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Tuesday: The Senate's Turn
posted at 2007-05-29 23:58 | Last modified 2007-11-14 10:38
Don't get me wrong - I'm delighted to see the Senate's budget proposal come out so early. But I speak for many of my Press Corps colleagues when I say there oughta be a law against putting out a budget the day after a three-day weekend. It's bad enough coming back to work in those circumstances without being faced with hundreds of pages of fine-print math.
But anyway, it's out. And it's on. And frankly, it's lacking a lot of detail. But here's the big stuff:
At 20.1 B, the Senate side rings up a full 263m less than the House proposal. A big chunk of that is the 300 million the Senate is passing up by letting go of "temporary" quarter-percent sales and income tax surcharges scheduled to sunset this year
What they cut:
82 million less for health and human services,
133 million less to reserves,
116 million less for capital projects (more on that below),
18 million less for agriculture,
35 million less to retirement plan payback,
14 million less to the state health plan.
What they didn't cut:
Education gets 60M more for the UNC system. K-12 hangs steady, community colleges take a hit.
Courts get 39 million more, although that's all revenue from higher fees - doubled in most cases - for everything from missing your court date to driving an overweight truck.
Debt. Lots of it. The Senate plan triples the House proposal for COPS spending, topping out at 1.2 billion in non-voter-approved borrowing. Senate Finance chair Dan Clodfelter defended that figure today, saying it falls within state Treasurer Richard Moore's debt ceiling. But Clodfelter also conceded any bond package to come would have to look for "other financing."
Jury's out:
State employee raises come in at 4 percent, a bit lower than the House's 4.25 percent. But House J2 chair Dan Blue told me that was where he thought the number would wind up, albeit with some one-time bonus money to help lower-earning employees catch up.
Medicaid -- the Senate budget appropriates nothing - zero dollars - to help counties pay their share of Medicaid. But it DOES include a promise to fix the system. Hey, 100M in aid (House version) is great. But not needing the aid would be priceless. Senators Dan Clodfelter and Tony Rand are running two competing proposals to revamp the system. Clodfelter's has more bipartisan support. But then again, he ain't Tony Rand.
Other interesting stuff in the Senate bill includes:
Gas cap
The Senate spending plan includes a provision to make the current cap on the gas tax permanent. Last year's temporary cap is set to expire June 30th, and with current gas prices shattering records, you can bet the tax would increase July 1st. The Senate proposal keeps the cap at 29.9 cents.
Needle exchange
The Senate bill includes permissive language (but no dollars) for three pilot "safe syringe" needle-exchange programs. Republicans are bristling. So are House conservatives on both sides of the aisle, who managed to sandbag a similar provision in their own spending bill. Chances are good it's a Senate-side bargaining chip that won't survive conference committee.
Parking wars
The Senate plan would do away with assigned parking for the vast majority of workers at the downtown Raleigh complex. Instead, the state would rent first-come, first-served lots that could be "overbooked" by no more than 15% percent.
Okay, maybe state worker attendance is bad. But is it really THAT bad? How smart is it, really, to further alienate already-underpaid workers by forcing them to come in half an hour earlier to get a parking place, or to pay for one? And what's the productivity cost when visiting state employees hold up a meeting because they can't find a place to leave the van? Someone needs to think this one through a little more.
Oh, wait, that's right -- no one HAS yet, because they haven't had the chance! Rumor has it Senate Approps subchairs were handed their budgets by the big chairs. Rank-and-file Dems didn't see the spending bill till 8:30 this morning. The GOP didn't get it till 11am. Approps started two hours later. But who needs transparency when you have party discipline?
COPS and robbers
What makes COPS attractive is that they don't require voter approval because they're secured by the value of the project, not the "full faith" of the state. But the flipside is that, because the loans are therefore less secure, the rates are higher.
If these projects are truly essential to the state, then in my opinion, elected officials should go out to the voters and make a case for them as part of a regular bond referendum. If voters won't okay the borrowing, maybe there's a reason. But it seems like it shouldn't be standard practice to go around the voters, and then make them pay more for the privilege of having no say.
Overheard:
Best lines of the day from Senate Approps:
"Ïf we're taking this out of Learn and Earn, you better lock and load, that's all I can tell you."
Senate Maj Leader Tony Rand, on a proposal by Sen Julia Boseman to find 750K for summer school to expedite teacher training. Her amendment was displaced and rewritten to take the money out of another budget item - one the Governor wasn't guarding "with a shotgun," as Rand put it.
"I have advocated calling the question and getting the h*ll
out of here."
Tony Rand, again, in an exchange with another Senator (Janet Cowell?), frustrated by the stack of proposed amendments to the Senate budget.
And the winner is:
"That's not an earring."
Deputy Senate GOP leader Tom Apodaca.
Senate budget co-chair Linda Garrou announced in Approps today (in jest) that a stray earring had been found (a "chandelier earring with a gold center and dangling Carolina Blue beads," according to a later lost-and-found email), and that it obviously belonged to Apodaca Hear it here.
Apodaca's swift comeback -- "Senator Garrou, that's not an earring" -- elicited a collective "Ewwww!!!" from the Press Room.
Apodaca's staff assures me the good Senator has "no piercings that they know of." And that's more than enough information for me.
Comments? Drop me a line.
