In August, Democrat Rep. David Redwine, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, referred to a “little man on his shoulder,” his conscience, who wouldn’t allow him to vote for a state budget that cut services for the aged and sick.
A few months later — after the smoke began to clear from two of the most chaotic and free-spending legislative sessions ever — some of us among the ranks of government watchdogs are wondering where Redwine’s and other legislative leaders’ consciences were hiding the rest of the time.
I’m not doubting Redwine’s sincerity. I commend him for standing up for his avowed principles. But many observers of the political scene in Raleigh agree that they can’t remember a time when back-door wheeling and dealing, downright meanness, and corruption so saturated state government.
Let’s start with the state budget, the most important responsibility the people entrust to their elected representatives. Facing a financial emergency created by a $1.3 billion deficit engineered during the 2001 session of the General Assembly, Gov. Mike Easley stole $543 million from county and city governments that they were supposed to have received in sales-tax reimbursements. Later, the legislature approved a budget that, incredibly, increased actual spending by $600 million, though it did fall short of what had been originally authorized.
In an attempt to balance the budget on the backs of taxpayers, legislators last year raised the sales tax by half a cent and hiked other taxes on income and consumer spending to bring in about $700 million. Adding insult to injury this year, legislators increased the burden by approving a half-cent increase in the sales tax for localities. Still, legislators sent an unconstitutional budget to Easley that was $100 million out of balance. Next year, the bloodletting will continue when the deficit is expected to again hit $1 billion.
Like pirates pillaging a town and raping its inhabitants, the scoundrels again gouged taxpayers by granting at least $300 million in giveaways to corporations that move to the state. Euphemistically named the Economic Stimulus and Job Creation Act, the so-called incentives legislation sets the table for inestimable pork-barrel spending and corruption.
Saving the worst for last, legislative leaders continued to conduct a shameful shadow session that Democrats evidently hoped might enable them to retain power should they lose it in the November election. Since the spring this little-known shadow session — created for redistricting — has run concurrently with the short session, which adjourned in early October.
The shadow session works this way:
Every few days a handful of Wake County legislators trudge over to the nearly empty Legislative Building to meet for only a few minutes. Since May, the routine for the session has not varied. Legislation is neither introduced nor debated. The session is called to order, the chaplain reads a prayer, and the session adjourns for another few days.
Although leaders of the Democrat-controlled legislature won’t divulge their motives, it’s apparent they’re hedging their bets should their party lose in the November election. Obviously it would be safer for them to allow a lame-duck Democrat legislature to redraw districts this year than to let a possibly Republican-controlled body do it next year.
And so the betrayal of the public’s trust continues ad nauseam in North Carolina. Who among North Carolina’s leaders has a conscience when we need it most?