A Fat And Lazy Hornet’s Budget
It was only a few months ago that the county manager and budget director openly acknowledged that Mecklenburg could not afford the government it has. So naturally, the Democrat majority on the board of county commissioners, with a party line vote Tuesday night, approved a budget that grows government by upward of $70 million.
The $1.38 billion monstrosity trims the tax rate by about 2 cents, while simultaneously increasing the property tax burden on about 56 percent of homeowners, in some cases dramatically, thanks to the magic of revaluation.
“We believe this budget represents a commitment to several important priorities established by the board: education, putting people back to work, and public safety,” said Commissioners Chairman Jennifer Roberts, who opined that the approved budget marked a “true compromise.”
Indeed, the budget is the very definition of tax-and-spend compromise: ask for an exorbitant funding increase, settle for a slightly less exorbitant funding increase, and leave taxpayers holding the bag.
The approved budget includes a $26 million increase for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools; a $2 million increase for Central Piedmont Community College; a $2.3 million increase for public libraries; a $3.3 million increase for park and recreation; a nearly $2 million increase to court operations and personnel, including an additional $623,000 to continue funding a specialty drug court that state funding cut entirely; and more than $6 million for corporate bribes, a.k.a. business investment grants.
Notice a trend? Republican Commissioner Neil Cooksey did.
“My fear is we’re opening the floodgates to new spending before we have completely refilled the reservoir,” Cooksey said, noting that the county’s unemployment rate still hovers in double digits, with the county down some 40,000 jobs from 2008 and housing prices down 6.5 percent since last year.
“The only way to keep our community viable is to find the delicate balance between keeping an affordable tax base and providing superior services for our residents,” Cooksey said. “We are in danger of setting government’s baseline revenue needs so high that the tax base will not be able to support it.”
In that light, Cooksey on Tuesday night made a motion to defer approving the budget and to have the county manager return next week and present the board with a revenue neutral budget, instead of one that grew government’s take by tens of millions of dollars. The motion was killed by a party line vote from the board’s Democrats, who regretted they weren’t able to reach even deeper into the taxpayers’ pockets.
“We do not feel it goes far enough, in reality, to support education,” Roberts said of the approved budget. “We wish we could do more, but the state budget cuts were too deep for the county to replace those dollars entirely, for either CMS or for Central Piedmont.”
The board’s Democrat majority was using the recent revaluation as an excuse for a tax increase, said Republican Commissioner Bill James.
“I don’t think this budget would have even been proposed if it wasn’t a revaluation year. I don’t think we’d be spending 50, 70 million dollars more if the 50 to 70 million-dollar tax increase were out in the open,” James said. “It’s an opportunity for Democrats to use that confusion, as to what the rate should be and how much revenue is coming in, to raise a bunch of money.”
James drew on the historical reference of Mecklenburg County’s role as a hornet’s nest of rebellion during the Revolutionary War, and wondered where that spirit had gone.
“I think the hornet doesn’t have a stinger anymore,” he said. “Whatever hornet was floating around in 1780 or 1776, his ancestors are fat and lazy and have no stinger.”
The reason for the devolution: “It’s because of an overdose of government money.” James opined. “It can no longer fly; its stinger fell off from excess government sugar, resources.”
An intervention – a legislative forced hornet’s detox, so to speak – was needed, James said, in the form of a taxpayer protection act that would require a super-majority vote to approve a tax increase, or legislation similar to California’s Prop 13 that would limit the amount of increase on property tax.
“I don’t think internally there is the intestinal fortitude to not raise taxes,” James said. “I think there’s a bias to doing it because people who live off government want more government.”
They’ll get $70 million more of it with the budget approved by Jenny and The Debts. That’s a heady and excessive increase compared to the revenue-neutral budget proposed by the board’s GOP minority, said Commissioner Karen Bentley, which would have increased funding for CMS, included merit pay increases for county employees, and provided additional funding for the libraries.
Under the Democrat-approved budget, about 80 percent of homeowners in Huntersville would see their tax bills increase, while upward of 77 percent of homeowners in Cornelius and Davidson would see the same, said Bentley, whose district includes the north Mecklenburg towns.
Democrat Commissioner Vilma Leake said she supported the approved budget, but with some reservations. Similar to Roberts, Leake thought it didn’t do enough for the “least amongst us.”
“The poor we shall have with us always,” Leake said. “So it becomes our burden to support those who do not have, and I don’t apologize for that.”
Leake seemed particularly unhinged because 90 people out of the county’s full-time staff of 4,437 positions are forced to rely on food stamps to make ends meet.
“When 90 people who work for the county are receiving food stamps, it grieves me to know that we were sacrificing jobs for the county for other agencies,” Leake said of the approved budget. “I felt that we should look out for our own staff, for our own people.”
Continued Leake, “I hope that this county and this country will come to the grips of making sure that jobs are available. It’s not just the president of the United States or the mayor of this city, it becomes everybody’s responsibility to bring forth proper jobs and support during this particular time in our lives in this city and county.”
Commissioner Jim Pendergraph, a Republican, had a different take on the employment front and the Democrat-approved budget.
“When I’m paying my bills and I get low on money in my checking account, I don’t have anyone that I can tax to fill that account,” Pendergraph said. “When the government runs low on money it raises the debt ceiling or increases your sales or property taxes. We can’t continue to fill the county’s treasury by taking more money from the hardworking taxpayers. To me that is very counterproductive to the recovery of our economy.”
“My esteemed colleague from District 2 [Leake] has said many times that there is a two-tiered system in this county: the haves and the have-nots,” Pendergraph said. “If this city and county continue on the current track, the have-nots will far outnumber the haves because the haves will have moved across the county line. And then who will pay the bills?”
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