RALEIGH — State Rep. Joe Hackney, a Chapel Hill Democrat, is a thoughtful and respectful legislator, but he said something Wednesday that struck me as neither.

The House Finance Committee was considering an idea to authorize new state debt to buy up land for state parks and for creating buffers around North Carolina’s military bases. Although the Senate had already approved $520 million in borrowing for this, the House panel’s version was far smaller, $68 million. Reacting to the (long overdue and welcome) concern on the part of several House members about the state’s rapidly rising debt level, Hackney sought to dismiss the issue.

“We do, in fact, have reserves,” Hackney said, according to the Associated Press. “We are not a high-debt state. … These wild accusations are just not anywhere close to the truth.”

Worries about the state’s new borrowing binge — just this year the Senate has endorsed a total of $760 million in new debts without a public vote for the above projects and UNC buildings — have nothing to do with the idea that North Carolina is a “high-debt state.” While soaring since the mid-1990s, our state’s debt-service per-capita remains low when compared to many other jurisdictions. But this doesn’t constitute an argument for more borrowing.

Many readers of this column could probably, if they really wanted to, go out today and purchase a new car, trading in their current vehicle to make the downpayment and then shouldering a monthly payment of principal and interest. At the bank, they wouldn’t be told that their debt was out of bounds or unaffordable.

So why don’t they? Because there are always competing claims on each dollar. If the car you drive will suffice for another year, that allows you to use your money to fix up the house, save for your children’s education, take that vacation you’ve been promising your spouse for so long, or pay off lingering credit-card debt for which the interest rates remain high.

In North Carolina’s state budget, there are plenty of competing needs, to put it mildly. Although I presume Hackney knows better, many state lawmakers seem to be think that unlike an appropriations bill, an issuance of state debt to fund a new project doesn’t cost anything. But debt service does impose an annual cost, one that must either be financed by foregoing expenditures elsewhere in the state budget or raising taxes.

Since 1996, the state’s annual debt service has more than quadrupled, and will reach $600 million in 2005-06 if no additional debt is approved this year. That reflects the addition of billions of dollars in bonds for school construction, water and natural gas projects, and higher education projects. While voters were told these bond issuances wouldn’t raise their taxes, that statement has proven to be, well, inoperative. Since 2001, a series of tax increases had cost North Carolinians about $1 billion a year, with up to a third of the cost attributable to those post-1996 increases in debt.

Just because we can issue debt doesn’t mean we should. There are higher priorities — such as maintaining the state’s buildings and heading off another round of economically destructive tax increases — and they should be respected this year.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.