Maybe it’s because I spent much of the past weekend working on a musical score, but I can’t seem to get Ado Annie’s song from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! out of my mind. Here’s the familiar chorus:
I’m just a girl who cain’t say no
I’m in a terrible fix
I always say come on let’s go
Jist when I orta say nix.
Actually, it just occurred to me why I’m humming this catchy little tune. The North Carolina General Assembly is reconvening in Raleigh for its 2004 session. According to most of the news reports, the prognosis for major legislation being adopted this year isn’t good. Lawmakers seem unlikely to enact controversial items such as a death-penalty moratorium or a state-run lottery monopoly just weeks before a scheduled July 20 primary in which many members are running against serious challengers in unfamiliar districts.
If the General Assembly is planning just to sit on the porch swing with its many suitors this year, rather than heading off to the hay barn, I’ll be gratified at its rediscovery of modesty. Unfortunately, I suspect that, like Ado Annie, our politicians may lack the sufficient willpower:
I’m just a girl who cain’t say no
Cain’t seem to say it at all
I hate to disserpoint a beau
When he is payin’ a call.
Come to think of it, Annie’s syntax closely resembles that of a certain Eastern North Carolina Senate leader — who, come to think of it, is promoting a new sin tax. While substantive changes in state law may not be in the offing in 2004, there do seem to be an awful many spending lobbies leaving the Legislative Building in Raleigh with goofy smiles on their faces. Hearing that there might be all of $200 million in surplus to spend (a tiny fraction of the state budget), they’ve come up with a peck of projects that just have to be funded to save the state’s economy: more than $300 million to build research centers on UNC campuses, tens of millions for the motorsports and film industries, tens of millions more for biotechnology, tens of millions for juvenile justice and mental health, and the list goes on.
A key reason why North Carolina has experienced budget deficits three years running, and will face something of a budget-deficit echo of half a billion dollars in 2004-05, is that when fiscal times were better its state leaders turned out to be the kind who cain’t say no. The founders of the American Republic, whose handiwork was mirrored in North Carolina’s founding institutions, didn’t want to create the kind of government that existed in parliamentary systems, the kind that brought significant legislative and executive power together in a single individual or party so that new ideas could be rapidly enacted. Our constitutional government was designed not to grease the skids but to gum them up, to ensure that only changes enjoying a large degree of consensus were likely to make it through the process.
On fiscal matters, the system has broken down and needs reform. Members happily vote for spending items they know are excessive or ridiculous as long as they get a little money to throw around at vocal or influential minorities in their districts. Additional checks and balances would help ensure that the general public’s interest in limited and economical government is represented and put in tension with the interest of individuals and groups (yes, comprising much of the public) to see what they can get. A Taxpayer Protection Act would be a good start, as would limits on sessions, legislative terms, and directing state funds to local governments or nonprofits with which lawmakers have close relationships.
Think of it as a little extra protection of our politicians’ virtue — a curfew, a lock on the windows, and a curious hound dog under the porch who barks at strangers.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.