This week the NC House majority voted along party lines to override Governor Cooper’s veto of Senate Bill 382. Although the bill’s title includes the words “disaster relief,” it contains no substantive relief for Western North Carolina. Only $2 million of the $227 million earmarked in the bill for disaster relief was allocated (for technical consulting for soil and water districts) while the remaining $225 million is simply shifted from one account to another and requires more legislative action before it can be used.
Another $25 million was allocated for debris removal.
Incoming House leader Hall noted that more than $900 million state dollars have been allocated to hurricane relief since October. However, that number pales in comparison to the $53 BILLION estimated price tag required for recovery.
Legislators may be particularly slow to move on hurricane relief because future forecasts for state revenue are dimmed by upcoming tax cuts set by the same legislators. Personal income and corporate income tax cuts scheduled to go into effect in coming years will cost the state more than $13 billion by 2031. North Carolina’s corporate income tax, already the lowest in the nation at 2.5%, is scheduled to drop to 0% by 2030. These cuts should be halted to ensure the investments needed in our state are adequately funded.
While legislators who crafted SB 382 say they must wait for federal hurricane relief funds to kick in before they commit more state dollars so they don’t end up spending more than what’s required to receive federal matching funds, they didn’t hesitate to allocate hundreds of millions more to private school voucher programs in November. The vouchers get more than $616 million this year alone and will receive nearly a billion every year within a few years.
As Western North Carolina heads into winter, residents will likely feel little comfort in the knowledge that millions of taxpayer dollars are flowing to private, mostly religious schools in urban and suburban counties far from their homes.