Ralliers Urge State to Cut Spending, Not Raise Taxes

The idea that North Carolinians are overly and unfairly taxed drew about 65 people to an anti-tax rally Wednesday evening at Wilmington City Hall.

“It’s not a budget crisis. It’s a spending crisis,” said Jonathan Hill, director of Citizens for a Sound Economy, referring to why the state has a projected $ 900 million budget deficit.

Supporters, armed with anti-tax posters and propaganda, lined the aluminum bleachers in place for the Azalea Festival Parade. Rush hour motorists continuously honked their horns at the crowd, as their posters urged.

Citizens for a Sound Economy along with the John Locke Foundation, both North Carolina based, conservative, nonprofit think tanks, headed into Wilmington for their fourth stop on a 25-city awareness campaign. The campaign was designed to draw attention to what both organizations call the state’s fiscal mismanagement.

Mr. Hill said the state could make up what it’s withholding from local governments by cutting at least $ 75 million from the Golden Leaf Foundation, a program that distributes money gained from a tobacco settlement to areas affected by a changing economy.

Of the $ 209 million Gov. Mike Easley recently withheld from local governments, Mr. Hill said Wilmington’s share is $ 2.5 million.

Mr. Hill also said the state’s university system wastes taxpayer money and he said there are 26,000 unfilled state jobs that are still funded at the state’s expense.

Don Carrington, the vice president of the John Locke Foundation, said he thinks the state gives too much money to nonprofit groups and called the North Carolina Global TransPark the governor’s “slush fund.”

“He’ll be the third governor to preside over that colossal failure,” Mr. Carrington said.

The Global Transpark in Kinston was originally designed to give North Carolina an edge in the worldwide shipping and distribution industry.