Of the 170 seats between the House and Senate, 49 will belong to freshmen legislators, according to the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research. The cause? Retirement, death and redistricting.

North Carolina has yet again come to national attention. In the June 4 episode of The Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert satirically described Replacement House Bill 819, which rejects sea level rise predictions by the Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel.

During the seven hours they spent debating the first draft of next year’s budget, a few of North Carolina’s representatives took the discussion to a personal level.