On Friday, the General Assembly passed the 2018-2019 North Carolina budget and sent it to Governor Cooper to either be signed or vetoed. However, before I get into why the budget fails the people of North Carolina, there are a few important facts to address for the sake of context.
First, Republicans set up a conference committee consisting of a few members to draft the budget this year, which is an unusual act that essentially prevents debate or amendments to the committee’s budget. Second, this also meant that the committee worked on the budget largely in secret up until a few days before the vote. Lastly, Republicans currently hold a “supermajority” in the House that will let them override any potential veto from Governor Cooper.
These factors combine to create a grossly unrepresentative process for budget passing in North Carolina and show that the members of the majority in the General Assembly have little interest in representing their constituents, and more in playing politics. In doing so, the General Assembly leaves behind the interests of students, such as education funding, and further jeopardizes the funding that public universities like NC State rely on.
For the reasons of maintaining a healthy government, it is essential that Governor Cooper veto the bill, that the people of North Carolina hold their representatives accountable, and that the members of the Republican party deeply reflect on the value of a representative democracy, especially when considering overriding any potential veto.
These unfair political practices start with the conference committee that was set up to create this budget. Not only does it use only a fraction of the representatives — who were elected specifically to work on matters such as this — but it also consists heavily of Republicans, meaning that in a state so evenly divided as NC, the budget is being decided almost entirely by one party. Anything with such an enormous effect like the budget deserves our government’s undivided attention; instead they have given the task of many to only a biased few.
Grier Martin, the representative for House District 34, just north of NC State, told the AP, “It’s unambiguous that the driving force behind this abusive process is so that their vulnerable members don’t have to show any sort of political courage by taking tough votes on amendments.”
Grier points out that without amendment votes or debates, the process of passing the budget hardly addresses the issues that voters, or even students, would care enough about to vote against their representatives.
For example, teacher pay has garnered a large amount of support for change in North Carolina. But without debate it is only seeing a 6.5 percent boost, rather than the 8 percent desired by Governor Cooper in his proposed budget. Moreover, the House budget touches on a wide variety of issues, included state employee raises and state taxes, issues which can affect nearly every constituent. Plus, as a public university, the budget can easily affect NC State too.
Put simply, the conference committee process restricts representatives’ input into the budget and prevents both debate and amendments to the bill. This means that there will be legislators from both parties whose constituents’ special concerns are not sufficiently addressed in the process of creating or editing one of the most powerful pieces of legislation passed by the General Assembly.
Lastly, there’s a final notable aspect to all of this that up until now I haven’t addressed, which is that some Republican voters may actually feel that this is a triumph. I seriously and wholeheartedly urge them to reconsider. This budget process gives a bad name to Republicans in North Carolina, it makes them seem corrupt and uninterested in the people of our state. It would be beneficial for them and for the well-being of North Carolina if they showed some decency and used proper legislative procedure.
But if decency doesn’t matter in politics, then perhaps fear of retaliation does. It’s worth considering that anything done by the Republicans can be used against them by the Democrats if they ever seize the means to do so. A study by Pew in 2014 found that 43% of adults are Democrat-affiliated, while 41% are Republican. With such a small difference and possible redistricting changes in the works, a Democratic majority is perhaps more plausible than it would initially seem.
In the next few weeks we will likely see how this all plays out. In the meantime, I urge Governor Cooper to veto the budget, even though it will most likely be overruled. I urge voters to consider what their representatives have done, or perhaps have not had the opportunity to do; and lastly I urge Republican voters and representatives to consider that the ideals of a party should be sturdy enough to withstand debate and that holding a supermajority is by no means an excuse to turn a democracy into an oligarchy.
