RALEIGH – The General Assembly is about to pass a 2010-11 state budget that will spend about $20.6 billion for general expenses (when properly accounted for), steal millions of dollars from the state’s charter schools, squander millions of dollars on ineffective or low-priority programs, and expand a nanny-state ban on retailers’ use of plastic bags, among many other provisions.

But the real story, I would submit, is what the new budget won’t do: prepare state government for what is likely to be another massive budget deficit in 2011. In a sense, then, it’s a placeholder budget – a stopgap measure designed to get Democratic incumbents past the November elections.

Then the real state budget plan for North Carolina will emerge.

In 2011, some $3 billion in short-term federal bailout funds and temporary taxes are scheduled to disappear from the state’s revenue availability. If the Democrats retain control of both chambers of the state legislature, most of the resulting budget hole will be filled by extending or expanding the tax increases, begging Congress for another binge of bailout borrowing, or some combination of the two.

If the Republicans were gain control of both chambers of the legislature, they’ll have deliver on their rhetoric of fiscal restraint or else shred their credibility. That means closing the $3 billion budget hole by reducing the size and scope of state government and redirecting state revenues currently routed to off-budget uses. If they resort to tax increases or federal debt bailouts as their predecessors did, they won’t hold power in Raleigh for long.

And if in November the voters decide to split the legislative chambers between the two parties, we may be in for a long and contentious session in 2011. For years, the Democratic and Republican philosophies of government have clashed mainly via floor speeches, competing press conferences, and campaign ads. But if a Republican Senate leader ends up negotiating with a Democratic Speaker of the House – or a GOP speaker faces off with a Democratic president pro tem – the final deal may not come until football season.

Which would be an apt metaphor.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.