The Republicans in the legislature are taking an unprecedented approach to ramming through a budget drawn behind closed doors and unopen to debate or amendments. Cynics who watch the legislature say the budget is always drawn behind closed doors. Maybe so, but it’s not stuck in a conference bill and, until now, it went through committee hearings that would change it and give it plenty of sunlight.
This budget leaves it up to reporters and legislative observers to uncover the shenanigans. And there are plenty. The budget shows large cash payoffs to the GOP base. A Christian boys’ camp gets $250,000. Anti-abortion organizations get their cut to the tune of more than $1 million.
They’ve been trying to slowly place the burden for school funding on local government for years. This policy is just more dramatic.
North Carolina made a smart decision back in the Great Depression to put the responsibility for schools in the hands of the General Assembly. In a state that has pockets of extreme poverty, the measure ensures that low-income areas can still offer quality education for their children. It’s enshrined in the state constitution and is essential to maintaining good public schools in North Carolina.
The provision in the GOP budget bill was ostensibly added to allow two towns in Mecklenburg County to establish town-run charter schools, but it could have loads of unintended, or possibly cynical, consequences. As Scott Mooneyham of the League of Municipalities said in the News & Observer, “This is a monumental policy change in North Carolina that is receiving very little vetting. Constitutionally the state has a duty to operate and fund schools. … Sometime down the road does this result in a statutory shift of some of that responsibility?”
It’s one thing to add pork to the budget, but policy shifts like this one should be debated openly, not shoved down our throats in an opaque process. Rural residents in poorer counties are once again about to be thrown under the bus with the support of their own legislators, many of whom aren’t sharp enough to see the bus coming. This time, most won’t figure out what happened until it’s too late. The lack of transparency is disturbing and the ideological logic of pushing the financial responsibility for public schools onto the backs of local government dismantles the system of education we’ve built in this state. It also runs contrary to the constitution and the promise of a guaranteed quality education for our children.
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 >
Whenever it was that these people who worked at gaining political power started at it, government, they do not appear to ever studied the purpose of it.
I used to complain about unread hippies, but overall my complaint is against ignorance. Skills are one thing, but the other type of knowledge is wisdom.
How to make wisdom work depends on the desire that it do so. Over and over the goals matter. My goal as a political artist is to create and maintain civilization. The more educated the population of citizens the more of a civilization you get.
it is 1+1 equals two.
The more ignorant people walking around on the streets with you means the more of a sea of barbaric humanity you are swimming in.
Both the States and the Federal Government must follow the Constitution accepting the goals and the goals dictate the right ways to achieve a general shared experience of civilization.
We want to help our fellow man or we don’t. People who are born into poverty are not doomed to lives of barbarity unless we work to ensure that that is the outcome. “A man cannot pull himself up by his own bootstraps. He only ends up with his ass in the air.” That is the complete and real quote of Abraham Lincoln.
Privatizers do not want to help their fellow citizen. The benefits of a government are only supposed to flow to their people, meaning not all the people of the government.
Making movies the rule is script to budget or budget to script. What our government is supposed to do is count up all the necessary costs for the education of citizens, and find or create that necessary money.
It is a nationwide problem caused by the desire of states with finite access to money to control what people coming out of their schools know, and more importantly believe. They don’t want to ask the Federal Government for the rest of the money to accomplish the goal of a public school system because then people will began to believe too much for them in a powerful Federal Government.
The promise of an American Civilization is equality. Equality in education requires federal money prop up state access to enough money to create a per capita universal educational experience.
The Federal government can simply create all the necessary funds whereas the states, no matter whether or not they tax all the poor and none of the rich or all of the rich according to ability to pay and none of the poor, let everybody gamble, skim from vice or what’ll, have only a finite amount of money.
The US Treasury is not a finite bank but an infinite issuer of funds for any necessary expense that defends and educates its citizens.
The States that care more about States Rights than the rights given to citizens by the Federal government don’t want federal money and then here it looks as if they misuse education funds if I understand money to disappear that the Federal Government gave them specifically for education.
If they don’t want to get the money from the Federal Government then they must create their own bank and issue their own currency.
Two things the government has as its duty are defense and education. Don’t elect people that don’t know what they are supposed to do and don’t want to figure out how to do it.
Well they are standing there so they get elected. The constitutions of states are what they are supposed to believe in, but they often do not believe in the goals laid out in their constitutions. No longer does the University System believe in free or as close to free as possible, higher education for all of the State’s citizens. “That’s just a technicality.”
They have the same sort of problem in the EU. Since nationstates adopted a common currency and can’t control the value of their individual currencies they can’t generate enough money for the expenses they have. Over there what is happening due to their common currency is War by another means. To fix their problem with the EU they can issue their own currency while continuing to use the Euro.
Southern states need to actually accept that they lost the Civil War, and they don’t print their own currency and their citizens have the right to demand their representatives get what is needed from the Federal Treasury augmenting their finite Treasuries.
I thank you for your time. Thanks to Editor Mills for creating this space. Mr. Mills has stood for elective office and standing for office is a big deal. I believe most of us are baffled at why our Republican representatives would want to create impossible financial situations for local governments.
It is not really baffling since they say they want to destroy the federal government. They can’t really do that but they can destroy the civilization of the state.
I feel as though there is more to say here, like how we need to look at the roll of the National Guard and what we really ought use that manpower for. We are paying for it. Why’d we borrow money to pay for it? It is really not needed for defense from invasion. It’s a Civil Defense and Disaster Response Force. Maybe we ought make all young State citizens serve in it and pay them with North Carolina Treasury notes they can pay their State Taxes with?
Thank you, Thomas, for a great post. I think Republicans will try or have tried these stunts in other places, including my adopted state of Virginia. The saving grace in the Old Dominion is that the state is turning blue, even in the legislature. Tar Heels need to elect Democrats, any Democrat, to stop these horrible actions by Republicans, who are not the Republicans I remember growing up in North Carolina. Frankly, I long figured that North Carolina spent too much on its Cadillac university system and neglected the public schools. Now, the Republicans are neglecting or ruining both systems.
This legislature can only remain in power if they toe Betsy DeVos’ plan to make our kids less educated, more racist and hateful. The GOP has one agenda- self-aggrandizement and the destruction of anything they disagree with.
Our teachers and students have made their wishes known. Many parents too. A prosperous society is only possible when people are enabled and have good opportunities. After seeing the fraud and graft practiced at so many charter schools (Francis Bacon Academy, for instance), what fiscally responsible government drains resources to fund private institutions-especially without establishing better oversight?
Republicans continue to make it their job to represent only a tiny fraction of our citizens. Then they blame everyone else when their plans turn out to be trash.
Brrger and his ilk had better either wise up or retire- we have plenty of issues to deal with without this club of entitled fools wiping out ehat is left of NC’s public school ststem.
This legislation is intended to let suburbs withdraw from urban districts. Urban centers will be able to fund their schools for some time to come because they will be growing for some time to come. When they stop growing or they raise taxes to the point that growth is harmed, the schools will be harmed. By then, the memory of this shift of funding will be distant and the GOP can go back to their “culture of poverty” arguments and blame poor people for a problem the GOP created. In the immediate future, this will be yet another kick in the teeth to rural constituents from the people they voted for. Poor and rural counties will suffer because their tax base is shrinking and the state now has reason not to take up their slack. So short-sighted it boggles the mind. I lived in Ohio for a time and saw what happened with this type of funding scheme. Inner city and rural schools were terrible. As poverty moved to the suburbs, property owners bore the brunt of tax increases while problems associated with increased poverty diminished the quality of education. This is the fate that awaits Matthews, Mint Hill, and other suburban areas of the state.
Matthews and Mint Hill will fare light years above our seriously rural areas of NC to Charlotte’s far east and to Charlotte’s far west. And unfortunately those constituents here in the west, at least will continue, unknowingly to vote for these Republican legislators and against their own interests.