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Good evening,
Tax season is upon us, and while everyone is rushing to file their returns for the past year, Governor Stein published his tax wishlist ([link removed]) for the future.
Gov. Stein's recommended budget for 2025 to 2027 seeks $70.2 billion in total expenditures, a staggering jump of 58.8% since 2019. Nearly $30.2 billion would be funded by the fiscally irresponsible federal government, nearly $37 trillion in debt.
Stein’s proposed budget would also halt the currently scheduled reductions to the individual and corporate tax rates, while converting the child tax deduction to a refundable tax credit.
As a result, taxes for North Carolinians would rise by $1.35 billion on net in 2027, and, by 2030, would grow to an estimated $4 billion!
And not only would North Carolinians’ taxes increase, Stein’s wishlist would decrease funding for school choice programs! His proposed recommendations would reduce funding for the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) by $783.8 million next year, and incrementally eliminate it by 2037.
What else does Stein propose?
The Governor’s proposal also contains several other noteworthy items:
* Issuance of a $4 billion bond for school repairs and construction, erasing years of successful debt reduction
* Increase funding state employee and retirees’ salaries and benefits by $700.3 million
* Only allocate $500 million to the State Emergency Response and Disaster relief fund (which had $1 billion withdrawn since Hurricane Helene)
* Maintain the contribution rate to the state retirement system (which isn’t sufficient to avoid a shortfall)
* Increase unemployment benefits
* Increase funding for child care
In summary, Stein’s budget would raise taxes on North Carolinians by billions, reduce educational opportunities for students, while increasing handouts to state bureaucrats. That doesn’t sound like a recipe for success to me.
You can read more about North Carolina’s taxes and budget here ([link removed]) , here ([link removed]) , and here ([link removed]) .
Esse quam videri,
Donald Bryson
Check out our latest video!
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More from Locke
1) 📢📢📢 Close the loophole in NC’s open meetings law ([link removed])
* Some local governments have been exploiting a loophole in the open meetings law to circumvent public transparency
+ The law defines “official meetings” as those involving a majority of members, allowing local governments to hold nonmajority meetings in secret
+ Nonmajority meetings are often deliberate attempts to evade the law, and they directly influence decisions made in public sessions
o For example, officials in Huntersville, Charlotte, and Asheville have all used nonmajority meetings to conduct business outside public view
o Transparency advocates, including an award-winning watchdog, have been repeatedly stonewalled
* The ultimate solution to improving government transparency would be passing a constitutional amendment, recommend in a recent Locke report ([link removed])
+ The amendment would require all meetings to be open to the public, unless a compelling public interest, as listed in state law, justifies closure
+ Closing this loophole would ensure that government decisions are made in the open, restoring trust and accountability in government for North Carolinians
Read the full article here ([link removed]) .
2) 🗳️🗳️🗳️ North Carolina’s voter registration system has gaps that need fixing ([link removed])
* One way election officials can make our elections more secure is by ensuring every voter registration is unique
+ Each voter should only have 1 registration, but identifiers like name, age or address aren’t always reliable (because more than 1 voter can share them)
+ Election officials address the problem in several ways:
o Voter registrations are supposed to be accompanied by a driver’s license numbers or the last 2 digits of their Social Security number
o A backup system assigns each voter a unique NCID number that follows them when they move counties
* Unfortunately, errors in the system still create duplicate registrations
+ Some voters, including high-profile individuals like Justice Allison Riggs, have been assigned multiple separate NCIDs
o Riggs had three separate voter registrations, each with a different NCID, across Wake, Durham, and Chatham counties
+ Election data expert David Goetze has flagged multiple cases where this has happened, emphasizing that these errors are administrative, not voter fraud
o He points out that the system’s failure to check for duplicates properly is a serious vulnerability
* The state election board says a fix is in place
+ A 2024 update to the SEIMS system now requires election workers to input driver’s license or Social Security details, which should prevent this problem in the future
+ Despite this fix, officials and watchdogs still need to remain vigilant to ensure voter rolls are accurate and clean
You can read more here ([link removed]) .
3) 🎆🎆🎆 North Carolina prepares for America’s 250th birthday ([link removed])
* Winston-Salem is believed to have held the first Independence Day celebration in our nation’s history, on July 4, 1783
+ And now it has launched a yearlong celebration, leading up to July 4, 2026
+ Forsyth County has tasked a special committee with organizing a series of events to honor our 250th birthday
+ And other counties across North Carolina have also formed committees to plan their own local festivities
o Though 25 counties have yet to take action, and are missing out on state grant funding available for supporting historical exhibits, educational programs, and public celebrations
* You can see a list of commemorative events planned for the celebration here ([link removed])
Read the full report here ([link removed]) .
Donate ([link removed])
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