? yeah. but still four months in jail. four months in jail is a misdemeanor if you disclose what s in the fracki