Are conservative lawmakers finally seeing the light or just hypocrites?

by Rob Schofield, NC Policy Watch, March 17, 2015.

Sometimes, the responsibility of governing and “making the trains run on time” can force a public official to rethink hoary and ideologically-driven positions. Take, for instance, State Rep. Bob Steinburg.

As Chris Fitzsimon explained recently, Steinburg – a fire-breathing Tea Partier on most issues – deserves credit for waking up to the complexities and gray areas that permeate the debate over publicly-funded business incentives. To Steinburg’s probable consternation, his newfound awareness (and probably, the mention from Fitzsimon) even earned him an attack from the Koch-funded automatons at Americans for Prosperity.

Could Steinburg’s open-mindedness be contagious? A recent news story in Raleigh’s News & Observer offers glimmers of hope.

According to reporter Colin Campbell, leaders in the hard-right North Carolina Senate will introduce legislation this week to alter the formulae under which the state’s sales tax revenues are apportioned amongst the state’s 100 counties. The stated reason for the move: to combat the growing divide between the state’s urban and rural counties. As Campbell explains:

“As it is now, a part of sales tax collections are funneled back to counties under a formula based largely on where the sale occurs. Counties with more retail operations – often in more urban settings – benefit from this. When shoppers from outlying areas visit malls in Wake, Durham or Mecklenburg counties, for example, those counties get to keep a larger share of the sales tax money, and it is used for their schools and other services.

The Senate plan would aim to change that, emphasizing instead a distribution of the sales tax based on where people live.”

Now check out what comes next in the story. According to Campbell, the state Senate Majority Leader, Harry Brown of Onslow County, said the following in defending the planned legislation:

“I think over time we’ve started to develop two North Carolinas. We’ve got to find a way to make this thing fair.”

The article goes on to report that the “parameters” of the proposal have been put together by the office of Senate leader Phil Berger.

Public investments as a key to prosperity

Did you catch the gist of that? According to the conservatives who run the North Carolina Senate and who are most responsible for driving the state’s ultra-conservative, anti-government agenda in recent years – i.e. the political leaders who have repeatedly claimed that “government is the problem” in America and that we are overrun by “takers” and “freeloaders” – North Carolina is, increasingly, a state of haves and have nots and the solution is better government funding in the struggling areas.

This is also from Campbell’s article:

“[Brown’s] plan would give more to those 80 poorer counties – and leave multimillion gaps in the budgets of some others.

Under a per-capita plan, many higher-poverty, more rural counties such as Greene, Caswell and Jones, would see their sales tax revenues more than double.”

The goal, as the article explains, is to dramatically enhance public investments in parts of the state in which they are severely lacking.

“According to a study by Public School Forum of North Carolina, Greene County spent about $705 per student in 2013. Wake County, by comparison, spent about $2,022….

If the state switches to a population-based sales tax system, Greene and its three towns would see their share increase from $2.28 million in 2014 to $5.1 million – a 123 percent increase, according to legislative projections.”

In other words, the point of the new Senate GOP proposal is basically twofold: a) to stimulate the economies of the state’s poorer, rural counties via increased investment in public structures and systems like public education and b) to effect a modest redistribution of wealth and resources from the haves in the well-off big cities to the have nots in the struggling countryside.

It’s enough to make a regular follower of North Carolina policy debates wonder if Senator Berger and his team have been kidnaped by aliens and replaced with body doubles.

Rank hypocrisy?

The initial and most obvious conclusion that an informed observer would draw from the new Senate initiative, of course, is that it is a classic case of blind and opportunistic hypocrisy.

After all, except for Charlotte’s Bob Rucho, all members of the Senate GOP leadership team are from smaller, less-well-off parts of the state. Berger himself is from Rockingham — one of the state’s most economically challenged counties.

Seen in this light, the clear reason for the new rap is that the conservative bosses want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to bash public investments and slash taxes on the well-off while at the same time grabbing all they can for their own communities.

Of course, if this is the explanation, it’s nothing particularly new. The examples of conservative politicians applying double-standards when it comes to the value and impact of intentional public action and robust spending are plentiful.

Whether it’s the Governor, the NC Chamber and other anti-tax business groups lecturing all who will listen about the jobs that are created via investments in road building, supposed fiscal conservatives swearing to the vital importance of military spending in sustaining local economies, or merely a local think tank singing the praises of a public university’s business school, we’ve heard this song before. Somehow, public spending that the Right favors (on the military, on transportation, on prisons) stimulates the economy while spending on things they oppose (health care, public education, cleaning up the environment) always amounts to “socialism” and/or government interference in the economy.

Or a light bulb moment?

Maybe, just maybe, however, this newest development will click on a light bulb of recognition for a few conservative true believers (and perhaps even a few members of the General Assembly). After all, if the facts surrounding job creation can convince a dyed-in-the-wool conservative like Representative Steinburg to rethink his once passionate and un-nuanced opposition to publicly-funded business incentives, maybe there’s hope in this realm too.

If Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown can go all John Edwards on us when it comes to acknowledging the obvious rural-urban gulf that divides two very different North Carolinas, who’s to say he can’t also recognize the similar need for public action to address the divide between rich and poor North Carolinians – regardless of geography.

Similarly, if Phil Berger can turn into Terry Sanford when it comes to the importance of investing public dollars in the schools and other public structures of Rockingham County, who’s to say he can’t – given the facts and the time to absorb them – grasp the obvious benefits of investing in the tens of thousands of Charlotte and Raleigh residents who lack health insurance and the means to obtain it (a group to whom Berger and his staff usually like derogatorily refer to as “able-bodied adults”). Stranger things have happened.

Going forward

Whichever the explanation – a new open-mindedness or just old fashioned hypocrisy – the course for caring and thinking North Carolinians is clear. As with the recent conservative epiphany that good roads will require preservation of the state’s tax on gasoline (or at least some reasonable facsimile), the best course for progressives is to step up, meet the converts with a handshake and heartily welcome them to the cause of building a better state.

- See more at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2015/03/17/two-north-carolinas-huh/#sthash.GJiCLbia.dpuf