Halt Cuts in Budget, Education Chiefs Ask
The Senate gave educators and economic development experts an
opportunity Monday to plead for no more budget cuts in the next
two years, but they had to share the floor with about 60 people
from an anti-tax group who showed up to oppose any tax hikes.
Senate budget writers allowed several members from North
Carolina Citizens for a Sound Economy to make their case that the
state should rein in spending, instead of adopting a lottery or
raising taxes.
About 25 school superintendents joined an equal number of
community college presidents and several UNC chancellors to
impress upon legislators that further budget cuts would reverse
the gains they have made in student performance and in training
workers in a tough economy. All three systems are seeing rising
numbers of students, but the money they get for enrollment growth
is ending up supplanting budget cuts.
“We cannot sustain cuts at this magnitude and provide for the
increased numbers of students who are coming here,” said UNC
President Molly Broad.
But Dennis Riddell, a member of the anti-tax group, said that
the state has yet to get serious about curbing spending in tough
times. Riddell, 46, a father of eight from Alamance County, said
he has had to cut his expenses to get by, and the state should
too.
“If that’s proper for a family, I don’t think it’s foolish for
the state,” Riddell said.
Others contended that raising taxes would hurt an economic
recovery. They said a lottery for education, as Gov. Mike Easley
has advocated, would send the wrong message to children.
One speaker, Andrea Harris, president of the N.C. Institute of
Minority Economic Development, said the Senate should eliminate
corporate tax breaks.
The hearing came as Senate and House budget writers remain
deadlocked over passing a budget.
The House’s latest $ 14.8 billion plan includes cuts to health
and human services, education and other services that senators
say would cause too much harm. The Senate has produced a $ 15.1
billion plan that doesn’t cut as deeply, but doesn’t cover what
Senate budget analysts project as a $ 628 million shortfall in
revenues for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Those analysts
say the Senate could need to plug a $ 1.5 billion hole in the
budget’s second year.
Senate Democratic leaders have suggested that a lottery or an
increase in the tobacco or alcoholic beverage taxes would help
solve the problem. But House leaders say they can’t raise more
revenues, and they are using $ 510 million in one-time federal
budget relief money to get by.
Only a few House members trickled in to listen in on the
hearing. Two said what they heard wasn’t going to help break the
impasse.
“It didn’t change my mind,” said House Republican Leader Joe
Kiser, who sits on a committee of House and Senate members
negotiating a compromise budget. “We just don’t have the votes in
the House to do what the Senate wants us to do, and we keep
telling them that.”
About half of the Senate showed up for the hearing. Those who
spoke tended to challenge the viewpoints of the anti-tax
advocates.
One speaker noted that she received a sound education in the
1960s though she sat in classrooms of 30 or more students. Sen.
Walter Dalton, a Rutherfordton Democrat and Appropriations
co-chairman, responded that education took up 70 percent of the
state budget then, compared with 58 percent today.
Dalton closed the hearing with a history lesson about one of
his district’s favorite sons, the late Gov. O. Max Gardner.
Dalton credited Gardner for helping create the state’s first
sales tax, which Dalton said helped keep the schools open during
the Depression.
“I hope we keep the same kind of priorities he had, because
education and economic development go hand in hand,” Dalton said.
“As I said before, we’re not doing a two-year budget. We’re doing
a 20-year budget.”