Fitzsimon File

It's been exactly two weeks since Governor Beverly Perdue delivered her budget to the General Assembly and the Senate is now working on its spending plan, though you'd never know it looking at the legislative calendar.

There are no Senate budget meetings listed. In fact, it's hard to tell anything at all is going on with the budget in the Senate unless you happen to bump into one of the Chairs of the Senate Appropriations Committee coming out of the corner room in the Legislative Office Building, where it appears they are putting the budget together.

Senate leaders reportedly are leaning towards accepting Perdue's proposed tax increases on cigarettes and alcohol, while top House Democrats privately continue to resist any tax increase. 

Perdue and the Senate are right that lawmakers can't balance the budget with spending cuts alone without devastating education and human services. But Senate leaders aren't helping that case with their secret budget cabal.

Building widespread support for new revenue requires open, public meetings to make clear what cuts alone will mean to programs that most people in North Carolina support, affordable housing, mental health services, early childhood programs, etc.

Instead, the legislative world waits passively for the spending plan to emerge miraculously from the corner room.

Top Senate budget writers formally introduced Perdue's budget as Senate Bill 1093 last week. The legislation tracks Perdue's spending numbers to the penny, prompting rumors that Senate leaders are considering supporting most of it, though that seems highly unlikely.

Too many legislators have projects and programs they want to protect to accept Perdue's proposal and there are some provisions in the Senate bill that are slightly different than Perdue's recommendations.

Even though it's not unusual to see the governor's budget formally introduced, it has reinforced the widely held view that the Senate plan will have a lot in common with Perdue's recommendations. 

Senate leaders may not be talking in public about their budget, but Perdue is still making the rounds promoting her proposals, appearing Tuesday afternoon before an audience of several hundred members of the North Carolina Chamber, the state's largest business lobbying group.

Her message was the same as its been since she released her budget, that she made tough decisions and cut $2.6 million in state spending, which is the total for her two year budget, not just next year. She said she cut programs that she likes and jobs that provide services she supports.

Perdue repeated her commitment to saving jobs and creating new ones, specifically citing her recommendation for a small business tax break, and investments in infrastructure and technology. And like every governor, she touted her strong commitment to education.

Perdue briefly mentioned her proposals to raise taxes on cigarette and alcohol, but only in general terms without citing the amount of the increases or how much they would raise. She quickly added that she rejected any broad-based tax increase because it wasn't the time to ask businesses to pay more. That also apparently means not asking business to pay the taxes they owe North Carolina.

Perdue's budget does not include an end to a corporate tax loophole that would prohibit multistate companies from shifting profits to other states to avoid paying North Carolina taxes, choosing instead to keep the $100 million break for large corporations that North Carolina companies who only do business in the state don't enjoy.

That's where the budget debate stands as the General Assembly session rolls on into April. The governor still selling her proposal and Senate budget leaders still huddled behind a locked door in a corner room. Stay tuned.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.