Governor shoots down budget deal
The governor didn’t use the word “veto”, but it was implied, and lawmakers are now knocked back a notch or two in their efforts to solve North Carolina’s budget gap and to begin the state’s overdue fiscal year.
The Raleigh News and Observer’s lead:
RALEIGH — A plan to increase the income tax of all North Carolina taxpayers is apparently dead.
After Gov. Beverly Perdue upended budget deliberations by fellow Democrats in the legislature, however, virtually everything else about a solution to the budget deficit is back up for grabs.
Perdue, hinting at a veto, said she told legislative leaders Thursday that she would not support an income tax increase that hit anyone other than the wealthy. “Who in the world thinks, in these trying times for families, you can raise income tax for working families and middle class families?” Perdue said at a hastily called news conference outside the Capitol on Thursday evening.
The move sends lawmakers back to the drawing board, first to give themselves more time to come up with a budget, then to try to find common ground that the governor will accept. The process could take many weeks, and it further vexes state employees–especially educators, who are trying to begin a school year with no real idea how much money they have to work with.
Tags: beverly perdue, budget proposal, Raleigh, Raleigh News and Observer, state employees
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