By Chris Fitzsimon
After weeks of closed meetings in corner rooms, the full Senate budget emerged Tuesday morning, most of it anyway. It’s notable for its differences with the spending plan presented by Gov. Beverly Perdue three weeks ago and for what it doesn’t include – most significantly, details of a tax package to raise $500 million.
Senate leaders want to spend less on public education and more on the university system than Perdue. Most of the difference comes in the Senate proposal to increase class size by two students in every grade in public schools, saving $322 million, a proposal that prompted swift criticism from Perdue and her education czar, Bill Harrison.
Harrison protested other education cuts in the Senate proposal too, including a $60 million reduction in the fund that pays for school construction.
Sen. Linda Garrou defended the larger classes, pointing out that she had 40 students back when she was a teacher, a lesson that unfortunately seems to have stuck with her.
The UNC system was the obvious beneficiary of the class size change.
President Erskine Bowles has been saying for weeks that the possibility of $175 million in permanent cuts would force hundreds of layoffs and a significant reduction in class offerings. Perdue proposed $167 million less for the university system. The Senate wants to cut only $35 million.
The Senate plan avoids even deeper cuts in other parts of state government by following Perdue’s lead in using the $1.7 billion in federal stimulus money to fill part of the budget hole, though that funding may end in two years, leaving a huge shortfall unless the economy rebounds and state revenue increases.
There are still some painful budget cuts in the Senate plan, big and small, like less money for Communities in Schools, which works to keep students from dropping out, and a sharp reduction in services for seniors and people with a disability covered by Medicaid.
The budget also includes reductions that it leaves up to agency heads to define and gives top state officials the ability to furlough state employees, a strategy that Perdue opposes.
Like almost every budget, there are things to like too, most of them emphasized by budget writers as they presented the plan to their colleagues Tuesday. There’s an expansion of health care for children, more school nurses and more money for community health centers. The Senate wisely rejected Perdue’s call to eliminate Sentencing Services, an important prison alternative program.
The Senate budget does cut funding for Smart Start by $15 million, part of a confusing approach to child care and helping at-risk kids. The plan transfers More at Four from education to the Department of Health and Human Services, appears to take half its funding to set up a new program described as a classroom subsidy for four-year-olds, then uses federal stimulus money to replace much of the new program’s funding. Child advocates say that’s a move that the Obama Administration may not allow.
There is no ambiguity about the process the Senate used to put the budget together. It was almost completely closed, with decisions made in corner rooms in private, unannounced meetings of a handful of Senate leaders.
When the only real discussion of the plan came in a budget committee meeting Tuesday, the usual restrictions governed the debate. Amendments were only allowed within subject areas.
A senator who wanted to spend more on mental health services by cutting funding for the Commerce Department was out of luck. It’s against the rules to even propose it. You have to be one of the privileged backroom few to make that happen.
The Appropriations Committee approved the budget after considering a few amendments and now it heads to the Senate floor with no details of the $500 million tax package. Reportedly, Senate leaders are likely to propose smaller increases in cigarette and alcohol taxes than Perdue recommended and are considering expanding the sales tax to cover more services and lowering the overall rate.
If it’s true that those changes in the sales tax are coming, it’s a long-overdue move toward a better revenue system, but nobody will know until at least next week, when the Senate Finance Committee may unveil its tax plan.
Nobody knows much in the Senate unless they are in those corner rooms.
Chris Fitzsimon is executive director of NC Policy Watch.