State Budget is Unfair unless you have HIV/AIDS
Rep. Debbie Clary votes NO on 2001-02 Budget

The 2001-02 North Carolina State Budget was given second reading on the House floor on Wednesday, June 27th. I can tell you that this budget is a disgrace, and it is irresponsible, unfair, unbalanced and has shortchanged the people of the state in favor of special interest. This budget was written by Democrat leadership and is a Democrat budget.

For months state employees and teachers have been told that there was no money for raises or to assist in rising family health plan expenses. The state employees retirement fund has been compromised, by leadership who decided to dip into the funds so they could make expenditures on new programs like funding HIV/AIDS drugs at a higher rate than any other drug assistance program in the state. There was no line item of the actual expense of the program in the budget due to the fact it will be in the tens of millions of dollars and this may have scared off even a democrat budget vote.

While they were great at making prescription drug promises to the elderly during their campaigns, the reality is the elderly, disabled, and blind, persons who need assistance will only qualify at 100 percent of Federal Poverty Level while many people who have made poor lifestyle choices and have HIV/AIDS will qualify at 200 percent of Federal Poverty Level. Children who are born with HIV were already qualified under the Children's Health Insurance Plan called CHOICE and statistics show that there are a negligible number of persons who have contracted the disease thru transfusions.

Not to beat a dead horse, but just what is fair about giving over $1100.00 a month to a illegal drug user who has now contracted HIV and telling my elderly and disabled constituents who have a $760.00 per month income that they do not qualify for $300.00 to assist them with a few prescriptions?

Of course my next peeve is the reduction of class sizes and taking away of teacher assistants in the name of good education policy. While I would agree that there is better success with smaller classrooms, putting 25 million dollars in the budget to reduce the class size is ridiculous at this juncture. There are not enough classrooms or teachers to make it workable in the rural areas. Mecklenburg, Wake and Guilford will get the money. Our teachers have vocally supported their classroom assistants, especially in the K-3 classrooms. Handling 23 of these little guys, who often still need help in toileting, is just too much for one person.

Then we move on to the "New Programs" that must be established in the name of Gov. Easley. There is the "More at Four" program. A $6.5 million dollar expenditure for a program that….well nobody knows yet. There was no explanation of where, how and when the program would be implemented, just that four year olds were at risk. I thought that was what Smart Start's expenditure of $221 million this year was taking care of. Oh, but that was a Gov. Hunt legacy. Now, we must fund a Gov. Easley legacy.

The budget leadership decided that every poor child in the state should have health coverage and expanded the Health CHOICE program for children by $8 million. At the same time hard working, dedicated state employees and teachers are taking a net loss in their paychecks. The best example comes from a Kings Mountain teacher who will be taking home $1200.00 less this year after his raise and paying for his families health care. He may have to cancel his childrens coverage if the car breaks down and they won't qualify for CHOICE because he works as a teacher

Next, I look at the Justice and Public Safety budget. Oh my, the indigent defense fund just got a whopping $5.3 million while the crime victims compensation fund got $500,000. Perhaps crime does pay. It reminds me of the story someone shared of a Cleveland County migrant worker who severly burned his child and the indigent defense fund not only paid for his
Lawyer but also his interpreter in the courtroom. You'd ring my phone off the hook if you knew how much it cost the taxpayers for this man to burn and cripple his child and walk out of our courtroom a free man. Do you think that child of his is glad that there is an indigent defense fund that has now been increased? It makes me as sick as it does you.

I could go on but I think you get it. There are many reasons that I voted NO on the State Budget but I wanted to share these few with you. I would have been ashamed to tell you that I was a part of the chaos of this year's budget. It was created by a handful of people, behind closed doors and handed partially to the general membership on a Friday afternoon after most had left for their home districts. There are always backroom actions on every budget, but this is the first one that I've seen delivered, that the general membership had so little input.

The Senate Democrats are the worst of the political sinners. Their budget which closed the mental retardation centers, closed the deaf schools and left the mentally ill in the street was a scare tactic to push North Carolinans to ask for new taxes. Sorry Senators, your little plan failed. That is the only good thing I can say about this House budget. There is no lottery included and no new taxes.

I appreciate the opportunity to work for you in Raleigh. It is not always easy to make the decisions that we are faced with but I had no reservations about this no vote. For more information, view the “Top Ten Reasons to Vote Against the Budget” or read the complete buget at the NCGA Website.

Rep. Debbie Clary