Sunday budget news
The wife and I took the kids swimming today. When we wandered back in, a statement from Gov. Mike Easley was sitting in my e-mail:
"Earlier today, my staff met yet again with House and Senate budget leaders on the reduction in revenues and the best ways we believe to deal with that reduction. I am concerned that this message keeps falling on deaf ears."The State Constitution requires that a budget be balanced before I sign it. The General Assembly cannot ignore reality. The very latest numbers verify that we remain short of the estimates that legislative budget writers are currently using.
"We recommended specific and sensible ways to fill the budget gap.
"It makes no sense to provide almost $20 million in tax cuts to the wealthy, in this economic environment, as they currently propose."
It goes on, and uses this phrase: "the budget must be balanced and have the right priorities for me to sign it." That's a veto threat in not so many words.
As has been noted on several fronts, the honorables have incentive to end the session quickly. Pretty much all of them have some sort of fall campaign to run, and several members of the Senate are running statewide. Speaker Hackney has a big NCSL meeting in the middle of July, and one would imagine he doesn't want to be messing with an ongoing legislative session while he does that.
The governor, however, loses all his playmates when the session ends. Also, when I've spoken to Easley one-on-one and in group settings about the budget, it's clear that he doesn't want to leave the next governor with the sort of budget emergency he inherited. So this idea that he's worried about declining revenues (as well as his own signature programs) seems to come from a genuine place. (Bonus: at the same time he fights for his signature programs, Easley gets to use the bully pulpit to claim the high-ground on fiscal responsibility. It seems to me this e-mail is an opening salvo in that campaign.)
And since the budget written last year is a two-year budget - this year's is merely a tweak - Easley wouldn't have to do anything drastic like shut down the government if he were to issue the first budget veto in North Carolina's history.
I'm not saying it's going to happen, but Easley's veto threat carries a little more weight this year.
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Update: I just spoke to Rep. Alma Adams, a Greensboro Democrat and one of the legislative budget negotiators. She said that as of 4:45 p.m. the budget chairs were still at the legislative office building and still working. When asked how late they would stay tonight, she said, "I don't even know." It didn't sound like an agreement was within striking distance, but that's just one woman's opinion.
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Update 2: The barkeep has a good roundup of roundup of all things budget related this week.
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Update 3: "They're making some progress on some small things but there haven't been any big breakthroughs yet...no eureka moment," said Bill Holmes, a spokesman for the Speaker's office who is keeping tabs on the budget negotiators today.
"Big things" would mean tax breaks that the legislature wants and the governor doesn't, enrolment increases for the university system, teacher salaries, etc...