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For the Record: 02/14/08

Posted on February 14, 2008 by Staff

Politicians seeming not to care
Politicians always like to quote the state motto that appears on the state seal in front of the Legislative Building in Raleigh when they are making speeches and promising to be responsive to the people they represent.

The motto is “Esse Quam Videri” — “To be rather than to seem” — a noble sentiment that is part of any definition of leadership. North Carolina would be much better off if more elected officials tried to live up to the motto, instead of only using it for rhetorical flourishes when asking for votes.

The last few days in the state’s political and policy circles don’t inspire much confidence that will happen. Saturday afternoon, several thousand people marched to the Legislative Building to support a 14-point policy agenda developed by the North Carolina Chapter of the NAACP and a coalition of more than 70 progressive organizations.

The 14 points include specific legislative demands like expanding funding for the Housing Trust Fund, more support for the state’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, fully funding poor schools involved in the Leandro lawsuit and adopting the recommendations of commissions that investigated the 1898 overthrow of the local government in Wilmington and the state’s forced sterilization of poor and African-American women that lasted until the early 1970s.
State lawmakers adopted part of the agenda in the 2007 session, allowing same-day voter registration at early voting sites and setting up a public financing program for candidates for three Council of State offices. The marchers came back to Raleigh to build support for the rest of the 14 points, and speaker after speaker explained in detail the coalition’s proposal and the statistics that supported it.

Several candidates were on hand, including some current members of the General Assembly. No Republican legislators attended, but the News & Observer story about the event included reactions from House Minority Leader Paul Stam and Sen. Neal Hunt.

Stam said “there was nothing on the agenda that was practical or within our power or something I wanted to do.” Hunt said he “guessed” he saw the agenda during the last legislative session, but didn’t pay much attention to it.

Apparently Stam and Hunt don’t believe there is an affordable-housing crisis in the state or agree with many of their fellow Republicans who have long supported the Housing Trust Fund to address it.

Neither seems bothered by the fact that Historically Black Colleges and Universities have been dramatically underfunded or that the state has yet to provide the sound, basic education to every child that the state constitution guarantees them.

Most troubling of all, neither seems to care what thousands of people in North Carolina want their state government to do. Stam claims that nothing on the agenda is practical or within his power, which is nonsense since the state budget that he debates and votes on affects almost every proposal.

Hunt’s response is even worse. He can’t be bothered to even pay attention to policy proposals that affect millions of people in North Carolina, including women who were sterilized against their will by the state as late as 1971.

There is significant legislative support for many of the items on the 14-point agenda, though adopting it won’t be easy as long as it’s okay for legislators to brush off ideas that bring 4,000 people to the Legislative Building.

Stam and Hunt and other politicians who so easily dismiss the concerns of so many people seem not to be all that interested in helping the people they represent. That means they need to be reminded again and again about what the people want. Seventy organizations and the hundreds of thousands of people that make up their membership aren’t going away. Time to plan the next march.

— by Chris Fitzsimon

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