Republicans took charge of the state legislature promising a new and more transparent way of building the state's budget, but so far, they are repeating the same patterns they criticized when Democrats were running things.
Republican legislators campaigned on adopting a new practice that would have the legislature build a budget from scratch rather than using the current plan as a baseline. No one talks about that anymore. Republicans also promised more open discussions about spending, but critical debates are being held behind closed doors.
The full group of lawmakers appointed to examine details of the education spending, by far the largest state expense, has not met in more than a week. But the Republican Senate and House chairmen leading that group continue to meet away from rank-and-file members and the public.
Republicans are working the same way Democrats did, said Sen. Jerry Tillman, an Archdale Republican and one of the subcommittee chairmen. Education budget leaders sit with legislative fiscal staff members to work out proposals to bring to the full group, he said, because having the entire committee talk it all out would take too long.
"It'd take you six months to do it," he said. "We're going to try to put together something that will make sense."
Chris Fitzsimon, director of the left-leaning N.C. Policy Watch, questioned how Republicans meeting privately in March to work out differences on the budget is any different from Democrats doing the same in June or July when they were in charge.
"One of the hopes was that Republicans would live up to their promise of having an open and transparent budgeting process," he said. "It appears not much has changed."
Transparency to be seen
But Sen. Richard Stevens, a Cary Republican who is one of the chief budget writers, said GOP budget writing will be distinguished by its transparency.
The subcommittee chairmen are acting like any group of legislators writing a bill, he said. When the chairmen bring options to the full group, there will be open debate, discussion and consideration of amendments, he said.
"Their job is to guide the process," he said.
Stevens, who helped lead education budget writing for a few years when Democrats were in charge, said those committees did not accept meaningful contributions from rank-and-file committee members after the plans were presented.
House Speaker Thom Tillis said he expects that meetings of the chief budget writers and all budget subcommittee leaders will be public. And he plans to stick to an earlier promise that all lawmakers will receive at least 48 hours to review a proposed budget before any votes are required.
University vs. K-12 cuts
The private meetings of education budget writers have been wide-ranging and touch on policy matters. The education budget chairmen are talking about how the reductions should be divided between universities, K-12 schools and community colleges. At one point, they talked of a 30 percent cut to universities.
"It was so tentative," said Sen. Jean Preston, an Emerald Isle Republican and education budget chairwoman. The university reductions won't hit 30 percent, Preston said, but there is interest among the committee chairmen in sparing K-12 schools as much as possible.
"A lot of members think there has been favoritism" in the past toward the universities, particularly UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University, she said.
The latest targets put university cuts at about 16 percent to 20 percent, while keeping the cuts to K-12 to less than 8 percent, Preston said, but the fluidity of the discussion could change those percentages at any time.
The chairmen also have talked about how to change spending on teachers and teacher assistants. One possibility would be to incrementally reduce teacher assistants while adding more teachers to lower class sizes to 15 students in kindergarten through 3rd grade.
Not quite from scratch
Zero-based budgeting was a favored Republican topic before the session started in January. It's a method that reverses typical budget-building methods and forces justification for all spending.
Rep. John Blust, a Greensboro Republican and a champion of the practice, said he was disappointed that lawmakers are not doing it.
Zero-based budgeting takes time, and states devise multi-year plans for examining departments. If lawmakers wanted to do it this year, Blust said, they would have had to start in January.
"We're more or less doing the same method of budgeting that's been done down here," he said.
