Apparently there will be no July 4 fireworks to celebrate two pieces of legislation many in the North Carolina startup community want passed.

Two key bills in the North Carolina General Assembly that concern the tech community – crowdfunding and patent trolls – are still pending. What’s happening?

Let’s go inside the sausage-making process that is politics …

The easiest route to passage is the patent troll bill, which is backed by the N.C. Technology Association and has a huge advocate in SAS.

“Two different bills are sitting on either side of the building,” WRAL’s Mark Binker tells The Skinny. “Probably will get done this week.”

But crowdfunding is caught up in what Binker describes as a “mess.”

“The crowd funding stuff is both in a bill sitting in the Senate as well as that [regulatory] reform bill. So it has at two vehicles it could take to completion,” he says.

But apparently time is not a factor. The House and Senate aren’t shutting down any time soon.

“Lawmakers will be back next week as there’s no budget deal yet,” Binker says. “Lawmakers are busy snarling at each other over bigger ticket items like Medicaid and teacher pay raises, so a lot of other things (crowd funding among them) are just on hold until those bigger things get worked out.”

As WRAL TechWire has reported, backers of the crowdfunding legislation managed to insert it into a big Senate regulatory reform bill (Bill S734). It passed the House a year ago by a near-unanimous vote.

However, Binker warns: “The reg reform bills are a mess. There are at least three different versions of them out there right now.”

Key Backers Is Confident

Mark Easley, an entrepreneur and an investor who has led lobbying efforts for the bill, remains hopeful.

“The Senate bill S734 which includes H680 has now been passed by the House and sent back to the Senate, where it has been referred to the Senate Ways and Means Committee,” Easley writes.” I am waiting for it to be brought up there.

“I have also heard that the budget issues will keep them is session for potentially a few more weeks, so that will allow time for other measures like S734/H680 to be brought up.”

Lt. Governor Backs Crowdfunding

Rebekah Bradley of Lt. Gov. Dan Forest sent a letter of support to Easley and the NC JOBS Act backers.

“The Jump-Start Our Business Start-Ups (JOBS) Act. Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest believes that this bill is an important step towards growing North Carolina businesses by allowing start-up companies and companies that wish to expand the ability to quickly raise capital from smaller investments, often called crowd-sourcing or crowd-funding,” Bradley wrote.

“As a result, businesses will be able to establish themselves in their market on an expedited basis and employ more North Carolinians sooner–all while having many citizens invested in the company’s success. The Lieutenant Governor supports passage of this bill as a well-thought out mechanism to ease the burden on North Carolina’s start-ups.”