RALEIGH — Make no mistake: Hurricane Isabel, though not nearly as destructive as previous storms such as Fran and Floyd have been in North Carolina, has still caused a great deal of damage — and has created the need for significant governmental expenditure.
This is precisely why it is so important for our political leaders to set firm priorities and to make good decisions with our money. Instead of trying to “respond” to every constituency that can quote a statistic or rehearse a sob story, public officials should start out with the presumption that in virtually every case in which a lobby group or government agency asks for taxpayer money, the answer should be “no” — not “well, we try to help you out,” or “wait until next year when the economy picks up,” or “it depends: how much money do you have in your PAC?”
Unfortunately, lawmakers in Raleigh still haven’t learned to say no, at least not consistently, even after four-straight years of budget deficits. Rosy scenarios and one-time gimmicks got the General Assembly through the 2003 budget cycle. Now, with little fiscal cushion left, the proverbial rainy day has returned.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I do not believe that it is the taxpayers’ job to subsidize risky private choices. I do not favor easy access to government bailouts for people who own cottages on the Outer Banks or homes in flood plains. Nor do I think that natural disasters should be used as an excuse for communities to try to tap public coffers in Raleigh or in Washington for preexisting needs, which is what happened in 1999 when North Carolina politicians shamelessly tried to scam the Feds for “Floyd expenses” that were anything but.
When I say that Isabel has created new fiscal obligations for North Carolina, I mean for things that are clearly state responsibilities. For example, we are going to have to repair quite a bit of public infrastructure, including the major highway along the Outer Banks and a number of inland roads and bridges. There have been public-safety needs, as well as emergency response and short-term relief. These are appropriate functions for North Carolina to perform, meaning that they are appropriate functions for North Carolina taxpayers to finance.
So the next time that you hear a politician talk about running (largely empty) choo-choo trains around Charlotte or the Triangle, or the next time you hear a UNC lobbyist complain about too-little subsidy for its high-priced researchers, or the next time you hear about how middle-class families ought to get free day care or health care or school lunches for their children, or the next time you hear the case for tossing millions of public dollars down various “economic development” ratholes, remember this:
Are any of these requests as urgent and important as recovering from a hurricane? If not, then why does North Carolina’s political class continue to respond so favorably to these proposals of dubious merit, when they must know that they are setting the state up for fiscal turbulence in the future?
Of course, there is a solution available other than fiscal discipline. It’s the call to raise North Carolina’s taxes again, at least temporarily, to address the new set of spending needs. I’ll be waiting to see how long it takes for some politicians or newspaper editorial boards to utter the t-word. In 1999, in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, it only took a few days.
But remember that any tax increase passed now wouldn’t be to finance disaster recovery. It would be to finance all those lower-priority items that politicians funded for years with the money they should have set aside for disaster recovery.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.