Chris Fitzsimon
The General Assembly session that began May 14 at noon and ended just before 5:00 in the afternoon July 18 is now being wrapped up, critiqued and evaluated. Pundits and partisans are assigning letter grades to lawmakers, providing detailed reviews of what passed the House and Senate and what didn’t and speculating about what it all might mean for the fall election.
That’s all worth doing; the more scrutiny, the better, especially if it’s put in the context of the challenges North Carolina faces, not just the effect on voters’ decisions in November.
The 170 members of the House and Senate introduced 1,332 bills and resolutions this summer. At last count, 251 of them passed, the most important of which was the $21.4 billion budget bill approved the second week of July and signed by Gov. Mike Easley a week later
Many bills that almost passed were big stories too. Lawmakers decided not to protect kids from bullying at school, failed to address the racial bias in the death penalty and made no adjustments to the state health plan despite a growing shortfall that may result in higher costs for state workers that could wipe out much of their 2.75 percent pay raise.
Legislators also balked at proposals that were wisely left on the table, including a plan to weaken state regulation of hog farms, a repeal of the local-option transfer tax for counties and a proposal to give a handful of millionaires on Figure Eight Island an exemption from the state ban on sea walls that protect the coastline.
But any meaningful evaluation of this session must start at its beginning in May, or even a few days before, when legislative leaders framed the next two months, defining expectations with reminders that this was a short session that doesn’t allow time for substantive debate on many issues.
The budget predictions were equally cautious, understandable given the state of the national economy, but House and Senate leaders also decreed that raising new revenue was off the table, including Easley’s call for higher taxes on cigarettes and alcohol.
There was no appetite for other ways to raise money either, like requiring combined reporting for multi-state corporations to prevent them from shifting profits around to avoid state taxes.
That was the stage set as the session began: no time for big issues, no money for compelling needs like affordable housing, child care and the probation and parole system. Budget writers were given strict targets, and the final budget reflects them with the smallest overall spending increase in several years.
It was enough to convince a majority of House Republicans to vote for the final budget, though it authorizes $857 million in new debt without a vote of the people and creates a hole in next year’s budget by spending $156 million of one-time money on recurring needs.
More investments were wisely made in children’s health care, dropout prevention and early-childhood programs. Most of the new spending pays for raises for teachers and state employees.
But some of the lawmakers’ claims about education and children ring hollow. The final budget does not fully fund the increased cost of fuel for school buses or the bonuses paid to teachers as part of the ABCs testing program.
There were roughly 29,000 kids on the waiting list for a day-care subsidy when the session began and there were roughly 28,000 on it when the session ended. Advocates have consistently said that it will take $50 million a year to address the state’s affordable housing crisis, yet the budget only includes $2 million in new funding for housing statewide.
Lawmakers did approve a plan to help families facing foreclosure, but the larger affordable-housing problems were largely ignored. The budget sets aside money for the troubled probation and parole system where caseloads for officers have reached 100 in some counties, an impossible situation brought to light with the murders of two Triangle college students earlier in the year.
Lawmakers are waiting for a national review of the system and it needs one, but there shouldn’t be any disagreement that caseloads should be lowered now before another violent offender is lost in the shuffle.
There was no time to pass legislation to help local governments with public transit, but lawmakers approved several toll roads and took money from the General Fund to pay for them, money that could have gone to housing, child care or the probation system.
There’s plenty more of course, another mixed bag on mental health, ill-advised gang legislation and some modest new protections for farm workers.
This was not the worst short session in recent history, far from it. But it was not the best one either. The limits were set in May and lawmakers spent the next two months banging against them, reassuring us all that they were doing as much as they could for child care and housing and health care when they were only doing as much as the limits they set allowed.
Keep that in mind when you hear all the evaluations and read the grades assigned to this session – that most of them are grading on a curve.
Chris Fitzsimon is the director of NC Policy Watch.