Editorial: Failure to pass N.C. budget is real emergency. Gov. Cooper should act, declare one

CBC Editorial: Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023; editorial #8873
The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

There’s no beating around the bush.

The North Carolina legislature isn’t doing its job.

Failing to have a budget passed by July 1 and still lacking one 75 days later -- they’ve made a mess of the state.

There aren’t bus drivers to take kids to school. There isn’t adequate access to healthcare and people are needlessly dying. Public services and facilities – from prisons to parks – lack adequate staffing to serve the public while assuring security, safety and necessary maintenance.

Students are crowded into schools and classrooms that lack full-time and certified teachers not to mention shortages of nurses and counselors. Violence and guns at schools and on college campuses are disrupting learning with lockdowns and terrifying faculty, staff and students.

For weeks legislative leaders have been meeting secretly over the state budget. Other than occasional pronouncements, the public has little notion of what’s really going on, what the issues of contention are or why there’s no budget to address the state’s most pressing needs.

Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham and House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, continually preach that government doesn’t work. Now, by their own actions, they’ve succeeded in proving it. Their inability to get the job done means the governor should step in and declare a state of emergency.

Not the figurative one he announced in May concerning the legislature’s neglect of our public schools, but a literal one.

This is no exercise in hyperbole or rhetoric. Would anyone question an emergency declaration if a hurricane, tornado, explosion or other disaster resulted in more than 4,000 deaths? Since Medicaid expansion became a possibility, an estimated 4,360 to 14,660 have died in North Carolina from lack of access to health care that otherwise might have been avoided.

Due to the legislature’s inability – or refusal – to carry out its duty, Cooper should order the appropriate agencies in state and local government to:

• Immediately begin implementation of Medicaid expansion.
• Release the necessary funding and implement the initial phases of the court-ordered comprehensive remedial plan. This is a consensus program that, over a rollout of eight years, aims to fulfill the state constitutional mandate that every child have access to a quality education. It should also include significant salary raises for teachers and other public education administrators and staff.

If legislators or other obstinate state officials want to go to court to stop Cooper, he should welcome the challenge.

When the state isn’t meeting its most basic obligation to citizens it is an emergency. Cooper will be standing with 1.5 million school children, their parents and their teachers. The governor will be standing with 600,000 people struggling to keep themselves and their family healthy and alive. Who will legislative leaders stand with?

The legislative answer should be to pass a budget, now, that properly funds the state’s needs – including the comprehensive remedial education plan, significant pay raises for school personnel and state workers so these jobs aren’t financial sacrifices and can attract competent, career-oriented workers and clear the way for Medicaid expansion.

We won’t hold our breath. That is why the governor needs to act now. This is an emergency.

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