Budget Update
Smoke 'em if you've got 'em...you can do that in the state capital building...which makes for, quite literally, smoke filled back rooms.(Just don't light up on the floor of either chamber, where the smoking is verboten.)
The honoroables in the House are taking a break until 8:30 p.m so they can rest up and attend a function featuring Lou Dobbs. Maybe he'll give them some money advice they can put to use tonight.
Speaker Jim Black says he plans to take a vote on the budget bill "before midnight."
For Greensboro, the big budget news of the day revolves around the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.
Workers have recently found problems with the building being renovated for the center, driving up the cost of completion.
Until this morning, the museum wasn't mentioned anywhere in any of the three major drafts of the budget. But during the House Appropriations Committee this morning, Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat, proposed an amendment that was accepted.
It moves $100,000 from the N.C. Museum of Art to a new line item that creates a grant for the civil rights museum.
The amount of money is small relative to the needs of the project, but that's not important.
What's important, from a strategic point of view, is that the money is there.
That's because after the House passes its budget this week, the members of the House and Senate will hammer out a compromise budget between the two bodies.
Without a line item for the museum in one version of the budget or the other, it would have taken some serious arm twisting by museum backer to get a grant done at all. Now, it has passable shot at getting funded.
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