As expected, the state Senate will attempt to squeeze even more out of public education (about $40 million) than was extracted by the budget adopted last week in the House of Representatives. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Education posted its budget targets today and the news is grim. Here are some of the low-lights: [Continue Reading...]
Senate GOP Leader Phil Berger said at his weekly press conference this morning that he has no immediate plan of how to deal with the 37,000 unemployed workers whose benefits were cut off on April 16. “No movement on that, for now,” Berger said. The long-term unemployed workers, most of whom have been looking for [Continue Reading...]
It’s bad enough that legislative Republicans have been holding 37,000 families hostage for three weeks by refusing to authorize the continuance of federally-funded unemployment benefits to which they are entitled; now the GOP has the gall to schedule debate on another bill that purports to deal with the problem of unemployed workers who are ”aggrieved” because the state Employment Security Commission has [Continue Reading...]
State Senate Democrats are taking another stab at restoring federal benefits for the 37,000 jobless cut off from their unemployment checks because of a budget fight state leaders are having. Democrats would need two-thirds of the Senate to pass the bill restoring benefits, a big hurdle with the GOP members in the majority and the [Continue Reading...]
Christy Zemcik used her cell phone this week to call up legislators in Raleigh and beg them to restore the unemployment benefits that she and thousands of others depend upon. In between calls, the 41-year-old former teacher was packing her belongings into boxes after getting an eviction notice from her Charlotte apartment complex. [Continue Reading...]
On the day that House Republicans will vote in lockstep to pass a regressive, back-to-the-bad-old-days budget, perhaps the biggest and most interesting news will take place outside the General Assembly. During the lunch hour, protesters from the Together NC coalition will dress in early 20th Century costumes and speak from a horse and [Continue Reading...]
No one really knows what July 1, the first day of the new fiscal year in North Carolina, will be like if state leaders fail to pass a budget all sides can live with. That’s partly because the state has never faced a budget stalemate quite like what this year has the potential [Continue Reading...]
The state Senate just approved a resolution that extends the “crossover deadline” (the date by which bills must pass out of the house in which they originate) from May 12 to June 9. Historically, crossover (a tool used to limit the flood of bills in the legislature) is normally set for late April or the [Continue Reading...]
Some news reports made it sound like a compromise, but yesterday’s committee appproval of a bill pushed by the “oudoor advertising” industry was really a matter of lawmakers taking a bill that gave the industry everything it had ever fantasized about and ratcheting it back to be just a nice, generous Christmas present. [Continue Reading...]
Frustrated with ten unnecessary days of delay from legislative leaders, House and Senate Democrats will be holding their own hearing tomorrow at 2 pm on the need to extend unemployment insurance benefits. The hearing will take place in Room 1124 of the Legislative Building. All are welcome to attend. [Continue Reading...]
One of the less well-reported aspects of the House budget under consideration this week is the explosion of new fees that the House GOP is enacting and/or increasing dramatically. The House Finance Committee has been examining a bevy of new court fees that the budget would impose in order to replace some of [Continue Reading...]
This has to be the first day this has happened this session — both houses held votes today in which Republicans finally abandoned their lockstep voting patterns. In the House, the break came on medical malpractice “reform” when several R’s voted in support of an amendment that removed some egregious injuries from the [Continue Reading...]
This was just released in the aftermath of a well-attended press conference at the General Assembly this morning: RALEIGH (April 19, 2011) — With hundreds of thousands of people unemployed in North Carolina, state leaders must act to create jobs and extend benefits — not disparage jobless workers suffering in a prolonged economic crisis. That [Continue Reading...]
At their weekly press this morning, House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate President Pro Tem offered no indication that they have any interest in budging from their stubborn position of tying the extention of unemployment insurance benefits for 37,000 jobless workers and their families to forcing a 13% overall state budget cut in 2012. In addition, the GOP [Continue Reading...]
It’s clearer than ever that the predatory consumer finance industry is pulling out all the stops to advance its big Christmas tree bill. Yesterday, in a quiet move that went mostly unnoticed by observers and completely unreported by the news media, House leadership removed one of the big hurdles that stood in the bill’s [Continue Reading...]
