RALEIGH -- House Republicans in North Carolina on Thursday largely completed their first budget draft that aims to spend $1.4 billion less than the governor proposed in key areas.
Opponents will argue that the changes will eliminate funding for more than 15,000 state and education jobs.
Six subcommittees, covering sectors including education, prisons, Medicaid and transportation, approved spending plans after their leaders took scores of amendments and heard complaints that the cuts go too deep.
House Democrats said the cuts could be scaled back if the Republicans agreed to keep some or all of the temporary taxes approved in the 2009 budget. Republicans have said the taxes will end, increasing the projected budget gap for the new year starting July 1 to about $2.5 billion.
"It doesn't change the fact that we had inadequate dollars," said Rep. Alice Bordsen, D-Alamance, after she voted against the subcommittee's spending recommendations for criminal justice programs. "We are eliminating services that we need. We will have people who are not going to be in facilities that are not up to the standards that we need."
10.5% cut to education
Public education, which makes up nearly 60 percent of this year's budget, will take the largest hit: an overall 10.5 percent cut that would keep services at current levels, according to budget sponsors.
The education budget would eliminate $259 million in local school district funding for teacher assistants in second and third grades. It's a move the Department of Public Instruction has estimated would stop money that pays for 8,814 assistants, leaving them only in kindergarten and first grade. The department said more cuts are expected for things such as assistant principals and custodians.
The UNC system would be required to find $469 million in spending reductions throughout its 17 campuses and the administration as part of a 15.5 percent cut. Administrators would decide where to cut, and UNC system officials say it will mean eliminating 3,200 faculty and staff positions and classes that will make it harder for students to graduate on schedule.
Rep. Bryan Holloway, R-Stokes, a co-chairman of the education budget subcommittee, said he doesn't expect the layoffs to be as great as the numbers suggest, particularly in the public schools.
"Superintendents have ultimate flexibility," Holloway said. As for the UNC system, he said, "some may lose their jobs - that's possible. But those decisions are going to be left up for them to make for the most part."
Medicaid takes a hit
The Health and Human Services subcommittee found the bulk of its more than $460 million in spending reductions through Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor and disabled. The House would direct Medicaid to locate $90 million worth of cost savings in state-funded programs. Already-low reimbursement rates for doctors, hospital and other providers would be cut 2 percent.
Rep. Nelson Dollar, R-Wake, a health subcommittee co-chairman, told colleagues that the cuts could have been a lot worse.
"We've had no loss of beds, no loss of facilities in making these reductions," said Dollar.
Democrats had a negative view of the health budget proposal, pointing out $60 million in cuts to the mental health system, a 20 percent funding reduction to the Smart Start early childhood initiative and a ban on grants and contracts to Planned Parenthood, an abortion and women's health services provider, for the next two years. Planned Parenthood doesn't use the $473,000 it receives from the state for abortions, but rather teen pregnancy prevention and family planning services.
The health care budget is "ideological, and it's targeted at the poor and powerless," said House Minority Leader Joe Hackney, D-Orange. "We will do everything we can to fix it as this process goes along and help the governor improve it."
