Universities, community colleges and state agencies got word Thursday that with a huge budget shortfall looming next year, it's time to cut - again.
The state's top budget officer sent a memo to a wide swath of state officials Thursday ordering up plans for next year's budget, which is expected to have a $3.3 billion hole in it. The stark news: Agencies must write plans on how they would cut 5 percent, 10 percent and 15 percent on a permanent basis. Officials will be asked to find underperforming programs, unnecessary services and redundant employees.
"This is not cutting across the board," said Chrissy Pearson, a spokeswoman for Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat. "This is a surgical cut. It might be a large scalpel, but this is going in and carving out specific areas that we can do without."
The state's current $19 billion budget, adopted this summer, included reductions across government. Next year the last of the federal stimulus dollars will evaporate, and a slate of tax increases adopted in 2009 are scheduled to expire. The resulting budget shortfall will likely be at least $3.3 billion, or more than 15 percent of the state's current budget.
The cuts will cause stress for some agencies that have already weathered two years of recession.
"It's getting more and more clear that we are past cutting through fat. We are deep into bone at this point," said Dave Richard, executive director of the Arc of North Carolina, a nonprofit organization that works with and advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Richard said cuts to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services have already affected people who need services. "I don't know how any agency can continue to try to make those cuts and achieve its mission," Richard said. "There will be people on the street."
Democrats control state government, and they wrote and adopted the current budget. Generally, Republicans objected to Democratic plans because they said the budget didn't do enough to curtail spending. "I am certainly encouraged that [Perdue] is thinking about the size of the real problem that we're facing," said Sen. Phil Berger, an Eden Republican and the Senate's minority leader. "I hope that she'll take an additional step and look at this year's spending level."
Republicans are working to convince voters that they deserve to control the legislature. Part of their pitch has been that they would look at the budget line by line and only approve dollars they determine would be worth spending.
"The information that she gets back from the folks in the agencies can be helpful in how we would craft a budget," Berger said.
Pearson said Perdue has already made strides in reducing spending and finding more efficient ways to handle state business.
"Despite what some critics might say, I think we're well down the road toward a leaner state government," she said.
Agencies are to submit proposed cuts by Oct. 29.
