Lawmakers should direct surplus funds to state’s critical needs

The author says North Carolina lawmakers should use some of the state's sizable budget surplus to fund struggling core services like childcare. (Photo by Daria Nipot/Getty Images)

First, the good news. As North Carolina’s lawmakers crank up their every-other-year “short” session (well, sometimes it’s not so short), they’ll have the luxury of working with a healthy boost in anticipated revenue. Healthy to the tune of a projected $1.4 billion – money to be factored into the state budget, now pegged at $30 billion, that will control taxing and spending decisions for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

But like a working person who gets a raise just when the car needs a costly repair, the General Assembly shouldn’t be breaking into its happy dance. The state’s repair list, so to speak, is long – and the consequences of an ongoing failure to address it will be felt across our civic landscape and by multitudes of ordinary families whose lives will become harder.

The additional money – a boost in tax collections beyond what was expected – is tied to rapid job growth and higher wages. Let’s consider a prime example of where a chunk of it could productively be spent.

As reported by The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina faces an imminent crisis in the availability of childcare. The federal government, during the pandemic, allocated $1.3 billion in emergency funds to help keep the state’s 5,400 childcare centers in operation. But that funding source will dry up in June.

Estimates are that loss of the money will force almost 30 percent of the centers to shut down – taking some 91,000 childcare slots out of circulation.

Imagine the scramble that will trigger among desperate parents for whom childcare is essential if they’re to remain in or join the workforce. The scarcity will push already burdensome costs – for infants, averaging $790 per month — even higher at centers that can stay open. The odds of finding daycare that’s reasonably convenient and affordable will shrink even further. What it boils down to is that many families will face a serious threat to their quality of life.

Public school systems’ Pre-K programs also stand to lose federal COVID-related funds this year – potentially depriving vulnerable youngsters of the well-known benefits of getting an early jump on the skills and habits that underlie academic success.

Perhaps Congress should bear some responsibility for finding ways to cushion the loss of federal childcare grants tied to the pandemic’s waning. But North Carolina’s legislators, jingling what they think will be an extra $1.4 billion, can’t pretend they won’t have some money to help.

The N&O reports that in that vein, a coalition of business leaders – who understand the importance of childcare for their employees and hence to their companies’ operations – and other childcare advocates aim to seek $300 million in state funding to be applied to the upcoming shortage.

A main obstacle in tapping some of the projected revenue surplus might simply be the competition with other needs – more public school funding prominent among them. Then again, an even bigger obstacle could be the reluctance of conservative legislative budget-writers to tap the revenue windfall for more spending rather than squirreling it away in a rainy-day fund or channeling it into even more tax cuts favoring corporations and the well-off.

School funds squeezed

The legislature continues relentlessly to resist the increase in public school appropriations that was sanctioned by the state Supreme Court in the so-called Leandro case, when the court was in Democratic hands. Now that Republicans have taken control of the court, the justices are likely to let their legislative allies off the hook. Which makes it all the easier for those legislators to plow additional mega-millions into vouchers subsidizing attendance at limited-accountability private schools.

Even if the full Leandro funding fails to materialize – undercutting what a series of court rulings have said is the state’s duty to let every public school student obtain a useful education – there will remain the glaring issue of salaries so low that the teaching ranks are riddled with vacancies as instruction suffers.

For that matter, pay across the spectrum for state government’s rank-and-file employees, including those in health services and corrections, also lags to the point where agencies struggle to function.

Those functions extend well beyond providing services such as institutional care for the mentally ill, or even safety and security in our prisons. In fact, the strength of our democracy hinges on an election system well-enough financed, staffed and equipped to ensure that elections are carried out accurately and efficiently while being accessible to all eligible voters.

In case it has escaped notice, the Republican contingent that enjoys a legislative super-majority, with blood brothers on the state Supreme Court, has been notably cool to the idea that our election apparatus should be geared to encourage voter participation and to protect voters’ rights.

Republican legislative chiefs have sought to turn a system that answers sensibly enough to the governor, the state’s chief executive, into one vulnerable to being hamstrung by partisan division. Building on election law changes plainly intended to suppress the votes of people who lean Democratic, a new structure for the state Board of Elections and its county-level counterparts could limit voting opportunities and empower election deniers aligned with former President Trump.

That new law, based on Senate Bill 749 as enacted last year, would strip the governor of his election board appointive powers along with his or her party’s guaranteed majority. A panel of Superior Court judges has found the law to be an unconstitutional infringement on the governor’s rightful turf. A legislative appeal is pending – and given the Supreme Court’s Republican tilt, nobody would want to bet against it without getting really attractive odds.

Tough duty

All the while, election officials – whether on the public payroll or civic-minded volunteers – find themselves on the receiving end of vitriol emanating from folks who, with no credible evidence, continue to claim that Republican candidates are vulnerable to election fraud.

This, of course, is the theme on which Trump bases his tiresome, groundless claim that victory in the 2020 election was snatched from him by cheaters in league with Joe Biden. So if we’re wondering whom to blame for the invective that makes life miserable for the under-appreciated public servants who ensure that our elections play out smoothly, accurately and fairly, look no further than the defeated candidate who now seeks to reoccupy the Oval Office from which he can persecute his political enemies.

Threats, intimidation and legal turmoil: These are facts of life these days for the state’s election managers. No wonder election offices face extraordinary turnover and vacant positions.

Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections, appealed recently to a legislative committee for more funding to support hiring throughout the election system.  She noted that since 2019, 60 of the 100 counties have had to find new election directors amid a wave of retirements and resignations.

“Election professionals have faced continued hostility, harassment, substantial changes in their workload and the demands on them,” Bell said, as reported by The N&O.

While Republican doctrine seems to be the fewer voters, the better, a truly small-d democratic system prioritizes voting opportunities for everyone who’s eligible. And that takes well-staffed election offices and polling places to keep things running properly.

Perhaps nobody should hold their breath, but if legislators, as they tweak the upcoming fiscal year’s state budget, were to channel some of that unexpected revenue into strengthening our election machinery, they will have shown faith in a priceless ideal whose benefits accrue to us all.

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