Seven more under-recognized bad decisions by General Assembly
Published October 1, 2014
By Chris Fitzsimmon, published in NC Policy Watch, September 30, 2014.
Last week we told you about seven bad decisions made by the General Assembly that have received very little attention amid all the back and forth about education cuts, the refusal to expand Medicaid, the massive tax breaks for the wealthy etc.
That list included everything from abolishing the funding for two nationally recognized programs, the N.C Teaching Fellows and Drug Treatment Courts, to ending the state Earned Income Tax Credit and the state deduction for 529 college savings plans.
Sadly, that list was just the beginning. Here are seven more damaging decisions state lawmakers made that are rarely mentioned any more, lost in the swirl of an election year.
1) Lawmakers abolished the state low-income housing tax credit that allows the construction of affordable housing for working families, seniors and persons with disabilities. The credit helped build more than 20,000 affordable housing units at 355 properties since 2003.
The award-winning program directs roughly $40 million to the poorest areas of the state and was supported by everybody from the homebuilders to anti-poverty advocates.
Lawmakers ended the credit and replaced it with an appropriation of $10 million. That means fewer affordable homes for families and low-wage workers at a time when thousands of people are still struggling to find a decent-paying job and have lost their unemployment benefits.
2) The General Assembly, astonishingly, made more cuts to the already severely underfunded court system. The Director of the Administrative Office of the Courts wrote legislators early this year pointing out that funding for technology in the courts has been slashed by more than 40 percent by the folks currently running the General Assembly and called the cuts “crippling” to the system.
Governor Pat McCrory proposed a small increase in technology funding but the final budget cut $2.9 million from AOC and remarkably made an additional and specific $500,000 cut to technology in the courts.
3) Despite all the bluster in this election year from legislative leaders about much they care about public schools, among the many reductions they made to public education was a $9 million cut to services for at-risk kids, money that local schools use for a variety of programs to keep kids in school and off the streets.
4) Lawmakers ended state funding for driver’s education in public schools beginning in 2015. That means the already strapped local school systems will have to pick up the cost or force parents to come up with the $300 to pay for it. That could mean that more than a third of eligible students won’t enroll in drivers ed and won’t get their license until they are 18, when they can take the state’s driver test without having taken a driver’s ed course.
5) Lost in all the talk of a pay raise for teachers—which varies from double digit increases to fractions of a percent—is that many school employees are not receiving raises at all, but instead are getting one-time bonuses of 500 dollars. That includes teacher assistants, custodians, and other non-instructional personnel.
Rank and file state employees are receiving a flat $1,000 increase, which means the folks who clean the Legislative Building in Raleigh are getting a pay increase twice as big as the folks who clean the local high school. Neither raise is enough. And no one has ever explained why there is a difference.
6) Maybe the most important education provision was one that was discovered after the budget passed. It means that funding for increases in student enrollment will no longer be automatically be included in the education budget.
Lawmakers could theoretically have chosen not to fund enrollment increases without the change, but they would have had to make a budget cut to do it. With the new budget provision, funding for new students will be considered along with other requests for new education funding.
Education officials have called this provision one of the biggest changes in education funding in a generation and for good reason. Funding for enrollment increases has automatically been built into the budget since 1933.
7) In another relatively quiet shift, lawmakers made thousands of families no longer eligible to receive child care subsidies, a program that allows parents to work or go back to school to earn a degree or marketable skill if they lose their jobs. The income eligibility change could affect as many 12,000 children.
Lawmakers defended the change by saying it will allow even lower income children currently on the waiting list to receive the subsidies. That’s little consolation to the only slightly less poor families who are losing their benefit and the ability to access affordable child care.
Another way to handle this dilemma would have been to increase funding to address the waiting list AND keep the subsidies in place for kids already receiving them. But lawmakers had that massive tax cut to pay for after all.
Last week we told you about seven bad decisions made by the General Assembly that have received very little attention amid all the back and forth about education cuts, the refusal to expand Medicaid, the massive tax breaks for the wealthy etc.
That list included everything from abolishing the funding for two nationally recognized programs, the N.C Teaching Fellows and Drug Treatment Courts, to ending the state Earned Income Tax Credit and the state deduction for 529 college savings plans.
Sadly, that list was just the beginning. Here are seven more damaging decisions state lawmakers made that are rarely mentioned any more, lost in the swirl of an election year.
1) Lawmakers abolished the state low-income housing tax credit that allows the construction of affordable housing for working families, seniors and persons with disabilities. The credit helped build more than 20,000 affordable housing units at 355 properties since 2003.
The award-winning program directs roughly $40 million to the poorest areas of the state and was supported by everybody from the homebuilders to anti-poverty advocates.
Lawmakers ended the credit and replaced it with an appropriation of $10 million. That means fewer affordable homes for families and low-wage workers at a time when thousands of people are still struggling to find a decent-paying job and have lost their unemployment benefits.
2) The General Assembly, astonishingly, made more cuts to the already severely underfunded court system. The Director of the Administrative Office of the Courts wrote legislators early this year pointing out that funding for technology in the courts has been slashed by more than 40 percent by the folks currently running the General Assembly and called the cuts “crippling” to the system.
Governor Pat McCrory proposed a small increase in technology funding but the final budget cut $2.9 million from AOC and remarkably made an additional and specific $500,000 cut to technology in the courts.
3) Despite all the bluster in this election year from legislative leaders about much they care about public schools, among the many reductions they made to public education was a $9 million cut to services for at-risk kids, money that local schools use for a variety of programs to keep kids in school and off the streets.
4) Lawmakers ended state funding for driver’s education in public schools beginning in 2015. That means the already strapped local school systems will have to pick up the cost or force parents to come up with the $300 to pay for it. That could mean that more than a third of eligible students won’t enroll in drivers ed and won’t get their license until they are 18, when they can take the state’s driver test without having taken a driver’s ed course.
5) Lost in all the talk of a pay raise for teachers—which varies from double digit increases to fractions of a percent—is that many school employees are not receiving raises at all, but instead are getting one-time bonuses of 500 dollars. That includes teacher assistants, custodians, and other non-instructional personnel.
Rank and file state employees are receiving a flat $1,000 increase, which means the folks who clean the Legislative Building in Raleigh are getting a pay increase twice as big as the folks who clean the local high school. Neither raise is enough. And no one has ever explained why there is a difference.
6) Maybe the most important education provision was one that was discovered after the budget passed. It means that funding for increases in student enrollment will no longer be automatically be included in the education budget.
Lawmakers could theoretically have chosen not to fund enrollment increases without the change, but they would have had to make a budget cut to do it. With the new budget provision, funding for new students will be considered along with other requests for new education funding.
Education officials have called this provision one of the biggest changes in education funding in a generation and for good reason. Funding for enrollment increases has automatically been built into the budget since 1933.
7) In another relatively quiet shift, lawmakers made thousands of families no longer eligible to receive child care subsidies, a program that allows parents to work or go back to school to earn a degree or marketable skill if they lose their jobs. The income eligibility change could affect as many 12,000 children.
Lawmakers defended the change by saying it will allow even lower income children currently on the waiting list to receive the subsidies. That’s little consolation to the only slightly less poor families who are losing their benefit and the ability to access affordable child care.
Another way to handle this dilemma would have been to increase funding to address the waiting list AND keep the subsidies in place for kids already receiving them. But lawmakers had that massive tax cut to pay for after all.
- See more at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2014/09/30/seven-more-under-recognized-bad-decisions-by-the-general-assembly/#sthash.aiMdF88s.dpuf
Last week we told you about seven bad decisions made by the General Assembly that have received very little attention amid all the back and forth about education cuts, the refusal to expand Medicaid, the massive tax breaks for the wealthy etc.
That list included everything from abolishing the funding for two nationally recognized programs, the N.C Teaching Fellows and Drug Treatment Courts, to ending the state Earned Income Tax Credit and the state deduction for 529 college savings plans.
Sadly, that list was just the beginning. Here are seven more damaging decisions state lawmakers made that are rarely mentioned any more, lost in the swirl of an election year.
1) Lawmakers abolished the state low-income housing tax credit that allows the construction of affordable housing for working families, seniors and persons with disabilities. The credit helped build more than 20,000 affordable housing units at 355 properties since 2003.
The award-winning program directs roughly $40 million to the poorest areas of the state and was supported by everybody from the homebuilders to anti-poverty advocates.
Lawmakers ended the credit and replaced it with an appropriation of $10 million. That means fewer affordable homes for families and low-wage workers at a time when thousands of people are still struggling to find a decent-paying job and have lost their unemployment benefits.
2) The General Assembly, astonishingly, made more cuts to the already severely underfunded court system. The Director of the Administrative Office of the Courts wrote legislators early this year pointing out that funding for technology in the courts has been slashed by more than 40 percent by the folks currently running the General Assembly and called the cuts “crippling” to the system.
Governor Pat McCrory proposed a small increase in technology funding but the final budget cut $2.9 million from AOC and remarkably made an additional and specific $500,000 cut to technology in the courts.
3) Despite all the bluster in this election year from legislative leaders about much they care about public schools, among the many reductions they made to public education was a $9 million cut to services for at-risk kids, money that local schools use for a variety of programs to keep kids in school and off the streets.
4) Lawmakers ended state funding for driver’s education in public schools beginning in 2015. That means the already strapped local school systems will have to pick up the cost or force parents to come up with the $300 to pay for it. That could mean that more than a third of eligible students won’t enroll in drivers ed and won’t get their license until they are 18, when they can take the state’s driver test without having taken a driver’s ed course.
5) Lost in all the talk of a pay raise for teachers—which varies from double digit increases to fractions of a percent—is that many school employees are not receiving raises at all, but instead are getting one-time bonuses of 500 dollars. That includes teacher assistants, custodians, and other non-instructional personnel.
Rank and file state employees are receiving a flat $1,000 increase, which means the folks who clean the Legislative Building in Raleigh are getting a pay increase twice as big as the folks who clean the local high school. Neither raise is enough. And no one has ever explained why there is a difference.
6) Maybe the most important education provision was one that was discovered after the budget passed. It means that funding for increases in student enrollment will no longer be automatically be included in the education budget.
Lawmakers could theoretically have chosen not to fund enrollment increases without the change, but they would have had to make a budget cut to do it. With the new budget provision, funding for new students will be considered along with other requests for new education funding.
Education officials have called this provision one of the biggest changes in education funding in a generation and for good reason. Funding for enrollment increases has automatically been built into the budget since 1933.
7) In another relatively quiet shift, lawmakers made thousands of families no longer eligible to receive child care subsidies, a program that allows parents to work or go back to school to earn a degree or marketable skill if they lose their jobs. The income eligibility change could affect as many 12,000 children.
Lawmakers defended the change by saying it will allow even lower income children currently on the waiting list to receive the subsidies. That’s little consolation to the only slightly less poor families who are losing their benefit and the ability to access affordable child care.
Another way to handle this dilemma would have been to increase funding to address the waiting list AND keep the subsidies in place for kids already receiving them. But lawmakers had that massive tax cut to pay for after all.
- See more at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2014/09/30/seven-more-under-recognized-bad-decisions-by-the-general-assembly/#sthash.aiMdF88s.dpuf
