Fitzsimon File

It has been quite a few days for Governor Mike Easley. After being booed at a Democratic Party rally last weekend by the progressive party faithful for his endorsement of Senator Hillary Clinton, Easley made headlines Thursday by proposing new investments to help people who are struggling and by speaking out again for undocumented students who want to continue their education in community college.

Easley is scheduled to release his complete budget proposal Monday morning, but Thursday he announced he wants lawmakers to find a total of $31 million this year to expand health care coverage for children, help people facing foreclosure stay in their homes, reduce the number of kids on the waiting list for a child care subsidy and hire more workplace inspectors to improve working conditions in the state's poultry industry.

Not a bad start for a list of investments that the General Assembly should make this session. Ten million dollars for children's health care would mean coverage for more than10, 000 currently uninsured kids when combined with available federal funding.

Easley wants a million dollars to help housing counselors find ways to keep people in their homes who are at risk of losing them and wants $9 million of federal block grant money to pay to remove more than 1,000 children from the waiting list for a child care subsidy so their mothers can go back to school or take a low-wage job to gain work experience. There are now 27,000 kids on the waiting list.

The plan to increase workplace safety inspectors would also cost a million dollars, which seems like the least lawmakers could do in light of the revelations in a recent Charlotte Observer series about injuries and unsafe conditions at poultry plants. The paper also found that companies often fail to report injuries as required by law and make it difficult for employees to protest their treatment.

It is State Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry's job to protect workers, but she doesn't seem too interested in doing it, brushing aside the need for more inspectors and larger fines for companies who violate the law, dismissing the disturbing stories of worker's injuries and intimidation in the Observer series.

Now Easley is forcing her hand, in effect demanding that she become as interested in protecting workers in the state as she is in shielding corporations from liability when they mistreat their employees.

Easley's also wants more money to help rape victims, increase compensation for foster care and adoptive parents, expand pesticide education efforts among farmworkers and standardize health care for some chronic illnesses.  

All worthwhile goals and the $31 million price tag isn't much in a $20 billion General Fund budget. Lawmakers should use Easley's proposals as a floor in their deliberations, not a ceiling, and let's hope Easley's budget also includes new investments in affordable housing and mental health services.

As encouraging as Easley's early budget proposal is, his comments about access to higher education for undocumented students are even more timely.  Attorney General Roy Cooper's office sent a letter to the state community college officials this week questioning the system's policy of allowing undocumented students to enroll if they pay out-of-state tuition.

Anti-immigrant groups and the politicians who pander to them railed against the policy last fall. Easley joined former Community College President Martin Lancaster in standing up for the rights of the students to continue their education.

Legislation to reverse the policy was expected early in the General Assembly session that begins Tuesday and legislative leaders have told advocates that the bill would pass, denying the right of children who have excelled in public schools to attend community college.

The ruling by Cooper's office may allow lawmakers to avoid the debate in an election year, which may have been the point of the letter in the first place.  

The ruling seems to contradict a federal court decision that found that admission to public universities and community colleges is not a benefit, a point reinforced by the fact that by paying out-of-state tuition, undocumented students in North Carolina are actually subsidizing the community college system, paying more than it costs the state to educate them.

Then there are the lives of the students, many of them brought here by their parents when they were young, who have succeeded in public schools and become part of their community and now simply want to continue to learn.

They deserve the chance, whether legislators are worried about talking about it or not. Demagoguery and fear can't be allowed to make policy and Easley seems to get that. Nobody ought to be booing the Governor this week.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.