Progressives, conservatives both say NC budget plans have wrong priorities
Liberal activists and some of the state’s top Republican elected officials found themselves in agreement Wednesday: Neither of the state budget plans proposed by GOP lawmakers are good enough, they say.
Labor Commissioner Josh Dobson, a Republican who won election in 2020 after serving in the state legislature, was back at the General Assembly on Wednesday. He urged his former colleagues to boost state employee pay beyond what they have so far proposed. And he wasn’t alone. Other statewide GOP officials sent top deputies or supportive letters to make that same point at a press conference held by the State Employees Association of North Carolina.
All agreed: Pay is so low that it’s hard to hire state workers and even harder to keep them.
One in every three new state employees is now quitting within a year of being hired, WRAL News reported earlier this month. Vacancies have skyrocketed, with 16,000 unfilled jobs across state government. It’s not only straining services the state is supposed to provide, it’s also wasting time and money to interview workers, train them, then do it all again — to the tune of an estimated $500 million per year.
GOP Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler sent his chief deputy, David Smith, to the legislature Wednesday. Troxler’s department handles everything from inspecting and marketing locally grown food to helping farmers, overseeing animal shelters and putting on the State Fair.
Smith said they’re facing historic difficulties in getting it all done.
“I have worked for the Department of Agriculture for over 50 years,” Smith said. “Fourty-five of those years spent in hiring and supervising people. In my five decades in state government, I have never seen it this bad.”
Inside the Labor Department, Dobson said one out of every four or five jobs are vacant for some of the most important roles — the people who inspect elevator safety, or who help investigate and prevent workplace accidents.
“It’s critical for the safety of all North Carolinians that we have a full staff,” Dobson said.
About the same time that press conference was being held on the first floor of the legislative building, up on the second floor Bishop William J. Barber II was knocking on the office door of Senate Leader Phil Berger, trying to deliver a letter. It listed Barber’s many complaints about the budget, which he said harms public schools, voting rights and more — including, particularly, further tax cuts that he said will help the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
After he got no response from inside Berger’s office, and after police blocked him from going in, Barber led hundreds of supporters in chanting the letter aloud.
“Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor, and children, of their rights,” the letter read in part.
A Berger spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment on Barber’s remarks, or those made by Dobson and the other Republicans.
Barber, the former North Carolina NAACP president who now leads the national group Repairers of the Breach, has been banned from entering the legislature following a trespassing conviction in 2019. It was related to a protest similar to the one he held Wednesday.
Barber wasn’t arrested again Wednesday but remarked, just before heading inside, that he was ready to be arrested if that’s what it took to get his message across. Later, in a speech just outside the Senate chamber, Barber called on Democratic politicians to engage in civil disobedience, too.
“Since they have a supermajority anyway, you might as well do like John Lewis and others did some years ago,” he said. Because if it’s bad, people need to know how bad it is.”
Barber led the Moral Monday protests in the 2010s that brought thousands of liberal protesters to the legislature. He said some Democratic leaders have asked him to start those up again now that Republicans have a supermajority once more.
Barber turned the request on lawmakers: “Some legislators said it’s time for Moral Mondays,” he said. “And I said, ‘It’s time for y’all to have sit-ins.’ As legislators, it’s time for you to act up.”
Details of the budget
In addition to Troxler and Dobson, two other statewide GOP leaders — Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey and Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt — also had their offices join in on criticizing the budget plans for not going far enough on raises for state workers.
The Senate’s budget plan would give 5% raises to most state employees plus 4.5% raises to teachers, on average. The competing plan from the House of Representatives has less aggressive tax cuts than the Senate’s plan and would instead spend more on raises: 10% for teachers on average, and between 7.5% and 11% for other state employees. All those figures are spread out over the next two years.
SEANC and its allies at Wednesday’s press conference said neither the House budget nor the Senate budget goes far enough to help state workers and agencies.
“When people are asked, ‘Why are you leaving,’ they’re all saying it’s the pay,” said Ardis Watkins, SEANC’s executive director.
Another complaint raised in SEANC’s press conference with the state officials was that health insurance premiums for state workers are far too expensive, at least for people who want to put their whole family on the State Health Plan.
The Senate’s budget does take one approach to that — not through extra funding to the State Health Plan, but by trying to force hospitals to charge state employees less. The budget threatens to shut down hospitals around North Carolina, if they don’t generate savings for the State Health Plan. The threat only applies to hospitals in urban areas like Wake, Mecklenburg, Durham and some of the state’s other biggest counties.
Dobson said it’s true that changes on the human resources side could help retain some workers. But the biggest thing is salary.
“To be candid, there’s no substitute for money,” he said.
Smith agreed, noting that the Department of Agriculture had to temporarily shut down two veterinary labs it runs because they lost so many vets. Many state veterinarians — and other government employees, for that matter — are finding that they can significantly increase their salaries by leaving for the private sector.
So not only do low salaries and high turnover hurt the department’s ability to do the work it’s supposed to do, he said, it also ends up wasting money.
“We are constantly a training ground for private business,” Smith said. “We train people, and they leave and go to a private sector job … and then we start all over again. It is a big expense.”
Barber’s protest focused less on the effects of the budget on the inner workings of state government, and more on how it will affect regular people.
He pointed to provisions cutting funding for future elections, saying he’s concerned further restrictions on voting rights in general are on their way now that Republicans have a veto-proof supermajority once more. Barber also focused on issues like corporate tax cuts worth millions of dollars, and a plan to overhaul education that will shift funding from public to private schools.
“What we’re saying to legislators is this is not a time for normal, cute, moderate, nice debate,” Barber said. “Our democracy is on the line. Our lives are on the line. Now, we don’t call on anybody to do anything that’s immoral or violent. But nonviolent action? Should be in these streets — and in these suites as well.”
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper released his own budget proposal in March, but his preferences don’t carry as much weight as in recent years, when his veto threat was stronger.
Following the November elections and the defection of Rep. Tricia Cotham from his party to the GOP in April, Republicans now have a veto-proof majority in both legislative chambers if they stick together on override votes. Cooper was already in a vulnerable bargaining position because a deal reached to expand Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of the state’s working poor — one of the governor’s top priorities — is contingent on passage of the state budget.
Both factors could embolden Republican lawmakers to pass a budget including items that advance their agenda, including items that protesters opposed Wednesday.
