Here is my warning to North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and the Legislature’s leadership: when you finish your work and fail to finish the basic business of state government in the United States of America, which is to adopt a budget for the state, voters feel vengeful. Specifically, they start to feel that “throw the bums out” may be necessary. This feeling impacts the leaders of both chambers of the state legislature and the governor, but it impacts the executive branch leadership, the governor, the most. After all, the buck stops here—at the governor’s desk, first and foremost. Just hear the sound of this: I hope that when the Legislature reconvenes in January, I hope they can adopt, with the governor’s consent, a spending plan for the current fiscal year. I know, I know, it is truly sad.
I commend the Democratic Governor, Roy Cooper, for taking all of his principled stands. Expanding Medicaid to cover the working poor, still possible under the Obamacare law, is a truly noble ideal. So, also, are granting teacher pay raises that amount to a significant percentage and annual increases. Nonetheless, the NC State Legislature was unwilling to grant either of these. They offered absolutely nothing on Medicaid expansion, and a notable compromise on teacher pay raises that could have saved face, if agreed-upon. No such compromise was available from the Governor’s office, however. Hence, we are left, this year, with nothing. No compromises, and ultimately, no NC State budget this year. We are left with, essentially, only paralysis. Total dysfunction in the halls of Raleigh. It is too bad.
On the bright side, one past hold-up in North Carolina state politics has been resolved. The I-77 express lanes/toll lanes leading from Charlotte to the North have opened. Former Governor Pat McCrory was right, on his radio show, that this highway project helped to cost him the election for Governor. Now, under the next Governor’s watch, the I-77 lanes are open. This marks the completion of the project, one that promises to address and relieve some of the perennial congestion plaguing this road. It was wholly unpopular, but it has finished, and it is, finally, open. Therefore, despite popular opinion, the highway has been improved, and the notorious congestion will have been addressed, and hopefully, somewhat substantially relieved. State government has enacted a solution to address the problem of congestion on this important expressway. State leadership did something, and finished it.
The I-77 political open sore will no longer hurt the Governor. The failure to reach any agreement with state legislative leaders can hurt the Governor, however. I encourage compromise, and enacting a state budget for North Carolina. Standing up for noble ideas is all well and good, after all, but doing the state’s business is, I think, more important. I do not send out a call to “throw the bums out;” rather, I call on our good state leadership to come to their senses, to compromise, and to adopt a state budget.
You can do better than what you have done.
—Nicholas Patti
Charlotte, NC
Nick Patti's Blog and Podcast 