JLF Can-Do Budget Offers Alternative to Tax Hikes

Analyst offers ideas for House, Senate negotiators approaching July 1 deadline

RALEIGH (Carolina Journal Online) — State budget negotiators can scrap proposed tax and fee increases while still avoiding the most drastic budget cuts they've threatened to make during the past few weeks. The John Locke Foundation's chief budget analyst explains how in his new "Can-Do Budget."

"State House budget writers offered their colleagues a false choice," said the budget's author, Joseph Coletti, JLF Fiscal and Health Care Policy Analyst. "To sell a budget plan with $870 million in tax and fee increases next year, those budget writers scared colleagues by implying that the only alternative was a budget with drastic, debilitating cuts to essential services. In a little more than 25 pages, the Can-Do Budget offers a third alternative."

"This budget would redirect revenues from the Tobacco Master Settlement to state government's General Fund and eliminate $125 million in nonteaching centers in the University of North Carolina system," Coletti added. "It also would remove corporate welfare programs such as the N.C. Biotechnology Center, Job Development Investment Grants, and tax carve-outs like the recently approved tax break for Apple Computer."