Think the well-publicized budget gap in North Carolina is due to uncontrolled spending? Think again.
A research brief released this morning by the North Carolina Justice Center’s Budget & Tax Center analyzes almost 10 years of fiscal data. The report, “Busting the Myth of Runaway Spending in North Carolina,” finds that relative to the state’s population and inflation, spending has actually decreased since the beginning of the 1999 fiscal year.
“North Carolina’s population has grown by an estimated 1.3 million people, or 17% since 2000,” writes Meg Gray Wiehe, a BTC public policy analyst who authored the report. “However, state spending has not kept up with population growth over the past decade.”
One central data point: when adjusted for inflation, per capita spending in North Carolina has fallen since the 1999-2000 fiscal year. Between that year and fiscal year 2008-2009, general funds appropriations dropped $19 per person.
Using a different measuring stick yields the same results. The BTC report also examined appropriations from the state’s general fund as a share of the state’s total personal income. Appropriations as a share of North Carolina’s total personal income have also decreased, from 7 percent in fiscal year 1999-2000 to 6.7 percent in fiscal year 2008-2009.
The data show that “cutting back on state spending will not be a matter of ‘trimming the fat or excess’ but rather a matter of making tough choices about the relative importance of state-funded services,” Wiehe writes.
