Subsidized child care
Gov. Easley's budget provides money for tackling new problems, such as the mess in mental health care.
But it also would chip away at some long-standing issues that have flown kind of under the radar. One example: subsidized child care.
The state pays to subsidize child care for low income families so the parents can head to work. It's not only a social service, but something economic developers say is useful in creating a stable workforce.
Easley's budget would spend enough to remove 1,110 children from the waiting list, all of it in federal block grant funds. He didn't propose putting any state funding into it.
Just by way of comparison, there are somewhere north of 27,000 kids on waiting lists for subsidized spots.