Friday follies

Published January 30, 2016

By Chris Fitzsimon

by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, January 29, 2016

Speaker Moore rules out teacher pay raise costing less than last year’s tax cut

State Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson made headlines this week by calling for a ten percent raise for all teachers in her appearance before a legislative committee. Atkinson also recommended additional increases for teachers who work in low performing schools or become mentors and leaders for other teachers.

She also wants bonuses paid to teachers at schools that exceed growth expectations in student achievement.

Later in the week House Speaker Tim Moore rejected the 10 percent across the board proposal, calling it unreasonable and said that something like two percent was more likely—and only if the Senate went along. Moore said that lawmakers needed to be “responsible with the numbers that we talk about with employee pay raises.”

Many veteran teachers have barely received a raise at all in the last few years and North Carolina ranks 42nd in teacher pay with average salaries lagging behind neighboring states. Last year seven out of ten teachers received no raise, instead getting a one-time $750 bonus.

The ten percent across the board raise that Atkinson is proposing would cost $540 million. That is less than the $600 million cost next year of the tax cuts passed by the General Assembly in 2015.

Legislative leaders didn’t seem too worried about being responsible with those numbers when they there were putting a final budget together.

Either teachers are a priority or they or not. Atkinson is suggesting they should be. Moore doesn’t seem interesting in making it happen.

Another week, another odd claim about the “Carolina Comeback”

It is not a surprise that Gov. Pat McCrory can’t stop talking about the alleged Carolina Comeback, the economic recovery that he claims his administration created in North Carolina even though every state has recovered to some extent thanks to dramatic improvements in the national economy.

But it is puzzling why McCrory and his supporters keep touting the drop in the state unemployment rate as part of their political spin about how well their policies have worked.

Not only it is an often unreliable indicator of how workers and families are actually faring, North Carolina’s improvement in the rate isn’t all that impressive and certainly doesn’t live up to the McCrory hype.

The latest unemployment numbers released this week show that North Carolina’s jobless rate fell by .1 percent in December to 5.6. A news release from McCrory’s office says the state has had the tenth largest drop in the rate in the country since he took office in January of 2013.

But what McCrory didn’t say is that North Carolina’s unemployment rate is significantly higher than the national rate of 5.0 percent.

It is also higher than all but ten other states and it is higher than the rate in the neighboring states of South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky and the same as the rate in Tennessee.

There are plenty of ways to assess the health of the economy and how families are actually faring across North Carolina.

The unemployment rate is not a particularly good one and it doesn’t actually support McCrory’s incessant claims of a Carolina Comeback—but he keeps using it anyway.

A reminder of the confederate flag controversy and McCrory’s inaction

The conservative media outlet Jones & Blount that is closely linked to the McCrory Administration reported this week that a confederate group with ties to North Carolina was on the way to Iowa to fly a plane carrying the confederate flag in Des Moines to send a signal to Republicans gathered for the presidential debate.

The group, Save Southern Heritage, is actually based in South Carolina but as Jones & Blount reported it made news in Asheville last year after someone painted graffiti on a statue of a confederate veteran.

The group’s news release about their Iowa trip includes this gem. “Now that our symbols, heritage and culture are under intense attack by cultural Marxists, and in many cases abetted by GOP quislings, the Grand Old Party is nowhere to be seen in helping the Southern people fight off this onslaught!”

Such a lovely sentiment.

There’s another North Carolina part of the confederate flag story that the McCrory administration news outlet didn’t include in their coverage.

The state is still issuing specialty license plates featuring the confederate flag seven months after Gov. McCrory said the state should stop in the wake of the racially-inspired shootings in a Charleston church last June.

After receiving national attention for his statement that the time had come to stop issuing the plates featuring the divisive symbol, McCrory did nothing to make it happen except feebly claim that he needed the General Assembly to act to stop the issuance of the plates.

Lawmakers did nothing of course and McCrory—in quite an impressive show of political courage—has never mentioned the issue again

http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2016/01/29/the-follies-246/

January 30, 2016 at 9:51 am
bruce stanley says:

The reason there is even a discussion about how much of a raise teachers will receive.....is due to the surpluses we have above the budget since GOP tax reform in 2013, the same tax reform that all of you lefties have been bellyaching about the the past 3 years. We had a large surplus in 2014 and mid year it appears we will have another large surplus for fiscal year 2015. Under the Democrat fiscal policies, teachers got no raises because the state couldn't afford them without going deeper into the hole. Correct?