Like Governor Perdue's recommendations, the Senate spending plan would increase real spending over the tentative appropriations approved in last year's biennial budget bill. Curiously, however, the Senate would reduce the appropriations for public education and public safety...
Justice and Public Safety spending would decline by $83 million in the Senate's 2010-11 budget proposal. Most of the cut in JPS would come from corrections...
Like Gov. Perdue, the North Carolina Senate fails to look beyond a patch-work budget for the current year and ignores the massive fall-off in revenue coming next year. Their reliance on more than $1.5 billion in non-recurring federal stimulus funds and $1.3 billion in temporary tax revenue to help balance this year's budget establishes a massive structural deficit of nearly $3 billion for next year's 2011-12 budget.
Our leaders in the state of North Carolina are similar to those in Guilford County in one important respect. They are muddling their way through this year's budget process, and making some tough choices; but overall their actions do not deal with the awful reality of what is to occur next year, or the year after that.
The North Carolina Senate appears poised to undermine our state's criminal justice system, which is already lacking.
Guilford County and North Carolina residents have every reason to believe they are being set up for tax increases next year or in subsequent years. If Republicans win either house of the state legislature in the fall, they would have a thankless task ahead of them.
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