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Democrats, GOP take new roles at NC session start (AP)
RALEIGH, N.C. — Democratic Sen. Linda Garrou used to have a key post in the Senate majority, a spacious corner office, extra research assistants and the ear of Senate leader Marc Basnight. People listened intently to what she said because she held sway on forming the state’s $19 billion budget.
Now, the longtime appropriations committee co-chair has to squeeze into one-quarter the size of her previous office. On the same day reporters peppered the GOP senator that took over her old office for hints on the budget, Garrou spent time vacuuming the dust stuck behind her credenza.
And Basnight is about gone, set to resign after 26 years in the Senate the day before Democrats officially lose their Senate majority for the first time since 1898. Basnight’s own corner spot awaits expected successor GOP Sen. Phil Berger.
Campaign reports show 2 outside groups spent $1.7M
Two outside political groups that targeted more than 20 incumbents helped North Carolina Republicans bridge a political spending gap with Democrats as the GOP won majorities in the General Assembly in November, the latest campaign finance reports show.
“I cannot bring myself to walk over and see Sen. Basnight’s office, I can’t do that. I know that I’ll have to, but I can’t,” said Garrou, D-Forsyth. “It’s … the end of an era.”
While power shifting is commonplace in other states, Democrats aren’t used to being the minority in North Carolina’s Legislature.
As the GOP takes charge of both chambers for the first time in 141 years, Democrats are trying to find their bearings, anxious to know how they’ll respond without any real power and how they’ll be treated by their political rivals. Will 2011 be about GOP revenge, or about cooperation and civility?
“It is the great unknown,” said Rep. Alice Bordsen, D-Alamance, who led two committees while in the majority. She’ll have no need for gavels the next two years – House Democrats aren’t getting any committee chairmanships. She said her new role is to speak out about GOP policies she believes will harm the state: “I have to become a little noisier.”
Berger and presumptive House Speaker Thom Tillis, who’ve been prepping for weeks for Wednesday’s historic opening session by hiring staff, moving offices and setting strategy, say people on both sides of the aisle will be treated fairly under their leadership. Although the majority party has inherent advantages, they say they’ll aim to treat Democrats the way they wanted to be treated while the GOP was in the minority.
“We’ve been there for a long time and we know how frustrating it’s been,” said Tillis, R-Mecklenburg. He said some people may think “once you get back in power, it’s payback, right? But from the rules, I don’t think you’ll see that.”
For example, operating rules for the House and Senate will remove provisions the GOP has complained for years they say stifles debate. But Sen. Tom Apodaca, the incoming Senate Rules Committee chairman, said the GOP won’t allow debate as simply a delaying tactic.
“We want to be fair in the process,” said Apodaca, R-Henderson, but “we still know that there comes a time to be quiet and move on.”
Republicans generally have followed the methods followed by predecessors Basnight, D-Dare, and House Speaker Joe Hackney, D-Orange, for handing out the prime perks of being in the majority – committee chairmanships and the distribution of office space.
GOP lawmakers have received all of the announced chairmanships in both the House and Senate, although the Senate has yet to announce leadership for all committees. Basnight gave chairmanships to a few Republicans.
As for office space, it’s tradition that the majority party moves to larger spaces and the minority to smaller ones. Still, new Senate Minority Leader Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe, said he was pleased how Republicans have handled the move that sent nearly every returning senator to a new office.
Republicans even replaced two small offices their members had to use in 2009 and 2010 with larger space for the Democrats to use. In the not-so-distant past, people in power punished political enemies by giving them office space Republicans complained resembled a phone closet.
Nesbitt said he’s had a cordial relationship with Berger and other Republicans and doesn’t expect that to change although the GOP will usually come out on top on issues.
“At the end of the day, they’re probably going to win,” Nesbitt said. “They’re supposed to win. It’s their turn, but it will be perhaps our job to persuade them and move them a little and make sure the public’s informed to what we’re doing down here.”
Ran Coble, executive director of the nonpartisan North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research, said it will be interesting to see the significant adjustments the parties must make in their new roles.
Republicans will have the responsibility of making budget decisions, instead of merely complaining about them. Democrats will have to draw the fine line of where to cooperate and where to fight the GOP.
“This is a chance to see something we’ve never seen before,” Coble said.
By GARY D. ROBERTSON – Associated Press
The rise of Thom Tillis (Charlotte Observer)
Estal Fain had already rejected eight candidates for a job as a records analyst at a Chattanooga insurance company when a midlevel manager walked into his office.
“I think I’ve found the one you’re looking for,” she told him. “He’ll probably be my boss within a year.”
Fain hired 21-year-old Thom Tillis back in 1981, bypassing college graduates in favor of the kid who’d left home at 17 and was working as a records clerk in Nashville, Tenn.
“He had the can-do attitude and intelligence and records experience I was looking for,” recalls Fain. “He readily embraced new ways of doing things. He got things done.”
Tillis did become his manager’s boss within a year, a rapid rise that would become his pattern in business and politics.
On Wednesday, Republican Tillis, now 50, will become speaker of the N.C. House – and one of North Carolina’s three most powerful politicians – after just two terms in the General Assembly. No one has risen faster.
Five years ago, he was voting on fire stations and baseball fields as a Cornelius town commissioner. Before that he served on the parks and recreation board.
Not that long ago N.C. legislators had to pay their dues. Committee chairmanships could take years to earn. Even the seating chart reflected a hierarchy of power.
Tillis never chaired a committee. Never moved off the back row.
His ascension came amid the seismic shift that put 68 Republicans in the 120-member House. Now only 27 have more seniority than Tillis. Some say it signals a more fundamental change as legislative power shifts to urban areas and driven, well-funded candidates.
“The old legislative politics of biding your time and climbing the ladder just doesn’t hold as much anymore,” says Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at UNC Chapel Hill.
In April 2009, Tillis walked away from a job as an IBM management consultant and a $500,000-plus annual salary. Over a year and a half, he put 45,000 miles on his blue pickup traveling the state with his PowerPoints to recruit candidates, hone issues and raise money.
“I was willing to bet a couple years’ salary on it,” he said of the campaign, “and I’m glad I did.”
Few who know Tillis are surprised by his success.
“He’s an intelligent guy and a quick study,” says Rick Ramsden, a former boss. “He knows how to put together a team and how to get results.”
‘Persistent as heck’
Tillis and his five siblings led a nomadic life.
They followed their father, a boat draftsman, to jobs in Jacksonville and New Orleans. Tillis never went to the same elementary school two years in a row.
His father finally took a job in Nashville and Tillis settled in for junior high and high school. He was elected student body president and graduated near the top of his class. But then, at 17, he decided to leave home and get a job.
“We weren’t wired to go to college,” he says.
At Provident Insurance, Tillis joined Estal Fain in trying to solve a problem: how to automate and index thousands of records at a time personal computers were still in their infancy and mainframes were limited.
They partnered with computer company Wang Laboratories. With the help of community college classes, Tillis versed himself in systems analysis as they helped develop a new imaging technology. Two years later he went to work for the computer maker as manager of a research and development team.
Wang took Tillis to Boston – where he briefly left to join a high-tech start-up – and then to Atlanta. It was there he came to the attention of Rick Ramsden, a managing partner at what was then Price Waterhouse, one of the nation’s biggest accounting and consulting firms.
At a company where executives usually waited up to eight years to become a partner, Tillis made it in six.
“He was one of the best people I had so I would deploy him wherever necessary to get things done,” says Ramsden. “People liked to be on his projects and the clients liked him, and that’s not always easy. He is persistent as heck.”
A year after making partner, Tillis would finally get his bachelor’s degree through a co-op program at the University of Maryland.
When the new PricewaterhouseCoopers sold its management consulting arm to IBM in 2003, Tillis went with it.
From bike path to politics
A bike trail put Tillis on a path to politics. A voter named Jesse McCall helped set him on a path to Raleigh.
A transfer had brought Tillis, his wife, Susan, a real estate broker, and their two children to Cornelius in 1998. An avid mountain biker, his push for a local trail led him to a seat on the park board. In 2003, he ran for commissioner in the fast-growing lakeside town.
He tied incumbent Jim Bensman for second place. McCall, one of the town’s oldest voters, broke the tie by pulling Bensman’s name from a hat. As one of the two top vote-getters, Bensman got a four-year term; Tillis, in third place, settled for two. He impressed colleagues in his first elected job.
“He’s not an ideologue,” says Bensman. “Thom is very good at figuring out what it takes to make something work, and he’s not afraid to tell people if he doesn’t like what they’re doing.”
Town Manager Anthony Roberts says Tillis “doesn’t say ‘My way or the highway’ and run over you.”
“He tries to explain his position and work with you and compromise.”
The two-year term freed Tillis in 2006 to challenge incumbent state Rep. John Rhodes, a maverick Republican.
For now, Tillis plans to devote his attention to Raleigh, but says he intends eventually to return to consulting.
Just four years after he was first elected, House Republicans chose him as speaker.
He likens his new job to his others. As a consultant, he says, “you’re generally in a situation where you’ve got a problem you’ve got to solve.
“You’re always going in and finding how you can better deploy capital and cash. And that’s what we’re going to have to do.”
By Jim Morrill
[email protected]
Posted: Sunday, Jan. 23, 2011
N.C. GOP will move fast on quick-hit list (Wilmington Star News)
Republicans spent a long time yearning for power in the state capital.
Now that they have it, they have no plans to waste it, or take their time using it.
When the General Assembly convenes this week for another lawmaking session, the Republicans, who now control both the House and Senate, plan to quickly parlay their 2010 election successes into changes in state laws.
Immediate plans include requiring photo identification to vote, lifting the 100-school cap on charter schools and passing budget amendments to limit spending in the current year, to make it easier to balance the next budget.
Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake, the House majority leader, said consideration of those changes and others could come soon after the Legislature convenes on Wednesday.
“We’ll be busy the first day and first week and first month,” Stam said this week.
He said he believed there was enough support among Republicans in the House and Senate to make the changes, at least some of which will be strongly contested.
“I would hope and expect they’ll be passed,” Stam said.
Voter ID
For starters, the new GOP majority plans to seek a law requiring voters to present photo identification before voting.
“We want to make sure that the person who votes is qualified to vote and only votes once,” Stam said.
Rep. Frank Iler, R-Brunswick, said he planned sign on as a co-sponsor of the legislation. It would ensure that voters cast ballots in the proper districts, he said.
Iler deemed it an “additional safeguard … to ensure all votes are counted, but not more than once.”
A recent poll by the conservative, Raleigh-based Civitas Institute showed N.C. voters strongly support photo ID – such as a driver’s license or passport – requirements at the polls.
“The new majority in the General Assembly will be encouraged by these results and voters’ strong backing for reform,” said Civitas Institute President Francis De Luca.
But the idea has plenty of critics, who argue in part that the requirement could stifle already struggling voter-turnout numbers by discouraging those without a photo ID from going to the polls.
Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, questioned the validity of the Civitas poll, saying 99 percent of the respondents said they had a valid ID. Hall said he believed a much higher percentage of voters likely don’t have an ID with a current address.
Hall also pointed out that it’s already a felony to vote illegally and said voter fraud cases are rare in North Carolina.
He questioned Republicans’ motives, saying he believed that it would affect mainly voters who don’t typically side with the GOP, including minorities, students, people with disabilities and poor voters who don’t have a current ID.
“It’s about political power, tinged with racism,” Hall said in a prepared statement.
Rep. Susi Hamilton, D-New Hanover, who is beginning her first term in the 120-member House, represents a Wilmington-area district with many minorities. She said she agrees with critics who say the law would disproportionately affect poorer, older and minority voters.
“I think they’re targeting certain demographics and a poorer segment of our population and using taxpayer dollars to do it,” Hamilton said.
She also said that Republicans preach less bureaucracy and less government, but that requiring IDs of voters would seem to fly in the face of that.
But supporters of the idea say there’s little evidence to show that any segment of the population would be more affected by the change. And Stam said the legislation would allow voters to bring their voter card that they get from their local boards of elections as an alternative to a photo ID. It’s unclear exactly what changes will be proposed; bills can’t be filed until the legislative session begins.
Nine states now demand a photo ID, and 18 others require some form of identification to vote.
Republicans have also said they planned to introduce a bill that would repeal the authority of counties to hold referendums to enact 0.4 percent land-transfer taxes. Voters in more than 20 counties have voted down such taxes, and no counties have approved them.
Removing the cap on the number of charter schools allowed in the state is also on the GOP’s quick-hit list.
The N.C. Association of Educators, which has been fighting efforts to raise the limit on charter schools for about as long as the state has had them, has reversed its position.
President Sheri Strickland said this week that its OK with NCAE if the 100-school cap is lifted but that it should go up gradually so the State Board of Education and the Office of Charter Schools can provide the proper oversight.
“We understand lifting the cap on charter schools is a campaign promise the new leadership plans to fulfill,” Strickland said in a statement. “We support their efforts to lift the cap if it’s done to ensure every child in charter schools is given access to a quality eduation.”
Charters should pay their teachers more, Strickland said, and the state should require charters to hire more licensed teachers.
Such changes are part of a 10-point plan Republicans circulated during last year’s election season.
Meanwhile, Republicans plan to mark their rise to power with special gavels made by N.C. craftsmen using wood from the state tree, the longleaf pine.
“I was looking for something thoughtful to mark the beginning of a session that will see Republicans assume control of the General Assembly for the first time in nearly 140 years,” said Rep. Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, who is expected to become House speaker.
Tillis will get a handmade gavel, as will Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, the presumptive president pro tempore of the state Senate.
By Patrick Gannon
[email protected]
Published: Saturday, January 22, 2011 at 3:30 a.m.
Berger: Budget, education are top action items in new session (WRAL)
When he was asked how this year’s historic legislative session will be different, incoming Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger couldn’t resist a quip.
“Well, I’ve never had as many of you show up for something like this before,” Berger laughed. “In fact, I couldn’t even give tickets away.”
For the past two sessions, Berger has been minority leader, happy for any press attention he could get. Now, he’s on center stage as the first Republican Senate leader in more than a century.
“It’s different, there’s no question about that. I feel humbled by the attention that we’ve received from this. I feel happy for the people that have, from a philosophical standpoint and a political standpoint, supported us over the years in terms of accomplishing this,” he said.
Opening Day is usually largely ceremonial, and that won’t change. But both chambers plan to get to work much more quickly than in recent years.
Next week, Berger said, House and Senate lawmakers will start work on several action items. The first is a proposal to give Governor Bev Perdue more power over the budget, something she’s asked for in the past. She’s proposed to cut spending in the current fiscal year to give legislators more of a cushion moving into the 2011 budget.
Perdue spokeswoman Chrissy Pearson says the governor hasn’t yet seen the proposal, but is looking forward to learning more about it.
“She’s had conversations with them about ways to balance the budget earlier. This is all about positioning the state better for future fiscal years – it’s all about finding the efficiencies and savings we can now,” Pearson said.
Charter schools will be another early action item. Berger said lawmakers will seek to eliminate the cap on the number of charter schools in the state.
And he said the proposal may include other policy changes, too, including the possibility of moving charter school oversight out of the , an agency some charter advocates believe is hostile to their cause.
Big Bills
The two biggest issues of the session are likely to be redistricting and the budget. Berger said he’s hoping both will move quickly. He’s aiming for a May deadline for the new voter maps, so they can be approved by federal officials well in advance of next year’s elections.
Perdue will start the budget process with her State of the State speech and her spending plan, due sometime in early February. Then the House will take it up, and then the Senate.
The current budget shortfall is estimated at $3.7 billion dollars. Berger insisted that the gap can be closed with cuts. But he conceded it will be a painful process.
“For anyone to suggest that any part of the state budget is going to be immune from consideration for reductions – for anyone to say that nobody’s going to be laid off, there are not gonna be any reductions, I think is unrealistic,” he said.
A big chunk of that shortfall will come from the June expiration of the temporary 1 percent sales tax, passed by Democrats in 2009. A PPP poll released Monday shows 71percent of voters would support extending the tax if it would help ease cuts to services.
But Berger was adamant: “The only poll that I’m interested is the one that’s conducted in November every other year. And the poll that was taken then was loud and clear. The people said ‘Stop spending. Don’t raise taxes.’ It’s not something that will be part of our proposal,” he said.
House Republicans are also pledging to let the temporary tax expire. And so is Governor Perdue. But aside from that, spokeswoman Chrissy Pearson said everything’s on the table.
“We are all in this together. The governor has had encouraging conversations with the new leadership. Her top two priorities remain creating jobs and protecting education. But the budget looms over everything,” Pearson said.
Posted: 7:53 p.m. yesterday
Snow and Ice (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Though two months of winter remain, the state Department of Transportation and some local governments have nearly depleted their annual budgets for handling snow and ice. The transportation department had already spent more than $25 million on managing slippery roadways through the end of last week, much of it during the major storm that began Christmas Day. The department typically gets $30 million for winter work through the fiscal year ending in June.
Detailed cleanup costs for the storm that snarled traffic this week work won’t be available for several more days, but DOT spokesman Steve Abbott said it will likely push the department over the $30 million mark. “We’re not getting help from Mother Nature at all,” he said. The department can tap $10 million in reserves before it has to start searching elsewhere for money. The agency spent less than $30 million each year between 2005 and 2009 before spending a whopping $65.7 million in 2010. Those expenses add just another layer of pressure to a state government that has been looking all over for ways to save money. Budget writers are now preparing to deal with a $3.7 billion budget gap that must be filled for the upcoming fiscal year that starts in July.
It’s a problem for local governments, too. Asheville, for example, has seen four storms since the beginning of December, and crews have only had a few normal-length work days since Christmas, with most days seeing teams managing roadways around the clock. Cathy Ball, the director of Public Works for the city, said she expects that will continue until late Thursday or Friday. The heavy workload is pushing the department’s overtime budget to its annual allotment. And she expects this storm will put the department over its budget for materials. The state’s tally of expenditures offer a glimpse into the most costly areas of cleanup.
Officials have spent the most state money in the mountainous counties of Buncombe and Madison, with each costing about $1.4 million to clean up. Dare County along the Outer Banks has been the least expensive, with just $28,000 in costs.(Mike Baker, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 1/12/11).
Juvenile Justice ( News & Observer)
Juvenile Justice ( News & Observer)
A coalition of child advocacy groups wants Gov. Beverly Perdue to alter her government reorganization plans so that the agency that deals with kids in trouble be sent to a department geared toward social services rather than one associated with criminal punishment. As part of a large-scale reorganization proposal, Perdue wants to shift the Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention into an enlarged Department of Public Safety, which includes the Department of Corrections. The advocacy groups is asking the governor to consider merging juvenile justice with the Department of Health and Human Services, where other child services in the state reside.
“We know the consolidation proposal is an attempt to cut costs only,” said Karen McLeod, president and CEO of the Children and Family Services Association of North Carolina. “The good policy behind the creation of a separate department for juveniles is not in question.” McLeod noted that juvenile justice department had been successful in working to lower juvenile crime and that the number of commitments to Youth Development Centers had fallen from 1,300 in 1998 to less than 400 in 2009. The groups pushing for the change are Action for Children North Carolina, the Children and Family Services Association of North Carolina, the Covenant with North Carolina’s Children, Disability Rights NC and the American Civil Liberties Union.(12/23/10).
Group to unveil legislative agenda to guide N.C. prison system (Wilmington Star News)
After a year spent crunching numbers and gathering input from an array of stakeholders, a national nonprofit organization is on the verge of rolling out a robust legislative package to guide North Carolina’s criminal justice system for decades, officials said.
Robert Coombs, a senior policy analyst at the nonprofit Council of State Governments, which has collaborated with senior state officials and elected leaders to strengthen the criminal sentencing system and rein in corrections spending, said state lawmakers could have the package of new policy options in hand by late January.
“Usually when we roll out these policy proposals, states are eager to vet them and make sure it’s a right fit for them and get them passed,” he said last week.
Gov. Bev Perdue announced in April the state would be participating in the Justice Reinvestment initiative, a program offered by the Council of State Governments, to identify fresh strategies for managing North Carolina’s growing prison population amid a difficult economic climate.
The legislative package rolling out next year will be a product of that initiative, and it is expected to produce legislation that helps curb corrections spending so North Carolina can reinvest that money into programs that enhance public safety, officials said.
The package comes as the state holds back on funding new construction projects, despite models showing further increases in the prison population. By 2019, the N.C. Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission, a consortium of criminal justice experts and lawmakers, predicts North Carolina will hold more than 50,800 inmates, a jump of more than 15 percent over 2010.
By fiscal year’s end in 2009, the N.C. Department of Correction spent 1.46 billion managing the prison and corrections system, an increase from $868 million in 1998, according to state reports.
Chief Deputy Secretary Jennie Lancaster at the correction department said sentencing reforms enacted in 1994 gave the state an accurate model to predict long-term population trends and enhance its planning capabilities. Called the Structured Sentencing Act, the reforms overhauled the entire justice system by lengthening prison terms for repeat violent offenders.
But structured sentencing abolished parole for most offenses committed after 1994, meaning inmates are currently required to serve their full sentences.
“Before structured sentencing, we had a pressure valve: parole,” said Michael Bell, correctional administrator at Pender Correctional Institution in Burgaw. “If we were taking hundreds of inmates a year in the front door and we had a finite amount of bed space, we’d open up the back door.”
In addition to an increasing prison population, losing that pressure valve means inmates are staying longer and thus growing older behind bars, raising the cost of medical care. According to figures provided by Pamela Walker, director of external affairs for the correction department, the prisons medical budget climbed from $41.5 million in 1990 to nearly $245 million in 2010, an increase of nearly 500 percent.
Concerns about prison medical expenses have partially abated as the state prepares to open an inmate hospital at Central Prison in Raleigh. Lancaster said the hospital should come online in 2012, and will provide a level of chemo treatment, dermatology and radiology, among other things. Serious medical problems, such as surgeries requiring an intensive care unit, will still be outsourced to private institutions, though.
Among the suggestions expected from the Justice Reinvestment program is a proposal that North Carolina do a better job of diverting low-risk offenders who have substance addictions or other problems that require treatment into community-type punishments like probation that can provide the care they need.
Nicole Sullivan, a research and planning manager at the correction department, said these low-risk offenders often cycle in and out of prison, sometimes twice a year, but their sentences are too short to provide a meaningful measure of therapy and treatment. And they are usually released without supervision, she said.
Officials hope to divert those low-risk offenders to community-type punishments to create prison room for the violent, habitual criminals.
After the Council of State Governments puts its policy recommendations before lawmakers, legislation is likely to go before the General Assembly for a vote, Walker said.
“Whether that happens during the next legislative session, which begins in January, I can’t predict,” she added.
Rep. Paul Stam, a Republican from Wake County and the incoming House majority leader, said he hopes the recommendations lead to bipartisan legislation that speeds the pace at which criminal cases move through the court system and clamps down on probation violators.
He said that if criminals know their cases are going to idle in court for months, or probation violators are not sent to jail, then they are more likely to offend again.
With the anemic economic recovery, officials have called this upcoming legislative session a prime opportunity to scout out new cost savings as lawmakers concern themselves with balancing next year’s state budget.
“When you spoke of treating offenders with anything other than harsh, archaic penalties, you were beaten with a heavy political stick and labeled soft on crime and you can count on that knocking you out of the legislative ballpark,” said Rep. Alice Bordsen, a Democrat from Alamance County who co-chairs the Justice Reinvestment Commission. “We haven’t been able to have these discussions until now.”
By Brian Freskos
[email protected]
Published: Sunday, December 26, 2010 at 3:30 a.m.
Brian Freskos: 343-2327
On Twitter: @BrianFreskos
Outgoing speaker Hackney is new NC minority leader (News & Observer)
RALEIGH, N.C. House Democrats voted Tuesday to keep outgoing Speaker Joe Hackney as their leader although they’ve been reduced to the minority as Republicans are poised to control the chamber alone for the first time in 12 years.
Democrats elected to the House last month met privately Tuesday at the Legislative Building and voted unanimously for Hackney to become the minority leader for the next two years. He was the only announced candidate, Hackney spokesman Bill Holmes said.
Hackney, an Orange County Democrat first elected to the House 30 years ago, has led the entire chamber as speaker since 2007. By electing him to the minority leader’s post, House Democrats apparently agree Hackney wasn’t to blame for a 16-seat flip in their chamber on Election Day that will give GOP lawmakers a 68-52 advantage. The GOP last had complete control of the House in 1998.
Hackney, 65, has attributed the electoral losses to a national wave that swept in Republicans.
“I certainly don’t think it was his failing that we in fact lost the House,” said Rep. Maggie Jeffus, D-Guilford, after the nearly two-hour caucus meeting, adding that Hackney works hard and knows the budget inside and out. “He certainly has the seniority.”
Hackney said he would also be re-nominated for speaker when the Legislature reconvenes Jan. 26, but that job is expected to go to Rep. Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, the nominee for the GOP.
With a few dozen Democrats standing with him, Hackney told reporters the House Democratic Caucus would hold the new Republican majority accountable if they make changes that would harm the gains in public education made under Democratic rule. They also wanted to work with Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue on efforts to accelerate job creation in a recovering economy.
“We will be working with the new majority,” Hackney said, but “we will not cooperate with them in tearing down public education in North Carolina. We will not cooperate with them in tearing down the governor’s job creation efforts in North Carolina and we will not cooperate with them in crippling public services in North Carolina.”
The Republican majority in both the House and Senate have said they want to pass a budget bill that would let expire temporary sales and income tax increases projected to generate $1.3 billion in the next fiscal year if they are allowed to continue.
Perdue also said last week she wants to balance the budget without extending those taxes, but Hackney suggested keeping those taxes should be considered in light of what fewer revenues could do to decimate the public schools or higher education. The state is facing a potential $3.7 billion shortfall for the year starting July 1.
While the Democratic caucus hasn’t yet decided on a tax platform, Hackney said extending the taxes “ought not to be taken off the table.”
Hackney, an attorney and cattle farmer, said the caucus would elect at least one minority whip at a later date. Current Speaker Pro Tempore William Wainwright, D-Craven, also will seek re-election to the post next month, but GOP Rep. Dale Folwell, R-Forsyth, is the favorite to win.
Published Tue, Dec 21, 2010 04:07 AM
Modified Tue, Dec 21, 2010 03:45 PM
GAO Report Outlines Future Challenges for Public Transportation (AASHTO)
Nationwide demand for mass transit steadily grew in the decade prior to 2008 and transit ridership reached record highs that year, concludes a recently released Government Accountability Office report. This increased demand for services presents both opportunities and challenges in the years ahead.
“Population growth and other factors are likely to increase future ridership demand, but cost increases and fiscal uncertainties could limit transit agencies’ ability to meet this demand,” according to the report.
The GAO report makes several recommendations on how to help transit agencies effectively accommodate ever-growing ridership despite budgetary limitations. These include focusing resources on keeping the nation’s rail and bus systems in a state of good repair; streamlining the delivery of federal grant programs and projects; and integrating performance accountability into federal programs.
GAO conducted interviews with federal officials as well as 15 transit authorities that operate heavy rail, light rail, and bus services. Agencies facing capacity constraints in their transit services between 1998 and 2008 undertook a number of steps with varying degrees of success to meet expanded ridership demand during that period. Those steps included adjusting routes, fares, and hours of service; making such investments as enlarged fleets and extended platforms; and maintaining and updating existing infrastructure and vehicles.
Another key trend during that time involved funding sources and capabilities. While the federal government was the leading source of capital investment in transit in 1998, local government provided the largest share by 2008.
While ridership has increased, fares have often not kept up with operating costs. Since fares typically do not cover the full cost of transit trips, public-transportation agencies experienced a widening gap between revenue collected from passengers and costs in services to accommodate increased ridership. In 2008, according to the report, only about 32% of transit agencies’ operating expenses were paid for though fare revenues.
With the recent economic downturn, transit agencies’ funding since 2008 has been strained due to decreases in state and local investment. Transit agency officials interviewed by GAO expressed concerns about less revenue coupled with the increased costs of expanding transit systems and maintaining aging infrastructure.
The 64-page report is available at bit.ly/GAO_Transit_Report.
Honey: They shrank the House committees (News and Observer)
The Republicans are about to shrink the House committee structure.
House Speaker-Elect Thom Tillis said the GOP caucus plans to shrink the number of House committees by one third when it takes over in January.
He said a caucus committee has been looking at the committee structure and has found the North Carolina House has more committees than any legislative chamber in the country. “It’s a waste of taxpayer dollars to have committees that sometimes meet only two or three times a year,” Tillis said. “It provides uncertainty on how you move legislative through the House.”
According to the House website there are 45 committees in the 120-member House. One reason there are so many committees, and even more co-chairs, is that enabled House speakers to spread leadership positions around to lawmakers.
Submitted by robchristensen on 2010-12-15 18:02
