They’re finally gone. Early this morning about 4:30 or so, the General Assembly adjourned. They left a lot of damage in their wake, but it could have been worse.
On the down side, our pubic schools continue to be underfunded and our teachers underpaid. In a blatantly discriminatory move, they’ve allowed magistrates to opt out of marrying gay couples. They privatized Medicaid despite having a system that was working, saving money, and providing good service. An anti-environmental bill that passed last night stripped away protections and monitoring because they were working. The GOP again raised taxes on poor and middle-class families by expanding sales taxes on services but exempting services most used by upper income people and businesses. They passed a bill that will allow leaders of the legislature to essentially run their own parties and take unlimited contributions from a variety of sources including corporations. I’m sure there was more bad stuff but that’s what I remember without digging.
Not much really good legislation passed, but some bad legislation was stopped. At the end of the session, when mischief and bad ideas flourish, the Senate tried to pass a bill that would syphon money from traditional public schools and give it to charters. The House bottled it up at least until next spring. Another Senate bill that would have restricted the power of local government also died in the house. The House also blocked a sales tax redistribution plan that would have harmed cities while managing to get some increased funding to rural areas. They restored a portion of the film credits that will help keep the movie industry in Wilmington. The House also protected teaching assistants that the Senate wanted to eliminate. We will get to vote on a bond referendum that would fund some much needed infrastructure improvements.
The big take away from the session is that House Speaker Tim Moore is a serious player. He served as the counter balance to Phil Berger’s Senate that his predecessor, U. S. Senator Thom Tillis, never could. While the Senate is full of ideologues who would remake North Carolina into a free-market utopia, Moore is a conservative pragmatist who wants government to function. Having Moore as a counterpart is a setback for the Senate after years of outmaneuvering the overly ambition Tillis.
Pat McCrory, for his part, comes out just as he went in. He’s a hapless politician with limited skills who was more of a spectator than a participant. The Senate and House control the state.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Well, I am a teacher and my husband is on disability due to several major health issues. We are definitely lower middle class. My taxes did not go down, in fact, we owe the state more! So who are you thinking about?
And the “opportunity” scholarships are just an end run around the NC Constitution which says in black and white that the state will fund a FREE Public Education for every child. It does not say that parents can get money to put towards private, parochial or any other type of school. Just because Mark Martin and his court need a refresher on the rule of law does not make it right to take taxpayer money illegally and hand it out. Democrats or anyone with common sense knows that this is just a first step towards hand out to the wealthy. They are just trying to garner praise for “helping the poor” and hope to ride on that wave toward more insidious activities.
You think allowing magistrates to opt out of marrying gay couples out of religious convictions is important enough to cite in you legislative review?
But no mention of good legislation that passed like the income tax reduction (or the revenue surplus brought on by the last round of GOP income tax cuts), the increase in funding for the Opportunity Scholarship Program for low income families, the increase in the state’s “rainy day” fund, or of the increase in education funding, etc.
What a biased, jaundiced view. One thing is for sure: more is never enough for the left when it comes to public resources. More spending, higher taxes, more regulation and more control over individual lives is the mantra of the left in NC and everywhere else.
Allowing magistrates to discriminate against anybody is noteworthy to report in such a review. What next? If a magistrate objects to the death penalty should he/she be permitted to refuse to issue a warrant for first degree murder? And that revenue surplus to which you refer is because we in the middle class and below paid more taxes so the yacht owners could get yet another cut in theirs. The so-called opportunity scholarships are a drain on the already underfunded traditional public schools and are hardly enough to pay tuition to a decent private school and the biggest recipients are Muslim schools which you decry. You like that?
What a specious argument. Even the most liberal legislature is not going to authorize magistrates to opt out of issuing criminal warrants. It’s just something that’s not going to happen.
And it’s a total fabrication that the state’s revenue surplus came from increasing taxes on the middle class. Middle class income tax rates were lowered. The surplus resulted from increased “business activity” (i.e, profits). Read the May 10, 2015 memo from the nonpartisan, professional staff of the NCGA’s Fiscal Research Division.
Liberals are aghast that conservatives have passed a program that will actually help low income families become self-sufficient instead of encouraging them to become wards of the state. Vouchers programs such as Opportunity Scholarships pose a lethal threat to the left’s political power, so it’s not at all surprising that Democrats oppose them so vehemently.
“What a biased, jaundiced view.”
It’s an opinion piece, it’s supposed to be biased. Just like your comment is biased.
“Moore is a conservative pragmatist who wants government to function.”
In North Carolina, the defintion of “function” is open to debate.