Fitzsimon File

Governor Beverly Perdue weighed in on the budget and tax debate Wednesday, kicking off a series of statewide rallies for more education funding and, according to News & Observer, telling lawmakers privately that she wants them to raise $1.5 billion in taxes next year, more than twice as much as the tax package approved by the House late last week.

Perdue didn't mention any specific taxes or dollar figures in her public appearance before a standing room only crowd of teachers and PTA members in the old House Chambers. She said the cuts to education proposed in the House budget would cripple public schools and called on lawmakers to rethink proposals to increase class size and lay off thousands of teachers and teacher assistants.

Perdue brushed aside questions about specific revenue proposals from reporters after her brief address, but her spokesperson said that everything was now on the table, including tax hikes well beyond the increases in tobacco and alcohol taxes she proposed in the budget she delivered to the General Assembly in March.

She was much more specific in her meetings with lawmakers Tuesday. The N&O reported that Perdue made a rare trip to the Legislative Office Building to talk to House and Senate leaders, who were not shocked at her $1.5 billion request.

That is roughly the size of a revenue package Senate leaders are reportedly considering, with most of it raised by expanding the sales tax to many services not currently subject to the tax while lowering the overall rate.

The House budget finds $183 million by increasing class size in grades 4-12 and another $130 million by ending funding for teacher assistants in the third grade. Perdue also mentioned textbooks in her remarks Wednesday. The House budget reduces spending on new books by $50 million.

Restoring those three cuts uses a majority of the additional revenue Perdue wants the General Assembly to raise. But that would still leave deep cuts to community colleges and the university system, not to mention health and human services.

Noticeably absent from Perdue's passionate defense of public education was any mention of the role that  poverty plays in how a student performs in school, or any call to restore some of the holes in the safety net the House budget would create for families and their children who are struggling in school.

Less than half an hour after Perdue finished her remarks in the Capitol, a group of legislators and advocates for aging programs held a news conference at the Legislative Building to ask for more support for services that help senior citizens.

As the news conference was ending, a group of supporters of the Governor Morehead School for the Blind gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Legislative Building to protest the proposed cuts in the school's funding.

Just outside the press conference room, folks with the ARC of North Carolina were passing out information to volunteers lobbying to reduce the budget cuts to services for children with autism and people with disabilities.

The House and Senate negotiators have their work cut out for them.

Even raising $1.5 billion won't prevent all the painful cuts to education, human services, and criminal justice programs. Perdue and both the Senate and the House have proposed abolishing an afterschool program that helped 14,000 at-risk kids last year.

Then there is the battle over how to raise the new revenue at a time when many people in the state are angry and scared, and constantly bombarded by propaganda from the anti-everything Right who misleads them into believing that lawmakers don't have to raise any taxes to balance the budget.

Perdue deserves credit for taking the push for more revenue to people across the state. She needs to broaden that call to explain what is at stake in the budget decisions for families, the mentally ill, and people with disabilities—as well as public schools.

The state's future and the welfare of millions of people hang in the balance. Time for some bold, uncompromising leadership in Raleigh. Past time.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.