At first glance, it seemed like just another disturbing week at the General Assembly.
A Senate committee approved a plan to give homebuilders a tax break that will cost local governments millions of dollars a year, another Senate committee passed a bill to weaken the state’s already anemic gun laws, and another panel considered a proposal to block state environmental officials from developing plans to cut carbon emissions in response to forthcoming rules from the EPA.
That’s all sadly business as usual these days in the legislative halls. And it didn’t stop there. Another committee approved a plan to take oversight of charter schools away from the Department of Public Instruction and a House panel toughened penalties for driving without a license, especially for drivers without a social security card, an obvious attempt to target undocumented immigrants.
There’s more but you get the idea. The reactionary legislative machine seemed to be whirring on all cylinders like it has in the middle of legislative sessions for the last five years.
But this is not the middle of the legislative session. It is supposed to be the end, or close to it. But legislative leaders have not done their primary job yet, they haven’t approved a state budget for the next two years and it is already more than three weeks late.
The budget delay is causing local school officials serious problems as they aren’t sure how many teachers and teacher assistants to hire or even how many classrooms they will need for the early grades.
You’d think that House and Senate leaders and Governor Pat McCrory would be working around the clock to hammer out a final budget quickly, to make sure schools and other state agencies find out as soon as possible how much funding they will have to do their jobs.
But Governor McCrory hasn’t been in Raleigh much this week. Tuesday he appeared on a panel at the Republican Governor’s Association meeting in Colorado and then headed to West Virginia for a few days for the National Governors Association summer meeting.
That makes it a little tough to weigh in on how many teacher assistants to fund or what sort of pay raise to give state employees—if any.
House Speaker Tim Moore isn’t around either. Moore is part of delegation of Republican lawmakers that also includes key Senate leader Bob Rucho that is in San Diego for the annual convention of the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, the group that allows corporate donors to participate in creating “model” legislation that Republicans in North Carolina seem especially fond of introducing in Raleigh.
McCrory is in Colorado and West Virginia. Speaker Moore is in San Diego and there’s not only no end in sight to budget negotiations, it’s not clear they have even begun discussions in earnest almost a month after the deadline for the new budget to be approved.
The startling nonchalance comes just two weeks after the General Assembly shut down for a week so lawmakers could take a vacation even though the budget was already overdue.
The only sign that the session is winding down is the announcement by Senate leaders that committees will stop meeting after this week. That may help minimize the additional damage to the state that lawmakers can do this year, but it’s not likely to jump-start the budget talks.
Next week brings the end of July and no one expects a budget by then or shortly thereafter. The continuing budget resolution passed to keep state government operating expires August 15th and it now appears likely they will have to pass another one.
Meanwhile local school officials wait and worry and wonder how much funding they will have to educate students this year.
Republicans promised not only a shift in ideology when they assumed control of the General Assembly in 2011, they also promised to be more efficient and transparent too.
Sadly, they have the rigid ideological part down but seemed to have forgotten the other promises they made as the session drags on with no final budget in sight.
