THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 23, 1996 TAG: 9606230070
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RALEIGH LENGTH: 70 lines
The legislature may have adjourned Friday at midnight, but that did not end the debate over whether legislators made a mistake by going home without passing a revised budget.
About 40 House and Senate members, all but three of them Democrats, gathered in the Senate chamber Saturday morning to talk about the unprecedented adjournment.
Although billed by Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, D-Dare, as a ``bipartisan'' meeting, only Democrats spoke.
``You do not believe and I do not, either, that the people elected us to come here and do what we did last night,'' Basnight said.
After a week of trying to negotiate $310 million worth of differences in their budget proposals, legislators gave up Friday night. Democrats urged Republicans to extend the session beyond the Friday deadline set last year; Republicans insisted they were going home.
``When this House says something, we do it,'' said House Speaker Harold Brubaker in an interview in his office after the meeting. ``People told us they were tired of elected representatives who say one thing and do another.''
But Democrats argued it was more important to address the state's needs in education, the environment and economic development than to meet an arbitrary deadline or pour more money into the state coffers.
``We have a billion and 300 million dollars in the state treasury of North Carolina doing nothing for our citizens,'' said Sen. Aaron Plyler, D-Union, the co-chairman of the Senate budget negotiators. ``I think that is ridiculous.''
The $1.3 billion figure includes $500 million in emergency reserves and more than $700 million in surplus taxes that lawmakers could have spent in a new budget plan.
Senate negotiators ran through a litany of needs that were left unmet without an agreement:
No money to hire teachers for 12,478 new students expected in public schools in August.
No pay raises for teachers, college professors and state workers.
No incentive money for the state's new education reform plan, which would reward high-performing schools.
No added money for school security officers or alternative schools for disruptive students.
No expansion of funding for court-ordered services to potentially violent, mentally ill young people. The lack of funding could thwart state efforts to end court oversight of the program.
340 unnecessary positions in the Department of Correction will not be eliminated.
No reductions in the sales tax on food, the corporate income tax or the tax on soft drinks.
No expansion of tax credits for new or expanding industries.
No repayment of back taxes to federal retirees.
Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. has the power to call a special session of the legislature to finish the budget. Democrats said they hope he will, but Brubaker said he doubted it because such a move would be politically risky.
And he said he was not worried that voters would blame Republican legislators for gridlock as they did the Republican Congress in January when the federal budget reached a stalemate.
``I really do think it's a different scenario in North Carolina,'' he said.
``One thing Congress did not do was get out their message,'' Brubaker said, a mistake House Republicans did not plan to make.
They had radio commercials out Friday accusing Democrats of spending all the state's money, a tactic they used to gain control of the House in 1994. MEMO: [For a copy of the 1996 North Carolina Legislative Highlights,
also see page B3 for this date.]
KEYWORDS: 1996 LEGISLATIVE HIGHLIGHTS WRAP-UP by CNB