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A legislative education committee won't include performance pay for teachers in its recommendations for short-session laws, said one of its chairmen. 

Performance pay for state employees, including teachers, was one of the big ideas included in the GOP-crafted budget last year. The budget included $121 million to spend in 2012-13 on "labor market and equity salary increases" and performance-based pay plans. 

Setting up a performance pay system is extremely complicated, said Rep. Brian Holloway, a Stokes County Republican and co-chairman of the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee. 

"It's something the General Assembly wants to do," he said. "I highly doubt performance pay will take place in the short session."

The meeting featured ideas from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, with interim Superintendent Hugh Hattabaugh and board Chairwoman Ericka Ellis-Stewart talking about the district's performance pay and teacher evaluation plan, and representatives from a mostly privately-funded effort called Project L.I.F.T. talking about their work with the district's lowest performing schools. 

The U.S. Senate voted 61-38 today to break a filibuster blocking a measure that would help states pay for Medicaid and teachers' salaries.

North Carolina and other states are desperate for the Medicaid money. Under the stimulus law, the federal government has been picking up a bigger share of the cost of the government health insurance for the poor and disabled. Sates were counting on getting the extra money through July 2011, but it appeared as if the beefed up payments were going to end in December because of shaky Senate support for keeping them up.

Faced with the uncertainty, legislators wrote a budget that included a list of progressively painful steps that would have been taken in January had the money not been approved. After state officials had raided savings accounts, cuts would have hit the state's contribution to the pension system and would have eventually sliced 1 percent of all state spending.

The Washington Post reports that the amount the Senate approved was less than states had hoped for.

North Carolina would likely get around $300 million instead of $500 million.

Still, Gov. Bev Perdue said in a statement that she was pleased.

“I want to thank the U.S. Senate, and especially Sen. Kay Hagan, for voting to move forward with Medicaid funding and money to keep teachers in the classroom," Perdue said in a statement.

"These were painful choices with money sliced from vital programs, but Senate leaders saw the catastrophe that would result from cutting medical care and putting thousands of teachers out of work across the country.

"This was the dire scenario I emphasized when I called members of our congressional delegation in recent weeks to push for this funding, and I thank them. I am confident both the Senate and House will ultimately approve this critical legislation.”

House Speaker Joe Hackney called the Senate vote "excellent news for education in North Carolina and for public school teachers."

Teacher pay increased between 1.8 and 8.2 percent in each of Kay Hagan's budgets.

The Democratic Senate nominee, who served as the Senate Appropriations co-chairwoman from 2003 to 2007, has cited her teacher pay raises in a recent TV ad.

Here are the average pay raises effective on July 1 of each year, according to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction:

2003: 1.81 percent

2004: 2.5 percent

2005: 2.24 percent

2006: 8.23 percent

2007: 5.0 percent

The actual raises could vary according to individual employees and other factors, as the calculations are rather complicated. The figures cited are for average across the board increases.

Gov. Mike Easley says the legislature "cannot ignore reality."

In a statement issued Sunday, Easley said that he is concerned that House and Senate budget writers are not reacting to the reduction in expected state revenues.

"The State Constitution requires that a budget be balanced before I sign it," he said in a statement. "The General Assembly cannot ignore reality. The very latest numbers verify that we remain short of the estimates that legislative budget writers are currently using."

Easley proposes getting rid of $20 million in proposed tax cuts, but keeping pre-kindergarten spending and pay raises for teachers, essentially threatening a veto.

"I want to be clear — the budget must be balanced and have the right priorities for me to sign it. I hope we can build a budget we can all be proud of," he said.

Gov. Mike Easley said this morning that he was puzzled by the decisions of state House members to cut his proposed teacher raises and other educational expense increases.

"It's very puzzling to me how a House who was so progressive on education last year can retrench so rapidly this year, failing to fund More at Four for our predominately minority students, really stiffing the teachers and not providing enrollment increases for college," Easley said.

Easley made his comments to reporters this morning after a meeting of state elected officials.

"It's not only unacceptable, but it's just puzzling to me how they can be that far off the mark," Easley said.

The House's proposed budget did away with Easley's proposed sin taxes increases on cigarettes and alcohol which would have paid for teacher raises and other items. Instead the House's first draft raises certain fees.

More after the jump.

Major pieces of the N.C. House's proposed state budget were released this morning, and they show more money for drop out prevention, a big cut for mental health community support services and a potential stumbling block for Gov. Mike Easley's More at Four pre-kindergarten education program.

The House would devote $15 million for drop out prevention grants to communities, more than double what is in the current state budget, Dan Kane reports. Nearly one out of every three students in North Carolina fail to graduate from high school, and state leaders are looking for ways to keep more students in school.

House budget writers also cut more than $86 million from the mental health community support program.

A recent News & Observer series on the state's mental health services reported roughly $400 million in waste in that program. The cut is $65 million more than Easley had sought in his $21.5 billion state budget proposal.

Easley's senior budget adviser, Dan Gerlach, said the governor will not sit for the way House members funded More at Four.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the cuts.

More after the jump.

State Rep. Deborah Ross has her eye on education.

The Raleigh Democrat says her biggest goal for the budget is a raise for teachers and state employees, though she did not have a specific amount in mind.

"I don't want to give a number because then they'll be mad at me because I didn't say a high enough number," she said. "I'm hoping that we can do as well as we did last year."

In the 2007-08 budget, teachers, UNC faculty and community college instructors received a 5 percent increase, while most state employees got a 4 percent raise.

Ross said she also hopes to land the rest of the funding for the Green Square project in downtown Raleigh, increase the contribution to the Housing Trust Fund to $50 million a year, add consumer protection measures on foreclosures and put a transportation bond before voters.

She also wants more funding for domestic violence shelters and other changes.

"We want to reduce the number of violations of domestic violence protective orders you need before it's considered a felony," she said.

Gov. Mike Easley proposed a $21.5 billion budget Monday that would raise taxes on cigarettes and alcohol to help pay for teacher raises and mental health reform.

Easley's budget, a 4.2 percent increase from the previous year, would add a 4 percent tax to beer and wine and a 4 percent tax to liquor to pay for a $68 million fix to the state's failing mental health system.

Easley would raise the tax on cigarettes from 35 cents to 55 cents per pack to pay for public school teacher raises that would average 7 percent. Administrators would receive a 6 percent raise.

This is Easley's last budget proposal. He is prohibited by law from seeking a third term. He has said a major goal of his last year is to get teacher pay up to the national average.

Pay increases would be given at a higher rate for newer teachers, said Dan Gerlach, a senior budget advisor to Easley.

"We all have to keep in mind this is a salary that is going to have to continue to grow if we want a quality education across the nation," Easley told reporters Monday morning.

More after the jump.

The end may be near. For the budget negotiations, that is.

Sen. Kay Hagan, one of the chief budget negotiators, said the House and Senate budget writers have agreed on salary increases for state employees.

They decided teachers, from K-12 to state universities, would get 5 percent raises. They settled on a 2.2 percent cost of living increase for retirees. State employees would get 4 percent raises. The percentages may change, Hagan said, but only if something else in the budget throws them seriously out of whack.

Negotiators are aiming to have the budget finished next week, said Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat.

The state House this morning started releasing portions of its proposed $20 billion budget for North Carolina. No news yet on proposed pay raises for teachers or state employees - or on what the House proposes to do with various taxes or fees.

But Dan Kane reports that the House is calling for full funding of enrollment growth at schools, community colleges and universities. The proposed budget would not fully fund inflationary increases in Medicaid spending.

Other tidbits:

- The proposal would provide nearly $10 million to purchase and store roughly 670,000 treatment dosages of Tamiflu in case of an influenza pandemic.

- The proposal would increase community college tuition by 6.3 percent.

- Need-based financial aid at the state's colleges would grow by nearly $28 million. The colleges would be expected to come up with nearly $19 million in savings by cutting middle management positions.

- The proposal calls for $7 million in dropout prevention grants.

- The plan would provide $8.4 million to subsidize child care for an additional 2,000 children.

House members are hoping to vote on a full budget package by late next week.