The dust is still settling at the General Assembly after the House passed its budget early Thursday morning on basically a party line vote. Democrat Rep. Bill Faison voted against it and Republican Harry Brown mistakenly voted for it.
The most interesting thing about the vote was that many of the Republicans who voted against the budget were intimately involved in writing it, most notably Rep. Wilma Sherrill, who along with Rep. Debbie Clary are chairs of the Appropriations Committee, the folks who put the budget together in those backrooms.
Several other Republicans co-chair the key subcommittees and had steered the decisions in individual issue areas. Steer the ship and then jump off it and complain about where it is headed appears to be the plan.
House Speaker Jim Black will now appoint a committee of House members to meet with a group of Senators to iron out the differences between the two budgets. Generally, only lawmakers who voted for the bill are asked to serve on the negotiating teams, meaning that no Republicans are likely to part of the process. Several Democrats are already promising to protest if Black appoints any Republicans to the committee.
There wasn’t much drama in the debate, though things did get off to an interesting start when Rep. John Rhodes offered an amendment aimed at curtailing the use of discretionary money by legislative leaders. Fellow Republican Rep. Richard Morgan moved to table the amendment telling the House that Rhodes proposal wasn’t worth wasting time. Maybe the Republicans are not quite united yet.
There were plans by a handful of House members to offer an amendment to restore the $1 million for the AIDS Drug Assistance Plan that was taken out of the budget. The amendment never came so the budget contains no money for the program that literally keeps people alive. The decision comes on the heels of a new report showing that the HIV infection rate is growing among women in the South, particularly women of color. Let’s hope those infected in North Carolina all have the means to by the medicine they need to stay alive. It is clear the General Assembly has no interest in helping them, as the state’s shameful neglect of people with HIV/AIDS continues.
Republicans were relatively muted in their opposition to the House budget, leaving the most strident rhetoric for the Republican Party officials. Those that did complain about the plan relied on the usual anti-tax rhetoric without many specifics of how they would have balanced the budget without making massive cuts to education and human services.
But Republican House members do have a point about the process used to put the budget together, which seemingly gets more secretive every session. House leaders did allow the Appropriations Committee to meet for several hours and consider more than 50 amendments, but the budget is still unveiled by a handful of lawmakers, not assembled by committees so everyone can participate.
Several decisions in the budget changed three or four times before the final budget was released. At one point, there was $10 million in the budget for the Housing Trust Fund, and then there was no money for it. The final budget had $5 million for the fund. Subcommittee chairs are allegedly in charge of their committees’ budget, but several chairs were unaware of changes made to the budget in their area until they received a copy of the final plan.
During the House floor debate, Rep. Jim Crawford thanked the legislative staff for all the hours they spent helping the seven lawmakers who were putting the budget together in a back room in the Legislative Office Building. Pretty hard for the public to have any input into the budget process if all the decisions are made in secret. It might take longer to put a budget together in public meetings, but it is the way our government must operate.
Legislative leaders might find that opening up the process would make the public understand the tough choices lawmakers face. That would lead to a more sane debate about the state’s priorities, apparently quite a radical thought.
Raleigh, NC
