Press Releases and Newsletters
Feb. 18 Daily Update
An aide to Pres. Pro Temp Berger indicated today that the Senate Republican Caucus would likely be looking at capping the gas tax this session.
The gas tax is tied to the average wholesale price of gas, which means as gas prices climb the tax does as well. Each penny of gas generates about $50 million for road maintenance and construction as well as other transportation spending.
Four years ago as gas prices climbed the General Assembly capped the tax for two years at 29.9 cents a gallon which decreased the State transportation maintenance and construction budget by $524 million over a four year period. Subsequently, the General Assembly changed the law to create a floor for the tax at 29.9 cents a gallon.
Governor Perdue’s proposed 2011 budget and the NCDOT 10 year work plan both assume the gas tax continues only with a floor and not with a cap. Capping the gas tax at the current rate will cost about $1 billion in transportation revenues from the 10 year work plan. Stated another way, a loss of $800 million from maintenance, $200 million from construction, and $30 million from Powell Bill and secondary road funds. These reductions will be in all 100 counties across the State. Click here (letter size) (legal size) to see one scenario of how those cuts could be allocated across each of the counties.
The Metro Mayors will be discussing the issue at our meeting next week, but in the meantime, please be considering the effect capping the gas tax will have on the state roads in your cities, on our state highways, and on the construction projects planned for your community.
As always, call me with any questions at all.
Julie White
Feb. 21 The Week Ahead
First up is the possibility the Governor vetoes SB 13 Balanced Budget Act of 2011. The Governor has ten days after recieveing a bill to make a decision on what to do with it. Her options include signing the bill, letting it become law without her signature, or a veto. She was quoted over the weekend saying she would let her decision be known today but staffers subsequently said Tuesday at the earliest. Sounds like there is discussion in the background seeking a compromise on the bill between the Governor and the General Assembly.
The tort reform debate is heating up this week with SB 33 Medical Liability Reforms. The Advocates for Justice (aka Trial Lawyers) have launched a web ad/campaign against the bill.
SB 9 Make Synthetic Cannabiniods Illegal will be heard in House Health and Human Services on Tuesday.
NCDOT Chief Operating Officer Jim Trogdon will be giving a NCDOT overview to the Joint Transportation Committee Tuesday at noon.
The Appropriations subcommittees continue to meet this week hearing agency presentations and further details of the Governor’s proposed budget.
I will be headed to Greensboro Wednesday afternoon for the Metro Mayors Winter Meeting Thursday and Friday so no updates on those days.
Have a great week,
Julie
Veto foreseen, but it’s a ‘fight worth having’ (News and Observer)
Veto foreseen, but it’s a ‘fight worth having’ (News and Observer)
All indications remain that Gov. Bev Perdue will pull out the “veto” stamp this week and thunk it down on a bill, now on her desk, aimed at sweeping money from a range of accounts while also giving Perdue authority to make $400 million in cuts at state agencies.
There seems to be little doubt that Perdue, a Democrat, will send the money bill back to the General Assembly. Republicans are in charge there, but did not get a veto-proof majority in the House on the legislation, Senate Bill 13.
Perdue said continued debate on the bill, sparked by her veto, is a “fight worth having.”
“I think I have until Wednesday,” Perdue said of reaching a final decision. “Everybody knows how I feel.”
Perdue has been concerned by a part of the bill that takes about $67.5 million headed to the Golden LEAF Foundation, which is funded by national tobacco settlement money, and about $8.2 million left in accounts that the state uses for business incentives.
Perdue said the tobacco foundation was created so that its grants shouldn’t be touched. She wants to honor that. And she says the incentives help create jobs.
Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis said he stands ready to help the governor with a jobs package, if one is needed. But the state should be looking to save everywhere.
Tillis, who is from suburban Charlotte, met last week with the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, which had sided with Perdue, and emphasized to its leaders that he will actively help bring in jobs. “As a result,” the chamber said in a statement, “we are comfortable that the provisions of SB 13 that were originally of concern have been put in a broader context and our concerns have been alleviated.”
The chamber withdrew its opposition to the bill.
“It’s about $10 million or $20 million that seems to be at issue,” Tillis said of a bill that he said would save tens of millions.
It has to be done
Perdue’s budget proposal includes $10 million in the One North Carolina incentive fund, which is controlled by the governor, and $7 million in job development investment grant money, another incentive pot. Her plan says the One North Carolina money is “seal the deal” funds that are critical.
While seeking the money, Perdue said she wishes itweren’t so. Competition among states is the overriding factor, she said.
“I don’t think anybody in America would be anything but ecstatic if North Carolina was unilaterally disarmed from this race,” Perdue said. “Forty-nine other governors have incentive capacity. … I personally hate
Republicans have said they are focused on creating a better tax and business climate that will attract jobs without government deciding on amounts and recipients of grants and other giveaways.
Cutting and creating
Much of the focus of Perdue’s budget has been on the proposed cuts to state employees – as many as 3,000 people and 10,000 positions. But her office says also that jobs and economic development funds she has included in the plan would create 10,000 jobs over the next three years.
State employee association leaders say it’s outrageous for Perdue to get rid of existing jobs while allocating incentives money in the hope of creating future ones.
Perdue points to five big efforts that she says would lead to job creation:
1. A cut in the corporate income tax rate. It costs the state $418 million. Her office says it will lead to 5,573 jobs.
2. An unemployment insurance tax credit for small businesses. Cost to the state: $65 million. New jobs: 1,300.
3. A traffic “mobility” fund to “address critical congestion bottle necks.” Cost: $76.8 million. New jobs: 1,459.
4. Her plan to spend $75 million repairing and renovating state and university buildings would create 1,500 jobs.
5. The $10 million sought for the One North Carolina fund. That would create 200 jobs, according to her plan.
Compiled by staff writer J. Andrew Curliss
Published Mon, Feb 21, 2011 02:00 AM
Modified Mon, Feb 21, 2011 05:06 AM
Golden LEAF spending decisions touch off controversy (Fayetteville Observer)
Golden LEAF spending decisions touch off controversy (Fayetteville Observer)
By Paul Woolverton
Staff writer
An $800,000 grant to provide iPod Touches for every child and teacher in grades five through eight in the Bladen County school system.
A total of $400,000 in grants for a horse park in Hoke County, where few people can afford horses.
A $100 million grant to build a jetliner factory in Lenoir County that promises to create 1,000 high-paying jobs by the end of 2016. The factory, which opened last year, had 163 workers by December.
Those are just some of the controversial spending decisions made by the Golden LEAF Foundation since it began awarding grants in 2000.
Golden LEAF gets its money from a settlement that North Carolina and other states made with the nation’s cigarette makers to end a lawsuit over the costs of caring for people suffering from smoking-related diseases.
Under terms of the settlement, North Carolina stands to receive $4.6 billion during the first 25 years of the 21st century. The legislature created Golden LEAF in 1999 to dole out half of the money to communities suffering economically from the decline in tobacco production. The foundation also underwrites statewide programs designed to help North Carolina move away from the tobacco economy.
While Golden LEAF President Dan Gerlach touts the program’s many successes – including 36,708 jobs created and retained through 2010 and $188.7 million in additional payroll – some Republican lawmakers and conservative activists say Golden LEAF has been little more than a slush fund for the Democrats.
Some critics also say it’s wrong to use government money to provide economic incentives for industry, something that Golden LEAF has done over the years.
“The Golden LEAF doesn’t have a perfectly clear history,” said Rep. John Blust, a Republican from Guilford County. “I’m sure you find very good things in many of their grants, but there have been mistakes. There has been money wasted.”
Blust thinks that the Golden LEAF’s board, appointed by the governor and House and Senate leaders, is subject to political pressure from them when it awards grants and that it would be best to put the money under the direct control of the General Assembly.
Gerlach, who worked for Gov. Mike Easley before taking the Golden LEAF job in 2008, said he didn’t see such pressures while he was in the governor’s office and hasn’t seen any since moving to Golden LEAF.
Golden LEAF has a professional staff that studies all requests and makes recommendations to the board, he said. Some decisions, such as the $100 million for the jetliner plant, are subject to a long, detailed evaluation. If the jetliner factory fails to create the jobs as promised, Gerlach said, the manufacturer is required to give back the money.
Blust’s criticisms of Golden LEAF were made this month in the General Assembly, during a debate over whether the state should take $67.6 million – Golden LEAF’s share of this year’s tobacco settlement payment – and use it to to help close a gap in the state budget.
The House and Senate voted to take the money, although they have not attempted to take Golden LEAF’s assets, which total more than $600 million. In past years, some lawmakers have tried.
On Thursday, Gov. Bev Perdue criticized the decision to take this year’s Golden LEAF payment. She said she has not decided whether to veto the measure, which is part of a larger set of cuts to balance the budget.
Incentive programs such as Golden LEAF are vital to help North Carolina compete for jobs, Perdue said.
“We have a 9.6 percent unemployment rate, and that is my primary task, to help those workers in this state find work, and I need the tools to do it,” Perdue said. “I believe that as we set it up, we did so thinking that somebody might want to invade that corpus. That’s a fight worth having, to me. We’ve got to have that tool.”
Cumberland County could be affected if the state uses the Golden LEAF money to help balance the budget. The program is scheduled to award $2 million in grants to Cumberland County in the next year. A committee is forming to select the grant requests.
Critics from two influential conservative organizations want to dissolve the program.
“It just needs to go away,” said Francis De Luca, president of the J.W. Pope Civitas Institute, an organization in Raleigh that promotes conservative issues and candidates. “Because that’s public money, and it’s being doled out by a private board appointed by politicians.”
John Hood, president of the fiscally conservative John Locke Foundation, expressed a similar view.
“Golden LEAF should never have been created,” Hood said. “The Master Settlement money should have flowed to the state’s general fund, based on the original theory of the case that smoking had a negative effect on state expenses, through the state employee health plan and Medicaid.”
The John Locke Foundation has been at odds with Golden LEAF since its inception. A 2008 review of Golden LEAF by the State Auditor’s Office didn’t help matters.
The audit found that in 2002 and 2006, the board invested Golden LEAF money in companies having potential conflicts of interest with a political campaign contributor, a board member and a public official. The three investments totaled $46 million. None of the investments was illegal at the time.
The audit also chastised the foundation for keeping poor records of its meetings and poor track of whether its grants succeeded.
Although Hood thinks the Golden LEAF foundation was manipulated early on by former Gov. Easley and other Democratic leaders, he acknowledged that political influence over it has since waned.
“I will hasten to say that I think Golden LEAF is much better managed today than it was years ago,” Hood said.
Republican Party leaders in the House and Senate say they aren’t prepared to dismantle the program.
“Golden LEAF does help create jobs,” said state House Speaker Thom Tillis.
State Sen. Phil Berger, the newly elected Republican Senate president pro tem, said that beyond taking this year’s payment to balance the budget, no decision has been made on Golden LEAF’s future.
Using some of the settlement money to help the tobacco-dependent communities was a good idea, Berger said, but he thinks the program is due for review.
“Were the decisions that were made 10 years ago, when it was created, does that still fit what we need to do?” he asked.
Recipient support
Those who have received Golden LEAF money staunchly support it.
Gerlach said grants that have been criticized would hold up if the critics took more than a superficial look at them.
Jane Murray, executive director of the Carolina Horse Park, said the grants that underwrote the park in its early years are paying off for Hoke County.
“There is no doubt that the economic impact we have had is growing and increasing,” she said.
The park holds events, such as Olympic equestrian trials, more than 100 days a year. The events draw visitors who stay in local hotels, eat at local restaurants and otherwise spend in the area, Murray said. The horse park estimates its events put at least $1.5 million annually into the area’s economy.
Marilyn Lee, curriculum and instructional director for Bladen County schools, acknowledged that some people might question the purchase of iPod Touch devices, which essentially are hand-held computers, for 1,600 students and 75 teachers. Although the grant award specifies iPod Touches, Lee said the school system hasn’t decided what kind of computers to buy.
“I don’t want it to be just a toy,” Lee said.
The computers, which ultimately could be small laptops or iPad tablets instead of iPod Touches, would connect to a wireless network in the school buildings, operate educational software and provide the teachers and school district a way to track the students’ learning progress, Lee said.
Gerlach said it’s important to note that the $800,000 grant won’t be paid until Bladen County submits a detailed, acceptable plan for what it will do with the money. The Golden LEAF payment is subject to whether the schools get other grants to upgrade their computer networks.
Educators believe that the computers will help the students later in life, Lee said.
The idea was based on a program in Mooresville, a city in the North Carolina Piedmont, Lee said.
The Mooresville school district provides a laptop computer to every child in grades four through 12, said spokewoman Tanae Sump-McLean.
“They use them at home, they use them every day in class,” she said. Golden LEAF did not fund that program.
Each computer is loaded with educational software and allows the students to learn at their best pace and through a means that often is better than a lecture in a classroom, Sump-McLean said.
The Mooresville district has seen standardized test scores rise by 13 points, the graduation rate rise by 22 points – to 86 percent – and the dropout rate decline, she said. The district attributes those successes, in part, to the computers.
Staff writer Paul Woolverton can be reached at woolvertonp@fayobserver.com or (910) 486-3512.
BUDGET PROPOSAL SHIFTS COSTS TO AND TAKES FUNDS FROM COUNTIES (Association of County Commissioners)
BUDGET PROPOSAL SHIFTS COSTS TO AND TAKES FUNDS FROM COUNTIES (Association of County Commissioners)
The budget proposal unveiled by Governor Beverly Perdue on Thursday would cause a major shift in how the state’s public education system is funded and would force more responsibilities on county governments while reducing much-needed revenues to counties for school construction. The proposed budget shifts responsibility to counties to pay for replacement school buses ($56.9 million) and takes the unprecedented step of forcing counties to assume the workers’ compensation costs for state-paid public school employees ($34.6 million) and community college employees ($1.7 million). The proposal also reduces state-funded positions in the local public school systems for administration, academic support and other non-instructional support areas, which will put additional pressure on counties to fund these positions.
“Counties have been assured by lawmakers that the state will not attempt to balance its budget by pushing down unfunded mandates and additional responsibilities to counties or by taking county revenues,” said NCACC Executive Director David F. Thompson in a news release issued Thursday afternoon. “The current budget proposal does both, and we will be working with the House and Senate to address our concerns.”
Statutorily, counties are supposed to receive 40 percent of lottery proceeds for school capital needs. The proposed budget uses most of the county share of lottery proceeds for state education expenses and eliminates the county share of the corporate income tax dedicated to the Public School Building Capital Fund. These moves add up to a loss for counties of almost $200 million per year in much-needed school construction funds. The budget proposal also shifts more social services administrative costs to counties, resulting in $5.4 million of additional expenses for counties, and reduces state aid to public health departments by $6.8 million.
Counties have lost more than $260 million in school capital funds during the current biennium, and the budget proposal for the upcoming biennium would take away more than $375 million from counties. Here is a year-by-year look at the revenue losses to counties.
2009-10 – state took ADM funds from counties ($100 million loss to counties)
2010-11 – state took ADM funds from counties ($100 million loss to counties) and reduced lottery appropriation from $176 million to $113 million ($63 million loss to counties)
2011-12 – state ends ADM fund transfer from corporate income tax ($72 million loss to counties) and reduces lottery share to $45 million ($115 million loss to counties)
2012-13 – state ends ADM fund transfer from corporate income tax ($75 million loss to counties) and reduces lottery share to $45 million ($115 million loss to counties)
Total losses for counties: $640 million.
Higher gas tax not likely, Berger aide says (N&O)
Higher gas tax not likely, Berger aide says (N&O)
Submitted by BruceSiceloff on 02/18/2011 – 11:12
Market forces will push North Carolina’s record-high gas tax even higher in July — unless political forces decide otherwise.
Democrats were in charge four years ago when drivers were unhappy about rising gas taxes, so they capped the tax for two years at 29.9 cents a gallon. That ceiling was converted to a legislative floor in 2009, and our inflation-adjusting tax has risen since then to an all-time high of 32.5 cents.
The General Assembly’s new Republican leaders seem likely to put a lid on it again.
“They have not specifically talked about this in caucus,” says Ray Martin, press secretary for Republican Sen. Phil Berger, the Senate president pro tem. “But it’s likely they’d want to look at capping any increase in the tax.”
Rising wholesale prices are pushing the tax higher. The gas tax is based on a formula: Currently, under the temporary law enacted in 2009, it is 17.5 cents plus the higher of two numbers — either 12.4 cents or 7 percent of the average wholesale price. That’s a minimum of 29.9 cents a gallon, and no maximum.
Gov. Bev Perdue’s proposed budget assumes the gas tax will increase by about a penny in the coming year. But a higher increase is possible under the 7 percent formula, which adds about a penny of tax for every 15-cent increase in the wholesale price. Retail gas prices have risen about 48 cents in the past six months, and the underlying wholesale price also has increased.
Each penny of gas tax generates about $50 million for road maintenance and construction, and other transportation spending.
Read more: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/crosstown/higher-gas-tax-not-likely-berger-aide-says#ixzz1ELNKpdG1
AFL-CIO and Chamber Ask For a Gas Tax Increase, Senators Agree (D.C. Streetsblog)
Business and labor came together to make a rare show of unity today to push for a robust transportation reauthorization with adequate investment for infrastructure. And they spoke out loud and clear for a higher gas tax. Most surprising of all – it seemed that Senators were finally ready to have a mature discussion about it.
The gas tax has been a third rail issue lately. While finance and infrastructure experts roundly agree on the need to raise the tax – which hasn’t been increased since 1993 and whose purchasing power has been gutted by inflation and improved fuel efficiency – politicians have been unwilling to get behind a tax hike during a down economy.
Enter Tom Donohue and Richard Trumka, two towering figures in U.S. economic life. Donohue, the cantankerous chief of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Trumka, the man’s man who heads the AFL-CIO, don’t agree on much. In fact, a favorite joke of today’s Senate hearing, where the two appeared together, centered on the strange-bedfellow nature of their joint push for infrastructure investment.
“The fact that Tom Donohue and I appear before you today does not mean that hell has frozen over or unicorns are now roaming the land,” Trumka joked in his opening statement at the Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. Delaware Democrat Tom Carper interjected, “When I walked up here from the train station this morning I did see a pig fly overhead.”
Carper noted that he was one of the only people on the Hill willing to support a modest increase in the gas tax to pay for infrastructure and deficit reduction. He has suggested raising it a penny a month for 25 months. The deficit commission has moderated that proposal, recommending a penny a quarter for three and a half years (resulting in a 15-cent increase), with all of the revenues going to infrastructure. Carper says that works fine, too.
Think about it – a 15-cent increase in three and a half years. I’ve seen three and a half months where we’ve seen gas prices go up – or down – by that much. I’ve seen three and a half weeks – and we all have – where they’ve gone up by that much. So I would ask you, in spirit of ‘the things worth having are worth paying for,’ to keep that in mind and help find a way to make this acceptable to the folks in our country.
Rich Trumka agreed. He said all funding and financing options should be on the table, from a stronger TIFIA loan program to a reauthorization of the Build America Bonds to an infrastructure bank. He proposed a half-cent tax on financial transactions, saying Wall Street created a mess that taxpayers are still paying for. (He and Donohue part ways on this particular recommendation.)
But in the end, Trumka said none of that will generate the robust funding at the level that’s needed.
We must rely on and boost our user fee revenue streams, a key component in addressing our huge infrastructure deficit. The gas tax has not been raised since 1993. It provides diminishing levels of funding and should be raised. Other forms of user fee funding mechanisms such as creating a user fee based on vehicle miles traveled have been discussed.
He cautioned that user fees can “have an unfair and disproportionate impact on working people if not properly designed” and threw in a pitch for collective bargaining rights, saying that when people earn a decent living they don’t “squeak” at paying a higher gas tax.
And Trumka also noted that federal investment was key because, despite all the talk of public-private partnerships, especially by House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica, “Private capital has never and will never adequately invest in public infrastructure because private investors cannot capture the economic gains that infrastructure creates.”
Well, sure, you might be thinking – the tax-and-spend liberals in the AFL-CIO might get behind a gas tax but the big-business conservatives of the Chamber of Commerce will never go for it, right? Wrong.
“We’ve been doing this since Dwight Eisenhower,” Donohue said. “If you’ve got another way, I’m glad to hear about it. I haven’t seen it.”
Tom Donohue was president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations for 13 years before going to work for the Chamber. He says back then, California truckers resented paying a user fee that would be used to build roads in Nevada, but he told them, “you have to build roads in Las Vegas or you’ll never get out of California.” These days, truckers are begging for a hike in the diesel tax if it would mean that the country would repair its roads and reduce traffic.
The brainstorm continued. Sen. Barbara Boxer asked about a fee on shipping containers entering the country at customs. Donohue shot that one down as fast as he shot down the financial transaction fee idea, saying exporters would find ways around the fee and might slap a tariff on U.S. goods in retaliation.
That left Boxer with the stone-cold realization that the answer, really, was the gas tax. Yes, Donohue said. It’s just common sense, “recognizing that you’re collecting half of what you used to.” Boxer added that people driving electric cars aren’t paying anything for the roads, and started mulling the VMT fee.
“I don’t like the idea of putting some ‘spy thing’ in people’s cars,” Boxer said. “I would do it on an honest basis where every year you pay registration and you pay a fee for vehicle miles traveled.” But raising the gas tax is simpler, she acknowledged, echoing Donohue’s point, which she admitted she hadn’t thought about before, that “we have system in place and to create new system is controversial and we don’t know the consequences.”
The hearing involved some of the usual bickering over bike lanes and transit – the “hitchhikers” onto a Highway Trust Fund intended just for highways, to hear Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-OK) tell it. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) reminded him that public transportation investment actually creates more jobs than roads and attracts development near transit stops.
Trumka and Donohue refused to get dragged into that debate, asserting that roads and rails are both necessary to create jobs, reduce congestion, and build a 21st century infrastructure.
by Tanya Snyder on February 16, 2011
Perdue outlines cuts, keeps most of temporary sales tax in place (Wral.com)
Most of a temporary increase to North Carolina’s sales tax rate would remain in place, state parks and welcome centers would close two days a week and about 10,000 government jobs would be eliminated under two-year spending plan outlined Thursday by Gov. Beverly Perdue.
With fiscal analysts projecting a $2.4 billion deficit for the fiscal year that starts in July, Perdue’s $19.9 billion budget for the 2011-12 year is only about $1 billion less than the budget she proposed two years ago.
The governor previously said she would allow temporary taxes approved two years ago by lawmakers to expire as scheduled this year, but her budget plan rolls back the penny increase to the state sales tax by only a quarter cent. That means the state tax rate would be 5.5 percent – down from the 5.75 percent now collected but higher than the 4.75 percent that would be collected if the tax were to expire.
The surcharge on income taxes for upper-bracket earners will expire as scheduled under Perdue’s budget.
As promised Monday in her State of the State address, Perdue also wants to cut the state corporate income tax rate from 6.9 percent – among the highest in the Southeast – to 4.9 percent – among the lowest in the nation.
To save money, Perdue proposed consolidating 14 state agencies into eight, eliminating many back-office functions she says are redundant. Altogether, her budget calls for eliminating 10,000 state jobs, but State Budget Director Charlie Perusse said only about 3,000 are now filled.
The governor said her spending plan protects every state-funded teaching position in North Carolina, but the budget also would eliminate about 4,000 clerical, custodial, transportation and administrative jobs in public schools. She also wants to cut funding for textbooks by about one-third.
Perdue said she expects more than 1,000 state workers will accept an early buyout provision included in her budget. The plan calls for giving those eligible for retirement an extra $10,000 payout, while younger workers who would retire with reduced benefits would get a $20,000 payout.
Other spending cuts include closing the nine welcome centers at North Carolina’s borders on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and state parks also will close two days each week. The state Department of Transportation and Department of Commerce will begin privatizing the welcome centers next year, according to the budget proposal.
State lawmakers last week passed legislation that would hold money back from several economic development funds this year. Although Perdue has spoken out against the move, she includes taking $7 million from the Job Development Investment Grant program to help balance the budget.
Leaders of the Republican majority in General Assembly will examine Perdue’s plan as they create their own budget.
Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger quickly issued a statement saying Perdue was breaking her promise to allow the temporary sales tax to expire.
“Instead of making tough choices to tighten the state’s belt, Gov. Perdue is balancing the budget on the backs of North Carolina taxpayers and local governments,” Berger said. “She is breaking her promise to end the taxes she raised, she is underfunding our retirement system and she is saddling local governments with hundreds of millions in additional expenses. This is not how to get North Carolina back on track.”
Republican legislative leaders have said their budget would focus on cutting spending, limiting government power and supporting the private sector. They plan to deliver a budget to Perdue’s desk before July 1, when the new fiscal year starts.
Reporter: Laura Leslie
Web Editor: Matthew Burns
Posted: 6:30 a.m. today
Updated: 18 minutes ago
Feb. 16th Daily Update
A big thank you to Salisbury Mayor Kluttz and Rocky Mount Mayor Combs who traveled to Raleigh today to meet with the Justice and Public Safety Appropriations Co-Chairs. They had a particularly positive meeting with Senate Majority Leader Brown who shares many of our perspectives on the courts needs.
The Governor is releasing her budget tomorrow at 10 AM with a press conference and then the budget will be presented in detail to the General Assembly at 1pm. Click here (and then on Appropriations Committee Room) at 1pm tomorrow to listen along.
The Joint Transportation Appropriations Committee heard a presentation by NCDOT on funding. The presentation covered funding sources, the equity formula, and NCDOT’s cash management and finance strategies. The question and answer period after presentations is always interesting as you can gain insight into what is on the member’s minds. Today’s questions included a wide range of topics. There was a discussion of our status as a donor state, meaning we send more transportation revenues to Washington D.C. than the State receives back. Rep. Iler noted that the Mobility Fund could be helpful in addressing our ports needs and asked if NCDOT thought we should have a specific fund for bridge replacement. Sen. Rabon asked if other states have different motor fuel tax rates on gasoline as opposed to diesel. Mark Foster, NCDOT Chief Financial Officer, noted that some states have differing rates, but in some cases the diesel rate is higher than the tax on gasoline and in others it is lower. Sen. Forrester asked for further explanation of the public private partnership model. Rep. Killian asked the department to look further at the cost efficiency of using more concrete as opposed to asphalt. He asked for additional details about the $65 billion funding gap and a review or validation that each project on that list is still viable and desired. Rep. Killian expressed his interest in looking further at the NCDOT cash management minimum requirements to ensure we are maximizing the use of our dollars at all times. Killian also noted the 1989 equity formula statute which says when 90% of the Intrastate System Mileage is completed the formula changes to 66% population, 34% equal share and wondered if in twenty years we have not finished 90% perhaps it was time to move on.
This afternoon the Senate moved SB27 Involuntary Annexation Moratorium from the Senate floor to the Senate Finance Committee. Please keep talking to your representatives and let them know cities and towns across NC are committed to making significant and meaningful changes to the city initiated annexation laws-including a strong voice for annexed residents.
SBI Changes (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The House has approved a package of operational and oversight changes for the embattled State Bureau of Investigation crime laboratory. The House voted 118-0 Tuesday in favor of the proposal created following negative publicity for the SBI lab and an outside report that raised questions about work by the lab. The bill now goes to the Senate. The measure would create a standing advisory panel of scientists to regularly review lab procedures and would change the lab’s formal name and purpose to make clear it doesn’t work solely for the prosecution. Anyone who willfully withholds any lab tests from attorneys in a case also would be guilty of obstruction of justice.(THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 2/15/11).
