Miracles still happen in Raleigh

You can count this as a minor miracle: The North Carolina General Assembly has passed a budget before the new fiscal year begins. That has not happened since 2003. Gov. Bev Perdue signed the budget bill with hours remaining before the spending plan would take effect.

Despite an $800 million shortfall in revenues, legislators managed to pass a budget without major tax increases and without some of the dire scenarios predicted as negotiations percolated in legislative offices. There will be cutbacks all around. Public schools will be a little tighter. The UNC system will be trimmed, but not so much that it will have to leave buildings vacant. Out-of-state scholarship athletes will once again pay out-of-state tuition, or have it paid by boosters. Four million dollars in highway repairs will be postponed. And mental health services and in-home care will see reductions that will affect the quality of life and health of clients and patients.

Meanwhile, state ferries will get a big boost, adding $11 million in funding. To partly offset this increase, road repairs will be cut $4 million. I'm old enough that I've driven a lot of N.C. highways and roads; I've even taken rides on a state ferry. But in my 40-plus years of driving, my ratio of highway driving miles to ferry sailing miles is probably in the range of 200,000 to one. Some North Carolinians will have an even more skewed ratio. So why does North Carolina increase funding for ferries while reducing funding for roads? It has to be political clout. Outer banks residents have to have ferries, and the Coast Guard has recently increased regulatory costs for ferries, but ferry users could easily pay more of the cost of operating ferries. That cost now is almost entirely borne by taxpayers, most of whom rarely if ever take a ferry cruise.

Anomalies such as this will continue until North Carolina revamps the budget system, including state taxes. North Carolina needs a reliable means of earning revenue, and taxpayers want rational regulations. Legislators and legislative staff need to examine what this state really needs, and then appropriate that money, without any extras for local museums, redundant highways or unnecessary state employees. The state will never get out of budget crisis mode until genuine controls on spending and political ambitions are put into place.