Republican leaders of the House and Senate on Thursday said Gov. Beverly Perdue's budget didn't cut deep enough.

Sen. Phil Berger, of Eden, and Rep. Paul Stam, of Apex, said Perdue avoided taking obvious cuts that would amount to at least enough to avoid raising taxes on cigarettes and beer, as Perdue proposed.

"There are some fairly easy savings to look at," Berger said, highlighting GOP proposals to cut spending that would further reduce school class sizes or to use computer software to avoid improper payments to Medicaid providers.

Stam said Perdue made "phantom" cuts that really didn't reduce money being spent, such as eliminating unused salary money, or didn't cut nearly as deeply as expected, given Perdue's warnings of pain. The Republican leaders suggested the state be prepared to reduce workers' hours, order furloughs or impose layoffs, as the private sector is doing.

Gov. Beverly Perdue said she is working on a draft of her State of the State address that she will deliver to a joint session of the legislature on Monday.

Perdue said she would emphasize the need for the state to continue to fund education in these hard times. And she will emphasize the need for transparency in government and urge sunshine at all levels of North Carolina government, reports Rob Christensen.

She said she's changing a speech draft that she was afraid was too much like "a school marm" in tone.

She is not expecting to submit her budget recommendations until mid March.

"There are tremendous cuts -- things that just broke my heart to cut," Perdue told the press after a bill signing in the old House Chambers of the Capitol. "But I am doing what I can do to protect the public schools."

As for the current budget year which ends June 30, Perdue said she could not rule out further cuts.

"I am going to do whatever it takes to pay the bills, to keep the schools open, keep the prisons locked up, keep our people safe and try to retrain all these people losing their jobs," she said. "That’s my priority."

Gov. Beverly Perdue said today she will have to make deeper cuts in state government than she had anticipated, because of the worsening economic situation.

Perdue said she hopes to have identified more than $1 billion in cuts by Monday afternoon to close a $2 billion shortfall for the fiscal year that ends June 30, reports Rob Christensen.

The governor said that in addition, it now seems likely she will have to slash more than $3 billion from the budget recommendations for the fiscal year that begins July 1. She'll submit her budget proposal to the state legislature next month.

"I am having to make tough, difficult painful decisions about how to balance the budget,” Perdue told several hundred people at the N.C. Center for Nonprofits at N.C. State University. “Everybody in the state will likely feel some pain.”

Perdue said this was the most difficult time the state has faced since the Great Depression. She said the budget numbers are the worst since monthly revenue records were kept starting in the 1950s.

Gov. Beverly Perdue thanked the state AFL-CIO this morning for their political backing, and promised she would work “shape up” state government.

But she sidestepped some of the more controversial issues on labor’s agenda, such as allowing collective bargaining by public employees, reports Rob Christensen.

Perdue told a conference of about 80 labor leaders at the downtown Sheraton that she was working long hours putting together a budget. She said her priorities were on preserving state spending on education, particularly K-12. She also wanted to protect vocational programs.

But she said there would be pain.

“It’s just so hard,” she said. “Its so hard to know the decisions I have to make will hurt people in North Carolina.”

More after the jump

   Comments (1)