Document Actions
Tues late: Making amends
posted at 2009-04-07 23:41 | Last modified 2009-04-08 10:16
State Senate lawmakers are expected to vote Wednesday on S202, a $20 billion spending plan for next year. The measure would cut about $2B and 1600 positions from the budget, resulting in layoffs for more than 700 state workers – 300 at DPI alone by 2011.
K-12 education takes a pretty brutal hit under the Senate plan. It would slash funding for preschool programs, increase class sizes in grade-school classrooms, stop all standardized testing that isn’t federally required, and put a one-year moratorium on ABC bonuses for teachers.
Wake Democrat Vernon Malone helped write the education portion of the budget. He says he knows it won’t be popular.
And I really don’t have to apologize for that. Because unless you’ve been under a rock for the last several few months, you know very well that our economy is in a tailspin. And there are those people who aren’t quite sure we’ve hit the bottom yet.
The Senate plan also closes a list of prisons and juvenile centers, converts some programs to receipt funding, and eliminates others entirely, according to Senate Senior budget chair Linda Garrou.
We felt like it was important that we not just say, “Oh, well, let’s just take 10% of everything.” We decided it was very important that we make some linear cuts that were going to be recurring cuts.
But the bill doesn’t rely on cuts alone, either. It would bring in an extra $50M in higher fees, two-thirds of it through the court system. (For instance, forgetting to buckle up or put on a helmet would cost you an additional $25.)
It also counts on about $500M in “tax adjustments,” but offers no specifics on where the money would come from. Senate leaders say they’ll release the details in the next week or two – after the spending plan wins approval.
Senate Republicans are crying foul. Bob Rucho (R-Meck) says without the tax numbers, there’s no way to know if the budget is balanced.
Aren’t we going to have that information before we vote on this budget? I mean, we’re buying a pig in a poke if we don’t know where those tax revenues are coming from.
Garrou and other Senate leaders say it’s not at all uncommon to separate spending and revenue bills – but then again, it’s been a while since they’ve had to depend on tax increases to cover spending. Senate Dems apparently weren’t worried about the missing numbers, voting the bill through three committees at breakneck speed today.
Fixes In
The first of those committees was Senate Approps, where members launched a volley of amendments at S202. A few of the most interesting/entertaining:
- Sen Ellie Kinnaird (D-Orange) tried to zero out the funding for the 287-G local immigration enforcement program. It failed under bipartisan opposition.
- Sen Doug Berger (D-Franklin) Joe Sam Queen (D-Haywood) tried to abolish the Program Evaluation Division, a legislative audit venture whose work he called “sophomoric.” This also failed under bipartisan opposition. (Updated - thanks, Gary!)
- Sen Martin Nesbitt (D-Buncombe) wants state Medicaid officials to start the long process of applying for a waiver to care for adult victims of Traumatic Brain Injury, an illness he expects will become more common here in NC as Iraq War vets begin to return en masse. That amendment passed easily.
- Sen Linda Garrou (D-Forsyth) ran an omnibus “fix-it” amendment she said was mostly technical. That’s true for some of it, but not all.
- It deletes a special provision that would have limited state school funding to one LEA per county. (Quite a few counties have two or even three.)
- It takes $350K away from local schools to restore some 2010-11 funding for the Governor’s School.
- It takes $5M from the Clean Water Management Trust Fund’s 2010-11 budget to shore up Regional Economic Development Commissions. (About $250K is specifically earmarked for BRAC-related development in and around Cumberland County.)
- It reverses proposed cuts that would have ended hosiery, textile, and tech programs at community colleges in Gaston, Catawba, and Haywood Counties.
- It includes defining language for this year’s trendiest financing strategy: two-thirds bonds. It’s a complicated concept, but in a nutshell, it lets lawmakers use voter-approved debt as a revolving credit line. The Constitution requires voter approval for General Obligation bonds, which is any debt issued against the “faith and credit” of state taxpayers. (This is the sort of debt usually used to build schools, roads, etc.) Eventually, those loans are paid down. “Two-thirds bonds,” originally approved in the '90s, allow lawmakers to re-borrow two-thirds of whatever they’ve paid off -- without the hassle of taxpayer approval.
Garrou’s omnibus amendment passed easily just before S202 was voted out of Approps. The bill also sailed through Pensions and Finance this afternoon with barely a peep from its critics.
It’s likely to win final approval Wednesday and Thursday, largely along party lines, and a full week ahead of the next round of bad news expected from the Revenue Department. Coincidence? Doubt it.
Comments? Drop me a line.
& Newsletters
