RALEIGH — The election-year benefits of delaying action on coal ash cleanup legislation and Medicaid reform to pass a $21.3 billion adjusted budget far outweighed tackling those combative issues during the just-concluded short session, political observers say.

“Both of those are contentious, complicated issues with multiple players, and that’s not what you want to take up in the middle of an election,” said Thomas Mills, a Democratic political consultant and editor of the Carrboro-based Politics NC blog.

Competing House and Senate plans for Medicaid reform will be addressed after the Nov. 4 general election, but another stab at coal ash legislation could happen before then.

“I think there is the possibility to [take up] coal ash sooner. I don’t know that the final decision on that has been made,” Anna Roberts, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Thom Tillis, said Monday.

Senate leader Phil Berger’s office did not respond to a request for information.

While calling the budget “a victory for North Carolina,” Gov. Pat McCrory did not rule out calling the General Assembly back into session to address those unresolved issues.

“I’m going to be in constant communication with the Senate and House leadership as they try to resolve their differences on some of these items during the next maybe hours or days. Or weeks or months,” McCrory said at a Friday press conference at which he announced he would not veto the budget.

As part of the budget, lawmakers agreed to raise teacher pay an of average 7 percent, give state employees a $1,000 raise and five extra vacation days, maintain funding for teacher assistant positions, preserve eligibility for all Medicaid recipients, put $186 million into reserve as a buffer against potential Medicaid cost overruns, and increase spending for education by $305 million — all without raising taxes.

But lacking comprehensive coal ash legislation, McCrory signed an executive order Friday directing the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources to hire additional staff to oversee the cleanup of high-priority coal ash ponds at Riverbend, Asheville, Sutton, and Dan River, conduct groundwater assessment at all 14 Duke Energy facilities, test nearby drinking wells, and meet all other regulations and laws.

“The willingness of legislators to sort of defer the big decisions to late in the process” has been blamed by some in the past on an opportunity to squeeze more campaign donations from affected parties, said N.C. State University political science professor Andy Taylor. He believes that is a cynical view and not the case in this election season.

Republicans “stoked expectations it’s going to be a short session” to show they were unified, and knew how to govern effectively and efficiently, Taylor said. They wanted to finish business early to enable Tillis to get on the campaign trail in his challenge against incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan.

“They just really couldn’t resolve the Medicaid issue so they punted. They weren’t going to let the budget be delayed by that,” he said.

Taylor said the failure to enact coal ash cleanup legislation might have an effect on lawmakers representing districts where the coal ash ponds are located, but none on the U.S. Senate race.

Barring another coal ash spill or some other type of environmental mishap that would revive the coal ash debate, Taylor thinks the issue will diminish by election day.

“I’m sure there will be some outside ad, Hagan might even run one,” accusing Tillis of letting a “nasty, big electric company off the hook,” Taylor said, but he does not foresee significant fallout for Tillis over failure to pass a cleanup bill.

“I don’t care who’s in charge. I think when they put off decisions like that, it’s always trying to avoid political fallout,” Mills said.

“The number of people Medicaid reform touches is going to be huge, and it’s going to be ugly, and it’s going to be bloody. Somebody’s going to get hurt, somebody’s going to come out good, and that’s not what you want to have during an election,” Mills said. “The coal ash thing is the same way.”

He does not foresee an impact on the U.S. Senate race or the legislative races due to the delays.

“Democrats will try to use the move to fire up their base a little bit — ‘They didn’t deal with coal ash, I don’t know how they’ll deal with the Medicaid,’ — but I think people vote on bread-and-butter issues,” Mills said.

“What [Republicans] have to overcome more than just the issues is the sense that they’re mean and vindictive,” and appeared to take glee in cutting budgets last year instead of assuming a tone of regret, Mills said. He contends cuts last year to education, especially, are most likely drive this election.

But Sarah Curry, director of fiscal policy studies at the John Locke Foundation, takes issue with contentions that education spending was cut last year.

She also praised the adjusted budget just approved by the General Assembly because it increases spending only 2.2 percent.

“It’s nice to see a budget even with a significant teacher pay increase not ballooning past the natural growth of the state” in terms of inflation and population growth, Curry said.

“The left is upset because they still believe the tax reform from last year and the tax cuts from 2011 are hurting the government’s revenue,” Curry said.

“We don’t believe tax cuts are bad because government’s not getting as much money as it wants,” she said. “They’re good because citizens are keeping more of the dollars they earned.”

But, Curry cautioned, the implications Medicaid reform might have for the current budget, or if any additional funding matters would be rolled into the 2015-16 spending plan, remain uncertain.

“Not knowing how they want to change Medicaid, we won’t know the full budget impact until they’re done,” Curry said.

Dan E. Way (@danway_carolina) is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.