Budget passed despite snags

After months of grueling debate and controversy, the N.C. General Assembly finalized the state budget two weeks ago, a month and a half after its original deadline of June 30.

When the dust settled, many were left scratching their heads, wondering who made the final decisions.

Most of the decisions were made by Senate and House leadership, said Sen. Hugh Webster, R-Alamance.

“The (Senate President) Pro Tem (Marc Basnight, D-Dare) and the Speaker (Jim Black, D-Mecklenburg) are going to decide what comes out of the budget,” Webster said.

“I heard some of those who you would generally characterize as being committee chairs and leaders … complain about being excluded from the process which was something of a surprise to me.”

The process was a departure from 2003, when the House featured co-speakers Black and Rep. Richard Morgan, R-Moore.

Webster said that although there are drawbacks from no longer having a co-speakership, the new leadership has its advantages.

“At least now you know where to aim and who to blame,” he said. “With the co-speakership, ‘it wasn’t me, it was him.’”

Sen. Charlie Albertson, D-Duplin, said having a co-speakership this year might have helped to smooth the process.

“I think an argument could be made that it may have worked a little bit smoother as far as timewise,” Albertson said. “They had some difficulty on the issues, didn’t have the coalition to draw from (which) they had with the co-speakers.”

The co-speakership built a strong center, grouping both Republicans and Democrats into a coalition that was able to meet the June 30 deadline in 2003, said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill.

But he said this year’s legislature was able to make much more controversial decisions with the Democrats leading both the House and Senate.

“This is a legislature that handled some very difficult issues,” Guillory said. “It didn’t handle them all very smoothly, but in the end it produced a budget that kept the state moving forward.”

But many legislators complained about partisan decisions made during the budget season, especially with all House and Senate Republicans excluded from the conference committee, the group which proposed the final budget.

But Rep. Bill Faison, D-Orange said it was the decision of the Republican caucus to exclude themselves from the committee when they didn’t support previous attempts at a budget.

“They took themselves out of the process,” he said. “It’s just a policy decision they made as a caucus.”

But Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said the majority of Democrats in both chambers were not involved in the process.

“I think the problem we have is the document is written by a smaller and smaller group,” he said.

“I think that what we want is a process that enables the members of the General Assembly to have input and ensure that the final document represents the collective will of the elected representatives of North Carolina.”

The unique budget season did not seem to hamper funding for the UNC system, said Mark Fleming, vice president for government relations for the system.

“For the university, we did extraordinarily well this year,” Fleming said. “We really do have very good bipartisan support.”

But several issues should not have made it into the final budget, as legislators added pork-barrel legislation to it, Berger said.

The spending of $400,000 on a teapot museum was particularly problematic, he said.

“I think that if the process were such that those appropriations were brought forward for separate votes … you probably would have seen less of that,” Berger said.

He said his opinion was best expressed by a member of his district.

“I had a constituent tell me … the budget, from what he could see, was an insult to an honest pig.”

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.