John, I don’t know if you saw this, but the Office of the State Controller just released their latest monthly report on our state’s finances—and it’s not good news.
Apples to apples, in February of this year, North Carolina brought in $457.6 million less in tax revenue than we did in February of last year.
It doesn’t take a degree in economics to know that bringing in half a billion fewer dollars each month—and that’s before we factor in inflation—isn’t sustainable. Not when nearly one in every four public service jobs in North Carolina is sitting vacant, not when we supposedly can’t afford to give teachers raises that keep up with inflation, not when NCDOT is having to mark simple projects for years down the road because they barely have the capacity for basic maintenance.
Actually, that’s a good example: let’s put what’s happening here in perspective. In January of this year, NCDOT reported that 8.4% of all bridges in our state were “functionally obsolete” or in “poor condition”—that’s a little more than 1,000 bridges. They estimated that, in order to bring all those bridges up to where they need to be, they would need about $4 billion.
In other words, if the trend from February keeps up, we’ll lose out on enough money to completely replace every “functionally obsolete” bridge in North Carolina within nine months, and all because of the NCGOP’s insistence on giving tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy even when we can’t afford it.
(Meanwhile, the GOP’s budget gave NCDOT a paltry $333 million for bridge replacement this year.)
I’ve always been told that the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility, but slashing revenues when we’ve got bills to pay doesn’t sound very responsible to me. And sooner or later, this irresponsible policy will drive North Carolina right off a fiscal cliff.
So how do we stop it?
The most important thing we can do is to flip the General Assembly and put folks in charge who actually understand the economic needs of running a functional state. I’ve made it my mission to run a hundred-county campaign and do whatever it takes to turn out voters for every race on the ballot—because nothing is going to change unless we have different people writing our budgets.
The second thing we can do is flip the Treasurer’s office. As the keeper of the public purse, the State Treasurer is positioned like no other member of the Council of State to use their bully pulpit on our state’s finances. As Treasurer, I’ll cross this great state from Murphy to Manteo and make sure that our people are educated on what’s happening in Raleigh so that they have the knowledge they need to hold our legislators accountable.
They say sunlight is the best disinfectant, and as Treasurer, I’ll open up the blinds and make sure that voters know what’s happening.
But I’ll be honest—there are a lot of people who don’t want me to do that. In fact, my Republican opponent has gone on record saying that he wants to shift more of the Treasurer’s duties away from this accountable, elected office and give them over to legislative appointees (i.e. hand more power over things like the pension fund to the same people driving us off a fiscal cliff).
He and his supporters are going to do anything to try to prevent us from taking this state back and giving power to the people—so I’ll need your help if we want to make sure they can’t stop us. I know I ask a lot of you, John, but I really need you to step up if we’re going to have any hope of staying competitive. Can I count on you to make a contribution of $25, $50, or whatever you can afford today? Our ability to get our message out to voters depends on supporters like you.
