Republican lawmakers in the state House and Senate have substantially different ideas about how education and Medicaid should be funded. Either that or they’re playing a good cop-bad cop routine.
A $21.1 billion budget plan presented by the House on Tuesday is rightly being criticized for leaning too heavily on predictions of increased lottery funds. Despite that wrinkle, however, the House plan offers a far more reasonable approach to funding public education and Medicaid than the Senate version introduced last month.
On education, everyone agrees that teachers are long overdue for a pay increase to begin the process of pulling them up from the bottom of the national barrel for teacher salaries. The House plan proposes to start some upward momentum with an average increase of 5 percent. The Senate proposes to mend the damage in one fell swoop with an average increase of 11 percent.
On the dark side of the Senate plan, teachers who agree to the pay hike would give up career status, commonly called tenure. The plan also cuts $233 million from the budget for teacher assistants, $15 million from the department of public instruction and provides no increase for textbooks.
Gov. Pat McCrory has criticized the Senate plan, saying the state needs a more comprehensive, sustainable and fiscally responsible approach to raising teacher salaries.
The House plan does not threaten teacher tenure and manages to match the Senate plan’s increase for the minimum teacher pay to $33,000 a year.
The House plan also is significantly friendlier toward the state Medicaid program, leaving out Senate cuts to Medicaid recipients. The House proposes to establish a $117 million reserve fund for potential Medicaid overruns.
The Senate has taken a particularly harsh attitude toward the way state Medicaid has been managed, seeking to convert the program to managed care and remove it from the Department of Health and Human Services. The House plan would leave Medicaid with DHHS and is more in line with McCrory’s and the N.C. Hospital Association’s vision for Medicaid reform.
The biggest stumbling block for finding compromise between the two plans may be the House proposal to double the state lottery advertising budget as a plan to boost revenue.
No matter how the lottery wrinkle is ironed out, teachers and other state employees may understandably feel like detainees hoping the “bad cop” does not re-enter the interrogation room.
http://www.reflector.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-adults-house-2503353
