A former state House Appropriations Co-Chair says that discretionary funds controlled by General Assembly leaders constituted a justified reward for their districts, because of the extra hours they put in to pass the budget.
State Rep. Debbie Clary, a Cherryville Republican who supported the 2003 power-sharing coalition of Democrat House Co-Speakers Jim Black and Republican Richard Morgan, said entrusting the funding of members’ special district projects to General Assembly leaders was the only way to get them passed in the budget.
“When I first came to the General Assembly ten years ago, pork was a four-letter word,” Clary said in a phone interview with Carolina Journal. “But at this point it’s survival; it’s a matter of being competitive and bringing home what you can for the people you represent.”
Clary said that many earmarked items favored by members for their districts that were included in the House version of the budget were removed in the Senate version, and vice versa. She said in order to get a conference committee from both chambers to agree on a final bill, those specified projects were converted to the discretionary funds controlled by Black, Morgan, and Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight.
“I had to trust the leadership to take care of the few items that I had,” Clary said.
She said that getting a budget to pass through committees, and through the General Assembly membership overall, would have been difficult with all the special projects itemized. She estimated that Appropriations co-chairs (four from each political party in the House; three Democrats from the Senate) and leadership representatives in each chamber work roughly 10 times as many hours as the rank-and-file membership, and therefore earned the right to bring extra funding to their districts.
“I can say that I knew about all those items and they were considered,” Clary said, “and just not funded in the way they were proposed.
“The only way to reward your leadership team for the hours that they spent is to look at the discretionary spending that they have access to. I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
A group of legislators, including Republican Rep. John Rhodes of Cornelius, believe differently.
“I would totally disagree with that,” Rhodes said in a telephone interview on Monday. “They are basically currying special favors from members of a coalition in government in exchange for support.”
Clary was one of a breakaway group of Republicans in 2003 that supported Morgan in a Co-Speakership arrangement with Black. All the projects funded through discretionary funds appeared to go to the districts of those legislators who supported House and Senate leadership.
“It’s a terrible practice and it needs to end immediately,” said Rhodes, who has requested that State Auditor Les Merritt examine the discretionary spending practices. “How can the leadership and the governor go to the public year after year and ask the taxpayers for more money when you have abuses like this going on?”
But Clary said special consideration for projects favored by political leaders has always existed.
“Throughout history in every budget there have been rewards for the leadership that has worked on that budget,” Clary said. “I think those rewards are fully warranted.”
She emphasized the many long nights and weekends that appropriations chairs spend working on the state’s biennial financial plan.
“If someone’s going to get a generator for their rescue squad,” Clary said, “it’s going to be me.”
[Read articles from the 1997 CJ series on slush funds]
Paul Chesser is associate editor of Carolina Journal. Contact him at [email protected].