Five goals, perhaps wishful, for North Carolina to pursue in 2020
In an important sense, the political new year won’t start in North Carolina until November. The General Assembly’s Republican majority can’t be expected to turn over a new leaf. It’ll follow the now tattered and discredited plan it has executed since taking control in 2011 — pushing tax cuts that favor the wealthy and big corporations, resisting Medicaid expansion, reducing environmental protections and business regulations and conducting public education on the cheap.
But, as North Carolina is becoming painfully aware, ignoring needs doesn’t make them go away. Despite the tunnel-vision of the legislature’s leaders, it’s worth taking a broader look at what North Carolina should do in 2020.
No. 1: Expand Medicaid. When the history of this era in state politics is written, the Republican lawmakers’ refusal to take the federal government’s offer to pay 90 percent of the cost of expanding Medicaid may be remembered as their cruelest and most financially reckless act. Thirty six states and the District of Columbia have taken the offer. One health care finance expert estimates that with Medicaid expansion 634,000 more North Carolinians would gain medical coverage, and by 2022 the state could add 37,220 more expansion-related jobs and $2.9 billion to the gross state product.
No. 2: Fund public education. A consultant’s report requested by the judge overseeing the Leandro case gave a stark picture of how much ground North Carolina has lost on public education. The report says the state needs to spend $8 billion more over the next eight years to help provide students a sound basic education. That shortfall is the consequence of Republican lawmakers putting tax cuts ahead of school funding. The cuts cost the state more than $3.5 billion annually in lost revenue. Since the state Constitution requires a balanced budget, the lost revenue had to be made up somewhere. Expect teachers to march on Raleigh again this spring seeking more money for schools.
No. 3. Step up on climate change. Gov. Roy Cooper deserves credit for addressing climate change by developing a clean energy plan. The plan proposes reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electric power production to 70% below 2005 levels by 2030. That would be considered ambitious 10 years ago. For 2020, the state needs to reach much higher because climate change is happening faster than projected. With its long coast and its abundant diversity of natural resources, North Carolina should be a national leader in reducing the release of greenhouse gasses and adjusting for risings sea levels. One big obstacle is that the state’s main utility, Duke Energy, is committed to a future of burning fossil fuels. State policy must be committed to a future of renewable energy.
No. 4: Shrink the rural-urban divide. Historically, North Carolina was a rural state. But today it is two states. One consists of fast-growing cities built around banking, higher education, biotechnology and computer science. The other consists of rural counties losing population and struggling to maintain schools and local hospitals in the face of inadequate state school funding and no Medicaid expansion. Between 2010 and 2018, nearly half of North Carolina’s counties — 43 out of 100 — saw a net loss of people. State policies need to strengthen rural-urban ties. Expanding rural broadband access has helped, but much more needs to be done to connect rural areas through technology, health care, education and transportation.
No. 5: Reform the UNC Board of Governors. North Carolina’s crown jewel — its 17-campus North Carolina University System — is being mismanaged by a politicized and dysfunctional Board of Governors. The UNC system can hardly withstand any more “fixing” by the Republican legislative leaders who appointed the board’s members. The board needs more political and demographic balance and there needs to be less micro-managing of the system president and less meddling in campus operations.