Statement on Legislative Budget by Alexandra Sirota, Executive Director of the NC Budget & Tax Center
A budget that continues tax cuts primarily benefiting the richest North Carolinians alongside highly profitable corporations and their out-of-state shareholders is a bad budget for North Carolina.
After a full year without a state budget — and the real harm caused by delaying planning, disrupting contracts, and reducing services for families, businesses, and communities across the state — North Carolinians deserved a budget that meets today’s challenges.
Instead, the budget that the public finally got to see today falls short. It fails to recognize rising costs and does not ensure future policymakers will have the revenue to meet North Carolina’s growing needs.
One example is SNAP, the food assistance program that helps more than 1.4 million North Carolinians put food on the table while supporting local retailers and farmers.
Earlier this year, HR1 shifted new administrative costs for SNAP to states and local governments. Yet this budget does not provide state funding to help counties cover those costs. Instead, legislative leaders would leave local governments to absorb the expense even as they seek to limit local revenue options this November through the proposed property tax levy limit amendment.
And this budget goes even further by requiring county governments to pay for future benefit costs. Rather than ensuring families can access food and communities have the resources they need, budget writers are choosing to prioritize tax breaks that primarily benefit wealthy corporate shareholders and the wealthiest households. North Carolinians deserve a budget that prioritizes kitchen cupboards over corporate pocketbooks.
The final legislative budget framework was released more than a month ago after being hashed out behind closed doors between very few legislators.
Rather than working on final details through a public policy process, negotiations continued out of public view.
As a result, people with experience and expertise to inform the final spending plan were left out, including many legislators. Now the NC General Assembly is being asked to cast an up-or-down vote on a flawed budget with no opportunity for amendments.
North Carolina deserves better. We need a budget that plans for rising costs for families and the state, recognizes the stabilizing force of public investments in people’s daily lives today and in the future, and makes life more affordable and supports well-being for all North Carolinians.
It’s time for our elected leaders to call on everyone— including corporations and the very wealthy — to pay their fair share so we can strengthen opportunity and deliver broadly shared prosperity across the state.
Once again, legislative leaders have chosen to put the interests of the few ahead of the well-being of North Carolina’s people and communities.
