| mySPIN |
 Thank God We Got a Collard Festival
by Tom Campbell
August 9, 2007
Our General Assembly met for approximately 100 days this year, ending with a flurry of activity. Many may debate how well lawmakers did their jobs but there are two inescapable conclusions about their performance.
The first is that there hasn’t been a time in memory when North Carolina faced more significant issues and needs. The second is that our legislature failed to take significant action on any of them. Former House Speaker Joe Mavretic remarked, on our NC SPIN television show, that North Carolina is no longer a state that takes bold action in resolving problems. Instead, Mavretic said, we nibble at the edges of our problems over a period of years.
There was a time when a national magazine called North Carolina “The Dixie Dynamo” because of our progressive and bold action. There was Governor Greg Cherry, who dramatically increased mental health care spending while we were recovering from World War II scarcity. His successor, Kerr Scott, initiated the “Go Forward” program, convincing citizens to borrow two hundred million dollars for new farm to market roads. His son, Bob, boldly consolidated higher education. Terry Sanford initiated a highly unpopular food tax to provide critical funding for public education. We were the first state to start a Department of Cultural Resources and one of the first to have a state zoo. We had big dreams and initiated big things.
Now, the first thing legislators ask their staff is what other states are doing about a problem. We are followers, not innovators. We focus on the trivial, like the official amphibian, state dog, or, in this session, the official state collard festival.
Our leaders are afraid to think and act big. Lawmakers fear media criticism if they do nothing, so they nibble at ethics reforms. They fear fallout over the death penalty so they allow a medical board decision to effectively put a moratorium on executions. One of the reasons for this session’s delayed adjournment was the fear of lobbyists and of public opinion over the real estate transfer tax.
Our lottery is a classic example. Never mind the questionable circumstances under which it passed the Senate. If you are brutally honest, the reason the lottery is failing to meet target revenue goals is that our legislature was afraid to offer the kinds of games, the advertising, and the payoffs needed to generate those dollars. The law they passed was too timid, so we just witnessed the beginning nibbles to amend the lottery to be where it should have initially been. We do a lot of nibbling.
Mostly, our leaders are afraid they won’t get re-elected. They know they must go along to get legislation passed and receive the big dollars doled out by leadership to those in favor.
We have accepted our leadership’s nibbling, allowing them to pass laws like the official state collard festival instead of finding solutions to high school dropouts, crumbling roads, teacher shortages, a mental health crisis, and staggering infrastructure needs, to mention a few.
Before your lawmaker files for re-election let him or her know that we need people who think big and act decisively in addressing our problems and that if they are unable or unwilling to do so we will find some who will. We deserve better leadership than the collard-loving nibblers we are getting. |
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