Senate budget: unwise tax breaks, partisan attacks, inadequate investments
Published May 12, 2017
by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, May 10, 2017.
Senate leaders are trying hard to convince people that their anemic budget proposal moves the state forward by making big new investments in education and providing a middle class tax cut for most North Carolinians.
The numbers tell a much different story. The N.C. Budget & Tax Center reports that the Senate spends well below the 45-year average as a share of the state economy and makes unwise cuts throughout their proposal.
As for the tax plan, if the Senate reductions for the wealthy become law, millionaires in North Carolina will have received a total annual break of $20,000 thanks to the tax changes since 2013. Those changes are costing the state $3 billion a year in revenue—and digging a hole.
The legislature’s own staff says this year’s tax cuts will lead to a $600 million budget shortfall in a few years and this year the cuts again forced budget writers to pick and choose what they would fund and who they would leave behind.
The Senate does include another raise for teachers, an average increase of 3.7 percent, but many beginning and veteran teachers would receive less and all teachers would not do as well as they would under the pay proposal from Governor Roy Cooper.
The Senate finally manages to give principals a raise—North Carolina ranks 50th in principal pay—but only makes a few other minor investments in education despite the state ranking 43rd in per pupil expenditures.
State employees would get only a 1.5 percent pay increase and state retirees would see no cost of living increase at all. New state employees and teachers would no longer be eligible for health care benefits when they retire, which will make recruiting new employees even more difficult.
The budget shuffles money around to reduce the waiting list of at-risk four-year-olds for NC PreK, though Governor Cooper found the money to eliminate the waiting list altogether.
Senators couldn’t do that because they insisted on slashing taxes for corporations and the wealthy again and only increasing overall spending by 2.5% percent to meet an arbitrary formula of how much state government should grow. Never mind the children and families and schools left behind.
There’s a partisan pettiness in this year’s Senate budget too. It eliminates the jobs of specific state employees in the Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Public Instruction while also making major cuts to both departments.
It abolishes emergency judges and special superior court judges that help the court system run smoothly when there are backlogs
There’s a gratuitous $4 million cut to the law school at UNC-Chapel Hill, which comes to 30 percent of its funding from the state, while $3 million is spent on a new medical residency program for the medical school at Campbell University, a private institution.
Senate leaders did manage to come up with the money to pay for a new executive protective detail for Lt. Gov. Dan Forest and his family and new staff for the UNC Board of Governors that is handpicked by the General Assembly.
Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Mark Johnson also gets new staff positions under his control while the State Board of Education that is battling Johnson has their staff reduced.
The budget is also chocked full of state policy decisions that have nothing to do with funding, like a moratorium on new wind farms in the state. One bright spot is a provision to stop automatically trying 16 and 17-year-old as adults when they commit crimes, though that should be in a separate bill too, not in the budget.
There’s plenty more and we probably won’t know the extent of what the Senate has done for a while.
The budget bill comes to 358 pages and the report with the spending decisions is 499 pages long. No Senator or reporter or member of the public had the chance to read it before it was considered by budget committees early Wednesday morning after being posted on line just before midnight.
There were no public hearings held on the budget, no testimony from experts about programs to fund, no input from most rank and file Senators.
It was simply unveiled from on high by Senate leaders who will demand its passage.
It’s the wrong way to put a budget together and the plan itself is the wrong direction for North Carolina, with its unwise tax cuts, petty partisan attacks, and woefully inadequate investments in education, human services and environmental protections.
Reportedly, House leaders have been working closely with Senate budget writers in their secret meetings. Let’s hope not.
But either way, there is still time for the folks running the House to come to their senses and start over. And that’s exactly what they should do.
May 12, 2017 at 10:39 am
Norm Kelly says:
Speaking of partisan attacks, one has to assume Chris will be writing about the trash talk coming from libs & demoncrats. Chris just must be talking about the misinformation coming from his side of the aisle (that's libs/demons/media allies for all you libs reading that don't understand Chris's position on everything!). Let's start with tax cuts preventing 'investment' in the state, killing income to the state. The FACTS, consistently and constantly ignored by libs/demons/media, prove that revenue to the state actually/factually/truthfully INCREASED since tax cuts were implemented. And speaking of misinformation/lies from left-wing zealots, let's talk about the deal Roy announced this week about some swiss bank increasing their presence in the state. They said one of the determining factors in making this decision was the repeal of HB2. What actually happened is that the state is PAYING them to expand here! Why is it necessary for the state to pay any business to expand/move here? Could it possibly have anything to do with unfair or high taxes in the state compared to other states that business could move/expand to? What other reason is there to provide tax cuts to said business other than the taxes are considered too high by the business in question? If it's good for a specific business to get a tax break, why is it so hard for libs/demons/media to realize that taxes are too high for ALL businesses in the state? Wouldn't it actually increase economic activity, encourage more businesses to move/expand here if ALL businesses were given the same opportunity that gov't hacks like to pick-and-choose with? (sentence may not be grammatically correct, but unless you are an unthinking lib, you get my point!)
What's common among libs? First, you must ignore facts. You must prevent others from seeing truth. Second, you must believe in abortion for anyone at any time for any purpose. And if you can force tax payers to pay for the abortion, you are even more solid in lib-land and to be praised by all libs! Third, you must support tax increases at every turn, oppose tax cuts of any variety, and refer back to point 1 by telling lies about what happens when a tax cut is allowed. When someone points out the contradiction between offering specific company tax breaks to be here cuz taxes are too high and their constant rant about taxes being too low, simply change the subject. Cuz libs must avoid truth/facts at all costs in order to remain a lib. If truth/facts were to invade your brain, you'd stop being a lib.
Witness Chris's ongoing endeavor to muddy the water by constantly ranting about the virtues of socialism, the negative of allowing people to be wealthy and actually keep their wealth, and the need to protect illegals in our nation. Have I read all of Chris's post today? Nope only had to read the headline to realize useless, non-factual, lib-loving diatribes were contained. As always, support libs, demonize conservatives, demonize tax cuts, extol the virtues of 'the poor', demand more from 'the wealthy', mislead about the benefits of tax cuts (also referred to as allowing people to keep more of what they earn!).
May 12, 2017 at 10:54 am
Norm Kelly says:
'this year the cuts again forced budget writers to pick and choose what they would fund and who they would leave behind.' Is it possible that Chris is serious with this garbage? Is it possible that anyone reading this line could believe it has ANY truth? Of course, there are some libs who are as confused as Chris, who like to mislead as much.
When libs ruled Raleigh, did the EVER have to choose between what they would/could fund and what they would leave behind? Was it always the case, just because libs ruled, that everything that everyone wanted was funded? Is it true that libs always had enough money to do everything? Every year? Kinda like libs ruled Raleigh for over 100 years but somehow, even these loving, kindly, 'for the children' libs allowed the state to be at the bottom of the teacher pay scale? If libs were able to do everything, as Chris implies, why is it that they allowed teacher pay to fall so short? Why is it that every time a lib gets into the gov's mansion, one of their rants is about FINALLY getting teacher pay up to the national standard? Could it have anything to do with the failure of libs to actually have enough money to fund everything and NOT have to leave ANYONE behind? What a ridiculous statement! And all this trash just to support the libs/socialist scheme/lie.
So much more to correct in this blog post, but I actually work for a living. Some day I hope to get on the lib bandwagon and start collecting from hapless tax payers, but in the meantime I have to earn a living!
May 12, 2017 at 12:01 pm
James Laurie says:
Wouldn't the elimination of emergency judges funding eliminate the funds applicable to the three judge panel in Wake currently hearing the State Board of Elections/Ethics Board matter?
