Gov. Beverly Perdue said Monday that she had considered calling lawmakers into a special session early next month to seek emergency budgetary powers, but decided against the move due to potential costs. Perdue said it was hard to justify the $1 million per day it costs to have the legislature in session. “Someone would have to convince me,” Perdue told reporters after a speech to the Southern Regional Education Board’s commission on middle grades meeting at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Raleigh. Perdue is the SREB chair.
The legislature is scheduled to convene January 26, but there had been talk that she might call the legislature into a special session earlier due to a projected $3.7 billion budget shortfall. Perdue expressed frustration that she did not have full authority to manage the state’s budget. Certain university spending as well as agencies with their own statewide elected officials – such as the Department of Public Instruction and Department of Agriculture – are off limits to her. As well, she said, the governor shouldn’t have to wait for the state to be actually broke before exercising some budget management. “Now we all know we’re in an emergency starting in June and why in the world I don’t have the power, the ability, the authority to claw back some empty positions across state government, to go into the university system, and to go into the other agencies of government that are independently supervised, I don’t understand that,” Perdue said.
The governor has already taken a number of steps to freeze hiring for the Cabinet agencies under her direct control. She has also urged other agency heads to voluntarily initiate hiring freeze. Perdue expressed satisfaction that the other agencies are taking steps to freeze hiring, singling out Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry, a Republican, and Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson, a Democrat, for praise. Republican leaders such as Sen. Phil Berger and Rep. Thom Tillis have said they are open to giving the governor some more budget cutting powers.
(THE NEWS & OBSERVER; Mark Binker, THE NEWS & RECORD, 12/13/10).
