RALEIGH – Gov. Beverly Perdue’s latest fiscal proposal, a $1.6 billion tax increase for FY 2009-10 and an even-bigger wallop in FY 2010-11, is many things, all of them disturbing.

It’s another potential injury to North Carolina’s economic competitiveness. It’s a catalyst for setting off another disastrous spend-and-tax cycle in the state budget. It’s a massive tax hike on the very low- and moderate-income North Carolinians whose interests so many liberal politicians claim to represent. And it’s a last-minute addition to the budget debate in Raleigh, a sprawling and unwieldy tax-hike package for which the governor has not laid an adequate political groundwork.

But one thing Perdue’s tax-hike scheme is not is a “split the difference” plan. Yet that’s how many lawmakers and commentators characterized it shortly after the governor announced her latest budget position on Tuesday.

The phrase “split the difference” describes a solution to an impasse or negotiation in which each side agrees to settle for less than originally sought. For example, say a tree on John’s property gets soaked in a thunderstorm. One of its branches breaks off and breaks his neighbor Jane’s window. Jane asks for full payment of the repair bill, because John should have kept the tree trimmed. John responds that the accident was really just caused by the weather. Rather than continue the dispute, Jane accepts John’s offer to pay half of the repair bill. The two have split the difference.

Perdue’s plan does not split the difference between the tax packages supported by the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. The House plan relies primarily on higher tax rates on sales and income. The Senate plan relies primarily on expanding the income-tax base and applying the retail sales tax to include dozens of services to which it does not currently apply.

The governor proposes that nearly all of each side’s tax-hike ideas be adopted in the final budget, either immediately or eventually. That’s why the bill for her proposed list of tax hikes, $1.6 billion in the current fiscal year, is far higher than the total tax increase proposed by either legislative chamber.

Rather than splitting the difference, Perdue wants the General Assembly to add the differences in the House and Senate plans together – all at the expense of North Carolina taxpayers.

Naturally, the governor argues that the current budget deficit justifies extraordinary measures, and then a large chunk of her proposed new taxes will be an “emergency measure” scheduled to disappear in a year or so. Skepticism is warranted. North Carolinians well remember paying hundreds of millions of dollars in income and sales taxes enacted earlier this decade by lawmakers and the Easley administration that were billed as “temporary” but then lingered on for many years.

When asked why North Carolina voters should believe her promise that the new taxes would, indeed, be temporary, Perdue responded, “Because I am the governor.”

Some might see the governor’s answer as unresponsive. Others might see it as revealing an imperious attitude about the power of her office and the legitimate concerns of wary taxpayers. Shucks, I’ll split the difference and say Perdue was being imperiously unresponsive.

We restless peons have been duly warned.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation