The most famous line in the world: North Carolina State Politics Edition.
With a charging Republican majority in North Carolina, the State is getting ready to make some serious budget cuts. People are going to have to sacrifice, to be sure. And the deeper and sooner that sacrifice occurs, the better off the financial stability of the State.
Yet, no one can accept that fact.
Just look at reports coming out of the Unions:
“Every single year at this same point in time, there is the budget dance … There is always immediately going into an assumption that we are going to cut services and we’re going to do bad things to public employees,” said Dana Cope, executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina. “This is the first time that the budget deficit that we’re talking about is real.”
Yeah, and every single year at this same point in time plus some number of weeks, a deal is worked out with the Democrats and nothing changes. Except the amount of money that North Carolina is in debt; it just gets bigger and bigger.
And to make it worse, the concept that budget actions are required never quite makes it into the news:
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina state employees and public school teachers are often the place lawmakers look to consider significant budget cuts, as three-quarters of the state’s $19 billion budget is allocated to salaries and benefits.
But anxiety levels for the more than 300,000 teachers, university workers and other state employees have soared early in the legislative session with the Republican leadership’s approach to closing a projected $3.7 billion budget gap for the upcoming fiscal year. Leaders have refused to extend two temporary taxes that would have trimmed the shortfall by $1.3 billion.
Look. We’re all anxious. We’re ALL worried. But something has to change, we simply can NOT continue on this path of debt and more debt. Soon we’ll look like California, or New Jersey or New York. And no one wants that.
But how bad is it? Really? How BAD do the folks in Government, state and local have it. Education too….what’s it like out there?
In the last 10 years, private sector employment has seen massive churn with jobs not yet back to Jan 2001 levels. Government, State and Local Education? Tickin’ nicely. Slow and steady upwards growth. Hardly even a downward tick.
Since the most recent recession?
Brutal. While the private sector is beginning to recover, it’s important to notice that those same segments above have been cushioned from the blow.
Now let’s look at North Carolina:
A virtual mirror image. The private sector has been hammered with the Government sector seeing slow and steady gains. And this is during the most recent recession.
Nope. Rather than protest that the state workers are having to sacrifice, we need to ask ourselves why they haven’t yet. And then get the job done!
There is a quote attributed to Jessie James that goes like this:
Mr James, why do you rob banks? and his reply “Because that’s where the money is.”
If three-quarters of the state’s $19 billion budget is allocated to salaries and benefits of public employees, then we are saying “that is were three-quarters of the money is to steal”. The thing is, nobody is going to be “stealing” any money from anyone. The State just need to “give” workers less next year. Giving less is not stealing.
As a public employee myself, this is a fact that I have great difficulty explaining to my coworkers. If you are lucky enough to find a $100 dollar bill on the street corner today but only find $10 next week at that same corner, are you “Losing” money?
I have a solution, but be warned… it is sooooo revolutionary that even thinking it may taint future generations. Here is what I suggest to my coworkers:
“Let’s make a deal with the public. If they dig deep, really deep, into their pockets and find the money to continue to give us employment WITHOUT any pay cuts or concessions, we, the employees, will kick it up a notch or two and be the best we can be. We will be the best teachers, the best garbage collectors, the best police and firemen the world has ever known.”
I truly believe that the community would be willing to RAISE taxes if we served their needs better. I am not trying to bash all public workers for being lazy. I am one of them, and many of us do work very hard. (I am especially thinking of teachers here.), but public workers either need to start working smarter, or allow the State to give us less.
Since you got me started on a rant about public workers, I wish to remind all that the State has also messed up. Michigan started a lottery back in the 70s. About twenty years ago the State of Michigan said it would give all the profits from the lottery to the public schools. That tag line is part of all the television ads for the lottery. It almost makes it seem like gambling is a good and socially uplifting activity. Great, let’s all gamble. The one point that the State never reminds the citizens of is that for every dollar of lottery profits that goes to the schools, one dollar of general funds money is held back from the schools. So an extra billion in lottery money means a net gain to the schools of ZERO dollars. Public workers do not always do their best, but the government also does weasly things that make our work harder. The State screws us, we screw them, you screw us, they screw you, then we all start over again. Are we having fun yet?
“Let’s make a deal with the public. If they dig deep, really deep, into their pockets and find the money to continue to give us employment WITHOUT any pay cuts or concessions, we, the employees, will kick it up a notch or two and be the best we can be. We will be the best teachers, the best garbage collectors, the best police and firemen the world has ever known.”
At this point, I’d settle for the ability to simply cut the folks who are the poorest performers, not the youngest employees. If we could eliminate the bottom 10% of teachers the gains would be massive.
The one point that the State never reminds the citizens of is that for every dollar of lottery profits that goes to the schools, one dollar of general funds money is held back from the schools. So an extra billion in lottery money means a net gain to the schools of ZERO dollars.
The lies of the Education Lottery are enough to drive me to stick a pencil in my eye!