Fix our problems before cutting taxes

Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, March 16, 2017.

They're likely to make big points with their voter base, but the lawmakers in Raleigh who are proposing another round of big tax cuts may be showing that their vision doesn't stretch a day beyond the next election.

Not that we're against tax cuts. We like having more money in our paycheck as much as anyone. And we like the idea of taking a smaller bite out of corporate profits, too.

Trouble is, we're not seeing much evidence that our legislative leaders looked at the other side of the ledger before the submitted tax-cut legislation. And that side of the books has some glaring deficiencies.

There's education, for one. Our per-pupil education spending still ranks among the lowest in the country. So does teacher pay. Our public-school principals are the worst-paid in the country. And for nearly a decade during and after the Great Recession, school budgets were relentlessly slashed. Thousands of teacher assistants were laid off. Lots of teachers were trimmed, too. Supply budgets are a joke. School buses are too old. So are many of our schools. School districts still struggle to equip students with computers and tablets, the 21st century standard for education tools.

The state's own bureaucracy has been heavily trimmed and many agencies don't have sufficient staff to get the job done. Mental health care is almost a joke. Lawmakers debate how best to beat our rampant opioid addiction problem while we're thousands of beds short of the treatment capacity we need to deal with the epidemic.

Many of our roads are a mess, in poor shape and unable to cope with growing volumes of traffic as our state's population steadily rises. And our highway trust funds fall miles short of what's needed to fix the problem, given cuts in gasoline tax rates, continuing low fuel prices and the steady rise in average fuel economy for the cars out on our roads.

Those issues and many more need to be addressed, but instead we're hearing discussion of more tax cuts for this year and next. One bill in the Senate would cut the personal income tax from 5.499 percent to 5.35 percent and expand the amount of income that's tax-exempt. It would cut corporate income taxes from 3 percent to 2.5 percent next year. Sponsors say that would increase North Carolina's allure for business, even though there's no good evidence that state tax rates influence corporate expansion decisions.

It looks to us like they're trying to hitch the tax wagon to the wrong end of the horse. Let's make sure we're taking good care of our kids, our roads and other essential needs and then we can talk about how to give back what's left over.

http://www.fayobserver.com/opinion/20170316/our-view-fix-our-problems-before-cutting-our-taxes