The House released its first draft of the budget Monday, and will add the final touches in committees throughout the week before voting on its final version and sending it to the Senate.
Two local lawmakers will play key roles in budget discussions — State Sen. Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson, is the second-ranking member of the Senate and co-chair of the committee on appropriations for education and higher education, and state Rep. Chuck McGrady, R-Henderson, is co-chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
Apodaca said Monday that the Senate and House budgets always differ. While he said he can’t speak for the House’s priorities, one of the Senate’s top priorities is funding the second phase of teacher pay increases.
He said the Senate hopes to get starting teachers’ salaries up to $35,000 per year, and give raises to state employees hurt harder by the recession, such as prison guards.
The Senate also wants to reinstitute the income tax deduction for medical expenses for senior citizens, which Apodaca called a big issue.
Efforts to reach McGrady were unsuccessful Monday, but in an email newsletter, he stated that education funding also is a priority in the House budget.
After the new revenue numbers were released, McGrady said the House Appropriations Committee gave out new goals to committees handling different parts of the budget, resulting in the reinstatement of funding for drivers education courses, maintaining funding for pre-K programs and an increase to the child care subsidy.
The newsletter said the House budget “fully funds school enrollment growth. It also maintains teacher assistants while adding about $50 million for textbooks and digital resources. Moreover, several public school initiatives were funded including a digital learning plan at $21 million, a teacher recruitment and retention loan scholarship program at $3.2 million over two years, a program for principal development at $10 million over two years, and $15 million for an initiative intended to move towards differentiated pay (pay based on performance rather than on longevity).”
The preliminary House budget also increases funding for rural economic development grants, tourism advertising and $5 million has been proposed for the One N.C. Small Business fund, which would offer technology grants for small businesses.
Building up the state’s rainy day funds and infrastructure funding are high on the list for the Senate as well, though Apodaca said the Senate hasn’t taken a position on two $1.5 billion infrastructure bonds proposed by Gov. Pat McCrory in April.
Apodaca said he has major concerns about those initiatives and would be “hard pressed to support” the transportation bond, since there aren’t any projects listed west of Morganton.
One area Apodaca would like to address is “a glaring need for doctors in the rural areas” around Hendersonville and Asheville. He said he wants to fund 10 additional residents in the area for the University of North Carolina Medical School.
The expected surplus gives lawmakers a chance to look at the areas that have been held back during the recession, Apodaca said, but frugality shouldn’t go out the window just because the extra money is there.
“What we’ve done since 2010, the decisions we’ve made are a large part of why we are where we are,” he said, adding that the legislature can’t just start spending freely.
In his newsletter, McGrady also emphasized the need for lawmakers to use restraint.
“Overall, I’m pretty happy with this budget,” McGrady wrote. “We haven’t gone on a spending spree, even though our revenues exceeded expectations.
“When the complete budget is released and sewn together over the next few days,” the newsletter stated, “my expectation is that folks will see we’ve made some targeted investments but that we’ve also made sure that we’ve prudently put monies towards long-needed repairs/renovations and savings.”
Reach Lacey at derek.lacey@blueridgenow.com or 694-7860.
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