A budget of poor choices that threatens the state’s future

Bt Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, August 13, 2013.

One way to predict how North Carolina will fare in the future is to look at how much lawmakers are willing to continue the investments in the people and vital institutions that helped the help the state grow into a leader in the New South in the last 40 years.

The state made major strides in the last generation by beefing up public schools and higher education, expanding targeted economic development and worker training efforts and creating innovative ways to improve public health and protect the natural environment so essential to the quality of life.

It’s not an accident that North Carolina has been among the fastest growing states in the country and that many areas of the state have been ranked as the best places to live and work and raise a family. Governor Pat McCrory recently touted the latest accolades in his constituent newsletter.

But the state didn’t cut its way to being the best place to live, it took years of intentional public investments. Sadly, the budget passed this year by the General Assembly and signed recently by Governor McCrory again rejects the lessons of the relatively prosperous past.

That’s one of the clear messages from a new report on the final state budget from the N.C. Budget & Center, which points out that state spending as a share of the economy is at a 40-year low. The budget also spends 8.3 percent less than before the Great Recession hit in 2008 when adjusted for inflation.

Education at all levels took a major hit this year, despite the claims otherwise by McCrory and legislative leaders. Education spending fell $260 million short of what was needed to maintain the inadequate funding levels of last year.

The effects of the cuts are reflected in daily headlines in communities across the state, teacher assistants laid off, teaching positions eliminated, and university staffs reduced.

And it’s not just the state’s education system that the budget neglects. The list of damaging cuts and areas that the budget woefully underfunds is long, from early childhood programs to economic development in rural areas to a program that helps people with living with HIV/AIDS get the medicine they need to stay alive.

The budget writers claim that growth in Medicaid spending was responsible for the cuts and the lack of a pay raise for teachers and state employees. But it’s not true. Medicaid spending increased, but lawmakers knew last year the increase was coming and refused to admit it, instead building savings into the budget that were impossible to achieve.

The Budget & Tax Center report points out that lawmakers were able to come up with more than $600 million over the next two years to pay for a tax cut that will go primarily to corporations and the wealthy. That’s money that could be keeping teachers and teacher assistants in the classroom and helping low-income families send their children to college.

The report also documents the smoke and mirrors in the budget—taking money from dedicated funds, relying on unspent dollars to fill recurring holes and increasing fees on thousands of people while lawmakers boast that they cut taxes.

The state budget is nothing more than a list of priorities and policy choices about how to invest public dollars and how much to invest.

Lawmakers do deserve credit for finally coming up with the money to provide some compensation for the living victims of the state’s horrific eugenics program.

But otherwise, this budget makes poor choices from start to finish and threatens the bright future that the people in North Carolina want for their families. Tax cuts for the wealthy and less funding for education are not going to get us there.