Dome Memo: Promises and counting

It doesn't help when you claim the state wasted $635 million and the link substantiating the claim puts that number between $177 and $226 million. The fact that it's spread over three years is lost in the confusion. The Beaufort Observer explains it thus:

First, they looked at how much money could have been saved had the cost controls that should have been put in place which were ultimately installed had actually been in place from the beginning. That number came to $635 million, of which North Carolina's share was $226 million.

Then they looked at what would have happened had there been earlier detection and reaction once the soaring expenditures began. That number was $498 million, of which $177 million was state money.

The annualized "waste" is thus $59-$75 million at best. Also lost in the confusion is the fact that many Republicans voted for the Mental Health Reform bill that pushed these services in the direction of private providers. These Republicans included free market champion James Arthur Pope. Now Tom Fetzer & his Republicans want to claim there wasn't enough of the government red tape they constantly decry. Also forgotten is the fact that Fetzer was part of the Martin administration that "raised" taxes including the Highway Use Tax, another much abused political football. Fetzer is a professional spin doctor and McClatchy has been spun.

Hhhhm, so bniolet, do you suggest that because the constituents are making less money and spending less money that the answer is for the government to take more money from them through taxation?

That doesn't sound like a formula for success in my book. We cut our household budgets and our personal spending, the government should do the same.

dahedgehog,

If you follow the link provided in the Dome Memo, you will see the following paragraph:

Revenue next year is expected to be more than $4 billion behind what it would have taken to keep funding programs and services at recent levels. Even measuring against this year's spending, which has been cut from what was approved in this year's budget, revenues are nearly $3 billion behind. Those figures do not account for approximately $1.3 billion in federal stimulus money, as the state historically has not calculated federal money in totaling up the general fund budget.

We wish there was a simple answer. But the fact is the size of the deficit depends on how you calculate it. Each side of this argument has their own way of crunching the numbers. 

Meanwhile, Rep. David Lewis, a Dunn Republican, launched a campaign to show that the Democrats are using faulty math in describing a budget deficit.

This seems like a great opportunity for a reporter to step up and inform his or her readers! Are Democrats using faulty math? Is Rep. Lewis wrong? As a reader, I'm unable to make any sort of informed opinion from the reporting offered via this blog.

Given that this is an argument over math, there is presumably an objective answer. As a reporter, you should work to provide your readers that answer, and serve your primary function of informing your readers.

By presenting this issue in terms of he said/she said, you do nothing to better inform your readers. Instead, partisans leave here assuming that their opponents on the other side are lying. Nonpartisans just throw their hands up in the air in frustration. It's a lose-lose situation. But it's a lose-lose situation that could be rectified....with actual reporting!

Step up and be a reporter, bniolet! Your readers need you!