Where’s state Attorney General Roy Cooper when North Carolina’s taxpayers really need him?
For quite some time now, the mild-mannered defender of truth, justice, and the North Carolina way has been waging a never-ending battle on TV, warning the public of various con artists, hucksters, and other undesirable characters who prey on trusting consumers. He has run announcements on identity theft, predatory lending, and a settlement with a home equity lender. Most recently he has reminded consumers of a national no-call list they can sign to ward off telemarketers.
Strangely enough, though, Cooper has been silent about a gang of rip-off artists who reside in his own backyard. They don’t call us at home at suppertime. They don’t break our fingers if we don’t repay a loan. And they don’t rifle through our trash or computer files.
No, they gradually wreck our pocketbooks and our lives while our backs are turned. They are North Carolina’s predatory politicians. And the mountains of money they steal put all the other villains in the shade.
Bait and switch is their game. First, they tell taxpayers that a certain tax is needed to fund some worthy-sounding cause. Then, when the political climate is right, the backroom shades are drawn, and the accrued revenue is high enough, they siphon the money into other pet projects under the guise of an “emergency.”
Once unusual in North Carolina, bait-and-switch politics appears to have become the preferred way of conducting government business today. Almost anything goes nowadays, under the convenient excuse that the state is so strapped for cash that state leaders are justified in transferring money from one fund to another that they find more politically expedient.
Like thieves on a rampage, predatory politicians grow bolder with each new heist. Demonstrating the epidemic proportions of the larceny were actions taken by the legislature this year.
Among the legislature’s recent victims were cellular telephone customers. Since 1998 cellular customers have been paying 80 cents a month into a special fund that would pay for updated 911 technology. The new equipment, which was to have been completed by the end of 2005, would have enabled officials to reduce from five miles to 100 yards the location of an emergency call.
Totaling $33 million this fiscal year and $25 million expected next year, the fund was too fat a pigeon for the state’s scam artists to resist. So they plucked it to help balance the state’s teetering 2004-05 budget. Now, implementation of the system will be needlessly delayed for an unspecified length of time. And the human casualties of the legislature’s cavalier action wait to be counted.
The number of victims waylaid by predatory politicians over the years continues to mount.
In 1998 North Carolina voters approved $200 million in bonds to extend natural-gas pipelines to 22 unserved counties in the state. Although pitched as a project that would reap benefits around the state, the pipeline eventually was steered to 17 counties in eastern North Carolina. Senate Pro Tem Marc Basnight, D-Manteo, commandeered the project by wielding influence over several commissions and boards after the bond referendum.
None of the money is likely to be paid back because the bond legislation doesn’t require it, and because the pipeline project isn’t expected to be economically feasible for decades, if ever.
Remember the higher-education bonds approved by North Carolina voters in 2000? State leaders assured taxpayers at the time that the $3.1 billion in new debt wouldn’t add to their tax burden. Numerous state tax increases, some of them necessitated by payments for interest on the bonds, have followed.
Taxpayers also might remember that the bonds were sold to them on the promise that they would be used primarily to repair and renovate dilapidated buildings. A report by the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy found, however, that universities were using most of the money for new construction rather than for repairs and renovations.
Gov. Mike Easley, too, got in on the act. Since fiscal 2001-02 he has seized hundreds of millions of dollars in special tax revenue that traditionally was reimbursed to localities around the state. Easley’s confiscation angered local officials, many of whom accused the state of stealing their money. Dozens of localities filed a lawsuit to recover the lost revenues.
In another lawsuit against the state, former Transportation Secretary James Harrington and former state Sen. William Goldston seek $285 million that Easley shifted from the Highway Trust Fund to the General Fund in 2001 and 2002. Harrington and Goldston, rightfully contend that the money was earmarked for specific road projects and cannot be used for any other purpose.
In 2003 Easley proposed, and the legislature obliged, using $700 million from voter-approved bonding authority associated with the trust fund for projects that weren’t included in the 1989 legislation that established the fund. More generally, motorists have been paying higher taxes on gasoline and cars for 14 years, but they aren’t enjoying the full benefits of the fund, as some of the money goes for general government or even transit.
How much longer can Cooper ignore the widespread looting of North Carolina’s taxpayers by predatory politicians? The extent of the crime spree demands immediate action, perhaps a bulletin on prime-time TV.