Government by secret provision
One of the most widely discussed provisions of the Senate budget that passed this week had nothing to do with the budget at all. It was a proposal inserted into the budget legislation to take away the power to regulate insurance companies from the commissioner of insurance and give it a new commission the budget created.
After the provision was discovered, Senate budget writers said they didn't know it was in there or which Senator requested it. Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight finally admitted that the provision came from his office and that he was upset about homeowner insurance rates on the coast that came from the Coastal Property Insurance Pool developed last year by Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin.
Basnight said that he never really intended for the provision to become part of the budget even though it was inserted into the budget. Got that? After Goodwin protested the power grab, the provision was removed by an amendment to the budget in a Senate committee.
Basnight says he now plans to introduce separate legislation to create the panel to set insurance rates, so the fight with Commissioner Goodwin will continue. What has not been answered is how episodes like this happen in the first place, a powerful Senator just deciding one day to sneak a provision that no one has seen, much less voted on, into the budget at the last minute that makes significant changes to state law.
It happens routinely in the Senate. That's how the athletic booster clubs at UNC received their windfall of taxpayer money—a provision snuck into the Senate budget a few years ago that allows out-of-state athletes to pay in-state tuition.
That sleight of hand now costs the taxpayers $10 million a year, about the same amount of money the Senate wants to save by cutting 2,000 slots for at-risk kids in the More at Four program.
The budget shenanigans are not new in the Senate and they are a direct result of the secrecy of the Senate budget process. Don't be surprised if there are other controversial provisions in the Senate budget that no one has discovered yet. It happens every year.
From the Fringe
There's plenty to choose from in From the Fringe this week. Joe Coletti at the Locke Foundation ridiculously calls the Senate budget proposal the "anti-freedom budget." There is plenty to disagree with in the proposal, but it's hardly anti-freedom, unless you believe like many of the Lockers than any tax or fee violates our freedom, even if pays for the roads or the courts or the schools we all use.
Locker David Bass comments on the possibility that New York Senator Charles Schumer may become Senate Majority leader if Senator Harry Reid loses his bid for reelection with the hyperbolic "May God have mercy on our souls."
But the clear choice from the fringe this week has to the Locker Leslee Kulba who runs the group's Asheville blog. Kulba offers her reflections about the folks at a tea party she recently attended in Hickory and the challenge this year for the tea partiers.
"The worst part of the uphill struggle is people have addicted themselves to government…Most don't want to work to be free. Working class people can't organize because they're trying to feed their family and a family on welfare. Trust babies and persons on the dole have all day long to "organize communities." It is disheartening for us who love the Republic to fight to give it to people who neither want it nor know what to do with it."
Apparently anybody who takes public assistance to get through rough times is on the dole and doesn't really care about their country. Lovely.
Kulba also recently attacked the North Carolina Logistics Task Force chaired by Lieutenant Governor Walter Dalton after Dalton appeared in Western North Carolina to listen to suggestions for job creation.
The group's mission statement says the task force seeks to "ensure that North Carolina has the necessary foundation to remain competitive in the global economy over the long-term."
Kulba says that means "As with all evils, our lust to tax and regulate will never be satisfied, so we must become a more onerous task master."
Government is evil. And so are any attempts to make sure the state has an adequate transportation system. Glad she cleared that up for us.
She is especially troubled for some reason that the task force "expects to develop a plan for the seamless movement of people, goods, and information throughout the state and beyond."
Trying to figure out that could possibly be a bad idea?
Kulba says "this conjures images of trains in Germany (1933-45)."
A comprehensive transportation system reminds her of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust?
It's simply dumbfounding that this kind of offensive blather comes from a paid staffer of a group that wants to be taken seriously in the policy debate.
