Yachts Not Tots Guide General Assembly Tax and Spend Priorities

Late Sunday night, the N.C. General Assembly released its compromise $20.6 billion budget proposal which includes five bonus days, but no pay raises or retiree cost-of-living adjustments. To say that this is disappointing is an understatement.

Retirees, public employees and the services they provide deserve more. SEANC believes that $20.6 billion is a lot of money and how lawmakers choose to spend it, speaks volumes about their priorities. This year’s misplaced priorities became apparent when tax breaks for yachts became more important than healthy teeth for tots. It became apparent when the General Assembly decided to keep tax breaks for NASCAR teams, while denying public employees a modest cost-of-living increase so that they could afford to spend a day at the races.

Without a pay raise, a five-day vacation for the average employee becomes a staycation or an opportunity to work more at the second job in order to pay bills which keep rising while wages do not. Don’t get me wrong, the vacation days are appreciated, but a modest cost-of-living adjustment was strongly advocated for by the association and warranted this year.

The budget would close several prisons at the request of the Department of Public Safety and eliminates 685 positions including: Duplin Correctional, Robeson Correctional, Bladen Correctional, Wayne and Western Youth Institution. Johnston Correctional Institution will be converted to a minimum custody prison and will shed 50 positions as a result. The Department of Public Safety’s Youth Development Centers and the 90 people who work in the facilities also took a hit with closures impacting Lenoir, Richmond and Buncombe Detention Centers. Finally, the State Highway Patrol Communications Center would be consolidated resulting in 30 lost positions.

On the plus side of the DPS budget is 175 new probation officer positions and a New Western Multipurpose Group Home is funded with an unknown number of positions to support this facility. There were also two prisons that were under consideration for closure in previous budget drafts, but were restored in the final budget¬¬¬-Orange Correctional and the North Piedmont Correctional Center for Women

After intense lobbying to maintain preventive oral health services in high-risk schools, employees at the Department of Health and Human Services Oral Health section would lose 15 of the 50 employees denying many children basic dental hygiene services. The Senate proposed eliminating all these services, while the House fully funded these vital dental services. Other items of note:

• One-time five additional days of annual leave to be used by June 30, 2014
• $1 million for a statewide compensation study
• $1.1 million to fund 175 new probation officer positions
• $2.5 million to fill 69 state trooper vacancies
• $7.5 million to the salary adjustment fund
• $33 million for the State Health Plan
• $36 million to fully fund the Teachers’ and State Employees’ Retirement System
• $56 million for a general fund reserve for increased contributions to existing benefit employee programs in FY 14-15

SEANC will never stop working until state employees and retirees receive respect and the compensation they deserve for their work.

Thank you,

Dana Cope
SEANC Executive Director

P.S. More specifics on the budget are on the SEANC website which you can access here.