Stein eyes state's top law enforcement post
By Melinda Harrell
Published in News on October 29, 2016 9:42 PM
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Attorney General candidate Josh Stein speaks about his policies and approach to the office Tuesday afternoon.
With North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper racing for the governor's mansion, the seat he is vacating is up for grabs.
Democrat Josh Stein is reaching for it.
Stein stopped in Goldsboro Tuesday to meet with the Wayne County Democratic Party to talk about what qualifies him to fill the position as the new attorney general.
He said his focuses as the state's attorney general would be on protecting North Carolinian families from violent crimes, addressing rampant opioid abuse in the state, improving the North Carolina Crime Laboratory and ensuring consumer protections.
"Protecting families is the most important part of the job and protecting them from violent crime through the office's integral role in the criminal justice system and defending the state on every criminal appeal that occurs," Stein said.
He said to be successful in that endeavor, once the state's attorney general's office takes on the role in the appeals process it must be "doing that job and doing it well."
In doing the job well, Stein highlights the importance of the efficiency and the accuracy of the state crime lab by making sure the lab has both "high quality analysis and quick turn around of analysis of evidence," as well as advocating for the legislature to fund the lab adequately.
The state crime lab has proven to be a hot button issue in the gubernatorial race, with incumbent Gov. Pat McCrory citing excessive delays in result times, while Cooper highlights the improvements the lab is making and will continue to make.
Stein said the crime lab issue has been a long time in the making, before Cooper was even in office.
"There are really two issues, historically, at the crime lab," he said.
"The first is, in the 90s, there were issues in terms of the quality of work it was doing and the reliability in the testimony in trial. Those issues came to light in Cooper's administration, but they really preceded him. Cooper spent a lot of time fixing the problems at the SBI and now that lab is the only dual-internationally accredited crime lab in the country. And so, the issue is not the quality of work that is done it is the speed with which the work is done and that is a resource issue and the primary constraint on the resource is the legislature that has underfunded the crime lab in the last six years."
Stein currently serves in the North Carolina Senate, a position he has held since 2009, and said he has worked to increase funding to the lab in order to add and retain staff.
"I introduced a bill last year called the State Crime Lab Act that called for higher pay for the scientists because what was happening was the state was training these scientists, giving them accreditation and they are immediately being poached by the private sector or county labs that can pay a greater salary," he said.
Stein said raising salaries for the scientists, adding more technicians to handle administrative duties and outsourcing toxicology tests would reduce the backlog at the lab.
"It is my hope that we are going to start seeing a further reduction in the lag it takes to turn samples around for evidence purposes," he said.
"If we find that we still don't have enough resources or there are not enough scientists, I am going to be on this making sure wherever the bottle neck is in the process, we are aggressively attacking that so that we can have as close to an immediate turn around as is feasible."
An issue that Stein hopes to address if elected is that of opioid addiction.
"I want to confront the opioid epidemic that is tearing families apart all across the state," Stein said.
"Opioid overdose is now the number one of accidental deaths across North Carolina, even more than car crashes and so, coming up with a comprehensive solution to address that is a high priority of mine. It is not a light switch kind of problem, where you flip the switch and make it go away."
Stein highlighted a multi-disciplinary and collective approach that he says must involve law enforcement, medical prescribers, the substance abuse community and the public health community.
"(I want to) get folks around the table and identify what are the most effect strategies from prevention to stop people from doing it in the first place, treatment for people who are addicted and enforcement for folks who are criminal drug pushers. And we really need to have comprehensive strategies on each level, and I want to be part of that process."
Stein also addressed one of the more tumultuous issues in this year's state election, House Bill 2.
"I oppose HB2," Stein said.
"It's discriminatory, and it has caused immense damage to our state's economy and reputation."
Stein's opponent in the attorney general race, Buck Newton, was an avid supported of the measure that has garnered nationwide criticism.
"My opponent was the cheerleader for HB2," Stein said.
"He thought it was the greatest thing ever. He was willing to push his social agenda on to the state, but we the people of North Carolina are having to pay the price for his extreme social ideology. He talks about the overreach of the federal government, yet this bill is a prime example of the state government overreaching into the affairs of local government and dictating what local governments can do in terms of how they want to protect their people."
Stein said the partisan nature of discourse is what is ruining national politics.
"I am not running for attorney general to engage in the political battles that are partisan and are ruining our national politics," he said.
"I am running for attorney general of North Carolina to protect North Carolina families, and that is what I am going to focus on. Not these partisan ideological wars."
Editors note - Stein grew up in Charlotte and Chapel Hill, attending North Carolina public schools in Chapel Hill.
He earned a law and public policy degree from Harvard University. After graduating he returned to the Raleigh area in 1995. In 1996 he married his wife, Anna. They have three children, all attending North Carolina public schools.
He served as the senior deputy attorney general under North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper from 2001 to 2008 and has served four terms in the North Carolina Senate representing Wake County.