Fitzsimon File

House and Senate leaders reached an agreement on a final budget agreement late Friday morning. The House and Senate will likely vote on the plan next Wednesday and Thursday.  Then the rush toward adjournment begins, despite several key issues outstanding, most notably an increase in the state minimum wage and legislation reforming the state’s lobbying and ethics laws.

The House passed an increase in the minimum wage last year and again this session. The Senate approved the dollar increase as part of its budget, but it’s not expected to be part of the final budget agreement, meaning the Senate will have to pass the bill on its own, something that most legislative observers expect to happen as early as next week.

Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight has sent mixed signals about that in recent media interviews, telling one reporter that he expects the bill to pass and telling another that he put the provision in the budget because that was the only way it would pass the Senate.

All this equivocation has advocates for the raising the state minimum wage a little nervous and it should. Basnight may support raising the wage, as do more than 80 percent of the people in North Carolina, but there are still many Senators that have reservations about the idea, buying into the flawed reasoning that the increase will hurt small businesses.  At the very least, many of them want to combine raising the wage with some tax benefit for the corporate community.   

House Democrats and advocates held a news conference this week to demand that the Senate pass the minimum wage increase on its own.  It ought to be the first order of business after the budget is adopted. There are 139,000 workers in the state now earning $5.15 an hour who need the help.

 

The picture for ethics and lobbying reform is even more unclear. The Senate has yet to pass any reform bills and only recently began committee hearings to review ethics legislation passed by the House weeks ago. Reportedly, the Senate leadership is putting together one comprehensive bill that would address lobbying, ethics, and some campaign finance changes.  

No word on when that bill will be release or debated, but if the Senate hearings this week on the House bills are any indication, advocates for reform better read the fine print when the bill is unveiled.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have not only had a lot of questions about the House bills on ethics and campaign finance, in many cases they have questioned the need for any changes to current law. Several Senators were upset about a provision that requires campaign treasurers to undergo a few hours of training.

One Senator said that his treasurer simply would not go to any training. Then it was explained that the training was available on CD and that an assistant treasurer was also allowed to take the training.

Still not good enough. Even when Committee Chair Senator Dan Clodfelter told the Senators that the Board of Elections finds errors in half the campaign finance reports filed, the grumbling continued.

The episode is simply the latest reminder of the struggle to make even minor changes to a system that directly affects members of the General Assembly. The treasurer requirement is one of the simplest, most straightforward provisions under consideration.

Some of the Senators who were complaining routinely raise and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in their campaigns. The law requires and the public deserves an accurate and timely account of contributions and expenditures of campaign money.

It’s a pretty safe bet that no Senator would trust an old friend down the street with no training or experience to manage a half a million dollar business account. The same should hold true with money raised and spent to hold elected office.

 

The House is still wrestling with the lobbying reform bill and this week’s decision to take out a proposed ban on lobbyists raising money for lawmakers, a key part of the recommendations of a House Select Committee and a top priority of most lobbying reform groups.

The week brought more evidence that House Speaker Jim Black would prefer that the ban remain in the House bill. Black told WRAL-TV that lobbyists raising money looks bad, saying “I think that’s maybe something we should stop doing because that just has a negative connotation.”

It has more than a negative connotation.  It corrupts the legislative process. Lobbyists who raise $100,000 in their homes for a lawmaker start out with access that no one else can match.

 

Finally, back to the budget. The weekly summary from the Civitas Institute, the polling arm of Pope, Inc., includes a brief rundown of the budget issues separating the House and Senate. (They were resolved not long after the summary was written).

The final paragraph says that a final budget deal is uncertain. Then comes this. “This begs the question. Will the concerns of North Carolina citizens truly be addressed or will our legislators continue to promote policies that are neither efficient nor effective?”

That’s a non sequitur. It is as if the author realized he or she hadn’t been critical enough, so decided to throw in one more shot in the form of a question that wasn’t begged at all from the summary above it.  

No explanation about what is inefficient or ineffective. Doesn’t matter, though. Facts aren’t really the point.

 

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 30th, 2006 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.