Thursday was an exhausting and frustrating day for many involved in North Carolina government. After yesterday’s opening session of the General Assembly in Raleigh that produced no Speaker, the 120-member House met again, deadlocked again, lost a member (Republican Cary Allred), found him again, deadlocked again, adjourned, meandered, adjourned again, and then went home for the weekend. Everybody else, from the Easley administration to the N.C. Senate, looked on with a mixture of amazement, amusement, and disgust.
I’ve got a somewhat different take. I liked it.
Consider this. The House has met for two days. It hasn’t pass any convoluted laws. It hasn’t squandered our money, or at least not enough to speak of. It hasn’t raised our taxes. It hasn’t jacked up our state’s debt load. It hasn’t swiped money from local governments. It hasn’t raided our savings accounts for one-time money to fund its perpetual spending machine. It hasn’t raided our gas-tax accounts to bail out the General Fund or build choo-choo trains for Smart Growthers to play with.
It hasn’t passed any new, costly, and much-touted schools “reforms” that promise to fix what is wrong with our government-monopoly education system. It hasn’t promised any new entitlements to any interest group. It hasn’t handed out checks to relocating companies, or given Gov. Easley any more authority to do the same. It hasn’t convened some grand “study commission” to come up with new ways to copy other states in wasting tax money. It hasn’t infringed on private property rights with new state growth rules. It hasn’t chased away economic growth by passing new regulations, like last year’s Clean Smokestacks bill, that don’t pass a cost-benefit test.
It hasn’t given itself a pay raise, or a pension increase, or passed any new “campaign reform” laws designed to insulate lawmakers from effective competition.
In short, the N.C. House – and effectively the entire legislature – has been unable to do anything other than provide denizens of the capital city with some low-grade entertainment and the city’s restaurants with extra business.
Kinda feels like a legislative paradise. Here’s hoping that leaders of both parties will take their time in the current negotiations about how the two parties will share power in the House.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.