Fitzsimon File

The House and Senate are expected to give final approval to a $20.6 billion budget late Monday afternoon. Both chambers gave tentative approval to the plan Saturday in largely party line votes after speeches from Democrats and Republicans that have become predictable both for their point of view and for their hyperbole.

Many Democrats called the budget the best in the state’s history, a designation that Senator Walter Dalton also applied to the Senate budget passed last month that did far less than the final plan.  Many House Democrats also said it was the state budget they had ever seen, surpassing last year’s, which was at the time was also the best they had ever seen.

Senator Kay Hagan not only said the budget did great things for the future but that it was put together in an open process, again forgetting that part of allegedly open meetings is announcing them and revealing what will be discussed.

The Republicans complained about the size of the budget, which is a 9.5 percent increase over last year’s spending total. They predicted all sorts of dire consequences for the state because of the provision allowing local governments to let people decide if they want to raise the real estate transfer tax by .4 percent.

Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger asked his colleagues questions like “do we really believe that government spending creates prosperity?” Nobody asked him if he really believed that poor children didn’t deserve health coverage.

Berger also said there was no tax the budget didn’t raise and no dollar it didn’t spend, another rhetorically well-crafted but factually incorrect sound bite. The final budget ends the income tax increase on the wealthiest 60,000 people in the state, provides tax breaks for the working poor, manufacturing companies, and parents adopting a child, to name a few.

And the budget puts $175 million in the state’s rainy day account, another $145 million in savings for repairs state buildings and leaves $270 million unappropriated. That’s $590 million that was not spent.

Representative Leo Daughtry said the budget ignores the fact that the corporate tax rate is a deterrent to companies coming here. Berger said that despite recent increases in spending, our schools are failing, our roads are crumbling, and our tax system is hurting economic development.

Pretty gloomy take on one of the fastest growing states in the country. Things must not be too bad if everybody wants to come here. That includes businesses. John Atkins, the President of the North Carolina Chamber, said in a speech recently that his group wants to “maintain North Carolina’s place as the best place in the nation to do business.”

House Minority Leader Paul Stam and other Republicans did have some legitimate points about the budget, primarily about the process used to pass it. The final budget was not available until almost 11:00 p.m. Friday night and that was online.  

Most lawmakers didn’t see a copy until Saturday morning. The Senate session convened at 9:00 Saturday morning, the House at 12:30, giving no one time to read the 321-page bill and the accompanying 145-page report before being asked to vote on them. Not to mention that the press and public might have been interested in seeing where $20.6 billion is going before it is a done deal.

Stam and other Republicans are also right that the budget continues the troubling practice of including special provisions which have never been debated in the normal legislative process.

The provisions ranged from important policy changes like changing the distribution of lottery funds to small favors for powerful constituencies like changing state liquor laws to allow people to drink earlier on Sundays at Carolina Panther games in Charlotte.

Special provisions subvert the democratic process and it is too bad that House Speaker Joe Hackney couldn’t convince Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight to keep them out of the budget.

Overall, the budget is not the best one ever crafted in the history of western civilization as the Democrats would have you believe, but it is mostly an improvement over the original bills passed by each chamber—though not as much at the increased spending might indicate.

Children’s health care will expand, but not until next year. The money invested in affordable housing, reducing the child care subsidy waiting list, and expanding Smart Start did not increase significantly even after new money was discovered.

The budget does make important investments in education, particularly in the university system, and starts to address some of the state’s infrastructure needs with $125 million to preserve open space and $100 for water and sewer projects for local government. 

It ends the counties obligation to pay for part of Medicaid, increases funding for More-at-Four and sets up a $50 million Cancer Research Fund at UNC-Chapel Hill.

It does spend 9.5 percent more than last year’s budget, almost $1.8 billion more. But more than half of that increase pays for enrollment increases in schools, salary increases for teachers and state employees and adjustments to the state health plan and retirement programs, spending no one opposes. 

Half of what’s left funds non controversial programs like teacher ABC bonuses, college scholarships, and inflationary increases in Medicaid.

The level of spending is largely a factor of the state’s growth and will not mean the end of civilization as we know it as the Republicans claim, but they are right that the process used to pass it still leaves much to be desired. 

It is not a budget that will save the world as the Democrats suggest, but it is a decent down payment on addressing many of the state’s challenges. It leaves plenty of work to do.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 11:33 am and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.