North Carolina’s Medicaid program dominates the state’s annual health and human services budget — at just under $3 billion in the current fiscal year, the program represents about 15 percent of total state spending. Medicaid is a vital component of North Carolina’s economic engine, as it injects $9 billion in federal funds into the state’s [Continue Reading...]
Divide and conquer? What a year of conservative control has meant for the North Carolina General Assembly. What the heck is going on in Raleigh? Why does it seem that state legislative leaders want to repeal most of the good things accomplished during the 20th Century? Recently, the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives [Continue Reading...]
Many North Carolina families are struggling, but a new report from Families USA shows that the Affordable Care Act will be an essential tool for aiding families across the state, particularly those suffering after the Great Recession. As last month’s report from the NC Justice Center’s Budget and Tax Center showed, North Carolina’s [Continue Reading...]
(Cross-posted from the website of the N.C. Council of Churches) Over the past several months I’ve been shaking my head at my computer screen, reading headlines from across the Southeast about new state immigration laws. This crop of new laws, enacted in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, and modeled after Arizona’s now [Continue Reading...]
…Even if they don’t know it A special N.C. Health Access Coalition report By Brenna Burch and Adam Searing Medicaid is a state-federal program that functions as a primary social safety net for many middle-class North Carolina families—families that as the result of old age, injury, disease, or catastrophic event face medical and long-term care [Continue Reading...]
Amending North Carolina’s new corporate tax rules to apply retroactively to prior tax years could put $400 million in paid and unpaid state corporate tax revenue at risk, a new report shows. In June, state lawmakers enacted House Bill 619, placing restrictions on the ability of the NC Secretary of Revenue [Continue Reading...]
“No more excuses: Building a lawful, 21st Century system for serving people with mental illness.” Federal law has long commanded the states to deinstitutionalize persons with mental illness; it’s illegal to use federal money to gather up such individuals and lock them away in big hospitals as was the favored practice during the last century. [Continue Reading...]
As the largest single spending category in the state budget, North Carolina’s public school system has been hard hit by the last several years of budget cuts, shedding thousands of teaching jobs as well as thousands of other educational staff crucial not only to running a school, but also ensuring that students succeed. Since state [Continue Reading...]
“Economic development subsidies: What the record at home and abroad tells us about spending public dollars to grow private business.” A lot of people think they understand what works and what doesn’t in the field of economic incentives. Professor Kenneth Thomas of the University of Missouri at St. Louis is one of those rare [Continue Reading...]
The recently enacted state budget will have severe and negative impacts on the state’s economy, according to a new report released by the North Carolina Budget & Tax Center. Specifically, the report finds that the budget will kill thousands of jobs across the state, ranging from the loss of 1,624 jobs in the [Continue Reading...]
“Economic development subsidies: What the record at home and abroad tells us about spending public dollars to grow private business.” A lot of people think they understand what works and what doesn’t in the field of economic incentives. Professor Kenneth Thomas of the University of Missouri at St. Louis is one of those [Continue Reading...]
Report: Costly Tax Cuts Won’t Keep People in North Carolina Common myth is busted in report released this morning RALEIGH (Aug. 4, 2011) – Slashing state tax rates won’t affect residents’ decisions to stay in or leave North Carolina, but will cost the state resources it needs to create the highly-educated workforce, quality infrastructure, and safe [Continue Reading...]
Action for Children North Carolina recently released its new report, North Carolina Children in the Recession. The report explores the impacts of the Great Recession on North Carolina’s children and youth. Child poverty has increased during the recession and, due to the sluggish recovery and divestment from state programs for children, the effects [Continue Reading...]
The final legislative budget, which was approved by both the Senate and House this past weekend, is currently on Governor Perdue’s desk for consideration. The failure of the new leadership to address the state’s fiscal challenges with a balanced approach that includes revenue will impede North Carolina’s fragile recovery, placing additional pressure [Continue Reading...]
Evidence suggests that investing in public structures and state programs would generate more economic benefits to North Carolina citizens than cutting the state’s corporate income tax rate, a new report says. In fact, cutting the state corporate income tax is more likely to hinder economic growth, according to a new report by the [Continue Reading...]
