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So the House started its public hearing on the budget at 6 p.m. tonight. I don't know about the satellite locations, but I ran out from the Raleigh location to do some edits on a story at 7 p.m. and there were still a good 60 folks or so hoping to eventually get a seat in the auditorium.

And Rep. Doug Young, who was running the show while I was in the room, said that more than 2,000 comments had come from online.

The comments seemed almost all aimed at asking legislators to preserve funding for different programs. I heard little from the cut-the-budget/lower taxes folks, but I wasn't in the room for a very long.

You can tune in live at this link. I've asked whether the forum will be archived online somewhere, but haven't heard back.

Among those who waited for (and eventually got) a seat were former Greensboro Mayor Keith Holliday and Guilford County Education Association President Mark Jewell.

Here's the early Associated Press report:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - House budget-writers gathered Tuesday night to hear from constituents and interest groups on what should be the state's spending priorities in the next two years, a job made tougher with news of dwindling tax collections.

The House Appropriations Committee held a rare statewide public hearing seeking comments about how to manage North Carolina government spending during difficult fiscal times.

Earlier Tuesday, Gov. Beverly Perdue announced that she would force state workers to take a 0.5 percent pay cut from their annual salaries through the end of June as April 15 tax collections were worse than projected.

The news meant lawmakers likely will need to find another $1 billion in spending cuts or additional taxes to close a budget hole entering the new fiscal year July 1, or a $4 billion-plus budget hole. That's nearly 20 percent of the $21.4 billion spending plan approved last summer by the Legislature.

Perdue presented a two-year budget proposal in March, and the Senate passed its version of the plan three weeks ago.

"The simple fact is that (Perdue's) budget is now obsolete. The Senate's budget is now obsolete. We are going to have to have more cuts than either the governor or the Senate," House Speaker Joe Hackney, D-Orange, said before the meeting.

A few hundred people gathered at the primary committee meeting in the auditorium of the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, but others also gathered at 10 community college campuses to participate by video conference. The event also was to be shown on the Internet.