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Ongoing NC GOP debacle thread

I don't know enough about Rucho or his plan to really defend him. I do know that the current Senate plan is shit. It un-taxes all corporate income and partially pays for it with a sales tax on utilities and a few additional services that don't have good lobbyists, plus revoking sales tax exemption for nonprofits (we'll see if that survives the onslaught by lobbyists for the big nonprofit hospitals). It doesn't get much more regressive than that. Small businesses are organized as S corps and LLCs and already don't pay corporate level tax, so this is just a giveaway to big publicly traded C corporations, while all our power bills will go up to pay for it. What a crock of shit.

Somebody in the Winston area is paying for a commercial about the nonprofit taxes on the radio.
 
I was sad to get this e-mail in my inbox today. I'm a 2013 UNCG grad (and entering WFU grad student), and I can say that it is literally impossible for kids between the ages of 18 and 22 to work their way through any undergraduate degree at this day and age without some form of government assistance or help from home. I have seen in threads on this forum where tuition at Wake Forest was $10,000 per year decades ago, and UNC was presumably much less expensive. I think that that is the world that our state legislators are living in, not really understanding the impact they're having on the state's future.

UNC President Tom Ross today issued the following statement on the House budget proposed for FY 2013-14:

Across the country, state leaders from both parties are making strategic investments in their public universities. They understand that talent is our economy’s most valuable commodity, and they are gearing up to compete. Ten of the 11 Southern states, including our neighbors Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia, have adopted budgets for 2013-14 that will increase funding for higher education. They are joined by California, Wisconsin, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, to name a few.

Meanwhile, the North Carolina House has proposed disproportionate budget cuts of $107 million to our public University, on top of the more than $400 million in permanent budget reductions imposed two years ago.

As other states are stepping up to compete, North Carolina cannot afford to stand down. If the House-proposed cuts remain in the budget, it would signal a weakening of North Carolina’s historic commitment to public higher education and make it more difficult for our University to produce the talent needed by business and industry. Since 2008, state funding has declined from 73% to 66% of the University’s budget, forcing students and their families to shoulder more of the cost.

If lawmakers make the choice to continue pulling back from higher education, our state will be placed at a serious competitive disadvantage. Academic quality and our campuses’ ability to improve retention and graduation rates will suffer. Some of our best and brightest faculty researchers will be pirated away by other institutions, and their research grant dollars—and the economic benefits they bring to our state—will leave with them.

While I am grateful the proposed House budget includes some expansion funds for the University’s newly approved Strategic Plan and our growing enrollment, and that House leaders showed strong continued support for our research mission, I worry about the impact deep new cuts would have on our ability to provide a high-quality education to our students and help drive North Carolina’s economic recovery.

We are operating leaner and more efficiently than ever before, producing more degrees with fewer resources. We have won a growing share of federal research dollars in recent years, putting those funds to work for North Carolina and creating jobs. We have absorbed large budget cuts that were painful, but necessary. Now, as the state’s economy has begun to grow again, the House is proposing more cuts that are excessive and damaging.

As the oldest public university in the nation, our historic promise of affordable, high-quality education has set an example for the rest of the country. We must continue to honor that covenant with the people of North Carolina. Our state cannot grow and our people cannot meet the challenges of this highly competitive economy without a strong, well-positioned University of North Carolina.
 
more stuff on tax reform, putting it here since this seems to be the running general assembly thread, not just debacles

http://www.gastongazette.com/spotlight/push-for-tax-reform-has-lost-all-momentum-1.160566?tc=cr

what i found interesting was that the author for the gaston paper wrote about this at all. he covers the local governments and i don't recall him ever writing about state issues when I lived down there.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/06/18/4114965/charlotte-says-senate-tax-bill.html

Tillis came out today and said that any tax reform will be revenue neutral to the cities and counties, not sure if that means total or on an individual basis. I'm sure some phaseout of any hold harmless amounts would be included. this quote gets me:

Local governments have other options for raising money for local services and infrastructure, including impact fees, water fees and other local taxes, Auth said. Governments could make up for lost sales tax by reinstating the food tax, or they could reduce spending, she said.

Reinstating the food tax will be very difficult once it's repealed for a few years until that authority returns. Reduce spending, ok I'll give them that with their platform of ideas, although it's tough with many services mandated by the state or necessary for quality of life. Water fees, i'm assuming means water bills, which pay for the system and running of the water system, not sure how that can replace lost revenues that help fund police, fire, sanitation, streets, etc. Impact fees face heavy opposition as well at the local level.
 
more stuff on tax reform, putting it here since this seems to be the running general assembly thread, not just debacles

http://www.gastongazette.com/spotlight/push-for-tax-reform-has-lost-all-momentum-1.160566?tc=cr

what i found interesting was that the author for the gaston paper wrote about this at all. he covers the local governments and i don't recall him ever writing about state issues when I lived down there.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/06/18/4114965/charlotte-says-senate-tax-bill.html

Tillis came out today and said that any tax reform will be revenue neutral to the cities and counties, not sure if that means total or on an individual basis. I'm sure some phaseout of any hold harmless amounts would be included. this quote gets me:

Local governments have other options for raising money for local services and infrastructure, including impact fees, water fees and other local taxes, Auth said. Governments could make up for lost sales tax by reinstating the food tax, or they could reduce spending, she said.

Reinstating the food tax will be very difficult once it's repealed for a few years until that authority returns. Reduce spending, ok I'll give them that with their platform of ideas, although it's tough with many services mandated by the state or necessary for quality of life. Water fees, i'm assuming means water bills, which pay for the system and running of the water system, not sure how that can replace lost revenues that help fund police, fire, sanitation, streets, etc. Impact fees face heavy opposition as well at the local level.

who lives in the city and pays for water? Democrats.

Who lives in the rurals and the burbs and has well water? Republicans.

Follow the money.
 
more stuff on tax reform, putting it here since this seems to be the running general assembly thread, not just debacles

http://www.gastongazette.com/spotlight/push-for-tax-reform-has-lost-all-momentum-1.160566?tc=cr

what i found interesting was that the author for the gaston paper wrote about this at all. he covers the local governments and i don't recall him ever writing about state issues when I lived down there.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/06/18/4114965/charlotte-says-senate-tax-bill.html

Tillis came out today and said that any tax reform will be revenue neutral to the cities and counties, not sure if that means total or on an individual basis. I'm sure some phaseout of any hold harmless amounts would be included. this quote gets me:

Local governments have other options for raising money for local services and infrastructure, including impact fees, water fees and other local taxes, Auth said. Governments could make up for lost sales tax by reinstating the food tax, or they could reduce spending, she said.

Reinstating the food tax will be very difficult once it's repealed for a few years until that authority returns. Reduce spending, ok I'll give them that with their platform of ideas, although it's tough with many services mandated by the state or necessary for quality of life. Water fees, i'm assuming means water bills, which pay for the system and running of the water system, not sure how that can replace lost revenues that help fund police, fire, sanitation, streets, etc. Impact fees face heavy opposition as well at the local level.

I love how they have been clamoring that the Democrats have bankrupted the state, yet here they are passing tax cuts with the only hope of paying for them is "increased economic activity."
 
This is rich.

"GOP Pat McCrory placed part of the blame on Moral Monday on outside groups when he spoke to the Republican convention in Charlotte over the weekend.
“Outsiders are coming in and they're going to try to do to us what they did to Scott Walker in Wisconsin,” McCrory said according to AP."


Read more here: http://projects.newsobserver.com/un...s_goolsby_calls_it_moron_monday#storylink=cpy

The Koch brothers, Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and Americans for Tax Reform are all homegrown local groups.
 
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/06/19/2976611/bill-that-would-tax-social-security.html

Potential for taxing income for those receiving Social Security. This is what happens when you can't agree on a tax reform plan and just start throwing random stuff together to get something passed. However, with the Senate taking the tax plan back to committee, it looks like they want to agree to something with the House behind the scenes (transparency!) before voting on it and avoiding a potentially long and drawn out conference committee.

Hearing now that the session may last into mid-July, after original goals of adjourning in mid-June. Most major legisilation is getting wrapped up, other than the budget and the tax reform plan.
 
yep. Tax "reform" is dead in NC, it appears. Rucho is right, the special interest groups killed it. However regressive tax cuts for publicly traded C corps at the expense of everyone else are alive and well.

These are the same publicly traded C corps that pulled all their textile and furniture jobs out of NC and sent them to China (not SC, not VA, not FL, not TX) for low labor costs. But Tillis would have you believe that if we just shave a few points off the state income tax rate, they'll all come flooding back in.

I didn't know who Bob Rucho was before all this but I'm now a fan of his for standing by his principles on tax reform. I probably don't like a lot of his other beliefs but he had a plan that, with some tweaking, could have really been good for NC. He had the courage to call a spade a spade when his leadership caved.
 
Doesn't NC, despite the income tax rate, sort of bend over backwards to give incentives (tax and otherwise) to large companies to locate here?
 
Doesn't NC, despite the income tax rate, sort of bend over backwards to give incentives (tax and otherwise) to large companies to locate here?

Yes. It was ranked in the top 10 for business friendliness before all of this. You'd never know it based on their rhetoric though.
 
http://raleighpublicrecord.org/featured/2012/06/06/senate-passes-controversial-fracking-bill/

"However, this new version of the bill also specifically legalizes waste water injection wells. This means that wastewater from drilling operations can be pumped directly in the ground as a means of disposal. It also specifically re-enacts the forced pooling of landowners, which means that if enough landowners in a specific area decide to allow fracking on their property, then all landowners must do so."

WTF
 
This is rich.

"GOP Pat McCrory placed part of the blame on Moral Monday on outside groups when he spoke to the Republican convention in Charlotte over the weekend.
“Outsiders are coming in and they're going to try to do to us what they did to Scott Walker in Wisconsin,” McCrory said according to AP."


Read more here: http://projects.newsobserver.com/un...s_goolsby_calls_it_moron_monday#storylink=cpy

The Koch brothers, Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and Americans for Tax Reform are all homegrown local groups.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/06/19/2976024/north-carolina-should-chart-its.html
 
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