Business Chiefs Skip Tea Party

Guess who didn’t attend Tuesday’s anti-tax “tea party” at the General Assembly? Big bidness.

It’s not that big bidness is anti-social or that its people didn’t learn the correct way to drink a cup of tea – pinkie extended – at the country club.

No, big bidness is on the opposite side of the issue from the big tea bags of the anti-tax movement: The Citizens for a Sound Economy, the John Locke Foundation, the state Republican Party, and the conservative talk-radio announcers.

In fact, the N.C. Citizens for Business and Industry, which functions as the state’s Chamber of Commerce, has called for passing a 1-cent increase in the sales tax to get the state through the current budget crisis. The group supports a half-cent local-option sales tax for local governments and a half-cent, statewide sales-tax increase that automatically would expire after three years.

“Major cuts have already been made – about $ 600 million in cuts from public schools, universities, health and human services and other state programs and agencies,” Gordon Myers of Asheville, the chairman of the business group, wrote in a recent letter to the GOP state Senate caucus. “The business community does not want to see our programs and services gutted. Without competitive programs and services, like schools and roads, we cannot recruit and retain businesses and industries in North Carolina.”

Big bidness’s backing of a tax increase is hardly surprising given North Carolina’s history. The business community has a long tradition of supporting public improvements. That is why political scientist V.O. Key, in his classic 1948 study of the state, called North Carolina a “progressive plutocracy.”

Gov. Cameron Morrison, the darling of the Charlotte business community, pushed through huge bond issues in the early 1920s that helped make North Carolina a pioneer both in road building and in higher education. O. Max Gardner, a Shelby textile executive, and his proteges helped enact a sales tax and reorganized state government during the depth of the Depression.

The last businessman to serve as governor, Luther Hodges, a retired textile executive, helped craft the state’s moderate response to the civil right rights movement and laid the groundwork for the Research Triangle Park and the state community college system in the 1950s.

The list of forward-looking businessmen who helped shape North Carolina as the leader of the South is a long one: Robert Hanes, Archie Davis, John Medlin, George Watts Hill, Hugh McColl, Walter Davis and John Belk are examples.

The business community led the campaigns in 1996 for the road and education bond issues and in 2000 for the largest statewide bond issue for higher education passed in American history. The top executive of the N.C. Citizens for Business and Industry, Phil Kirk, is also chairman of the State Board of Education.

Big bidness, of course, looks out for its own. Don’t look for business leaders to push for pro-union legislation, to lobby for more stringent workplace rules or ask to close corporate tax incentives. They’re supporting a sales tax increase, not a corporate income tax hike.

If taxes become unduly burdensome, the state’s “progressive plutocracy” would undoubtedly protest. But for now, big bidness wants no part of any tea parties.