06/17/2009

Associated Press

From The Charlotte Observer, June 17

Time for Perdue to step up to challenge of balancing state budget

Few can remember when times were this difficult in the General Assembly. The state's annual revenues have taken a nosedive since Gov. Bev Perdue first presented her budget, and worsened since the Senate adopted a $20.5 billion budget with a $500 million hole.

Now the House has sent forward a much-diminished $18.6 billion budget that preserves many core functions of government and raises more than $780 million in new revenues to help cover a $4 billion-plus shortfall.

That's a big improvement on an earlier, $17.5 billion budget the House considered that would have sharply cut spending on education and mental health care, just to name two central responsibilities of the state. The House approved new tax brackets for upper incomes, expanded the sales tax base and boosted its rate by 1/4 of a cent. House Speaker Joe Hackney said House Democrats "responded honestly, forthrightly and without demagoguery to do the extremely difficult job of balancing our state's budget."

Hackney called out Republicans who "stood on the sidelines" refusing to either cut spending or raise revenue. Republicans felt squeezed out of the process, calling for cutting more programs that did not take teachers out of the classroom and opposing tax increases. We think they're right about some programs that consume far more money than they're worth.

While we think the House was courageous in coming up with new revenue — including corporate revenue the state has not previously collected — we believe the Senate's general plan for restructuring the revenue system is a better answer for the state's future. Senate leaders contemplate a revenue system that would significantly broaden the sales tax base and allow cuts in income and sales tax rates.

Perdue has called for more support for education, but has not thrown her political clout behind the tax-reform effort. She hasn't ruled it out, but without a bold stroke from the state's chief executive, the opportunity to move from a failed, Depression-era tax system to one more likely to meet our long-term needs may be lost.

These are difficult times. Legislative leaders are looking for help. Now's the time for Perdue to show determined leadership in remaking this state's outdated and inadequate revenue system.

___

From The Fayetteville Observer, June 17

Town's police woes require a forceful solution

Gregg Jarvies, Spring Lake's interim police chief, has prescribed bitter medicine for the town's demoralized police department: Everybody gets fired, and the department gets rebuilt from the ground up.

"It's a kick in the gut," said Jarvies, lamenting the injury to "decent individuals and good police officers" who would suffer for the misdeeds of others.

The plan is, as Nellie McCoy of the Board of Aldermen said, "very cold."

All true. But it does have its redeeming features.

First, it would work. Rather than painstakingly untangle the Gordian knot that the scandal-wracked department has become, Jarvies' plan would slice right through it. There would be no one left in the department whose competence or integrity was suspect, because there'd be no department.

Second, it makes good fiscal sense. With the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office already running things and town officers barred from investigating both misdemeanor and felony cases, it would be hard to justify keeping those officers on the payroll while they were variously vetted, investigated, vindicated and sacked.

According to the most optimistic timetable, the department will not recover its power to handle misdemeanors before 2011, and there is no timetable for restoring the power to investigate felonies. Even if everything breaks exactly right, that's too long to keep a police force that is little more than a paperweight on the public payroll.

Third, by contracting its police work out to the Sheriff's Office, the town would stifle the brewing debate over who should pay the county's expenses for its intensive efforts in Spring Lake.

Fourth, some provision has been made for honest officers who become innocent casualties of the clean sweep — and we don't mean only the two weeks' notice and the month's severance pay. If the plan is adopted, they won't be barred from reapplying once hiring resumes. And both new hires and returnees will be working for a bigger, more professional department that properly compensates its officers.

This plainly isn't going to happen right away. In fact, District Attorney Ed Grannis has said that the process of restoring police powers can't even begin until Jarvies' contract is extended or a permanent chief is installed.

The larger, obvious point is that it can't begin at all unless the town board commits itself to a plan and to providing the wherewithal to move it forward. It doesn't necessarily have to be this plan. But if the aldermen vote this one down without putting up a better one, that will be another leadership default and another undeserved blow to the public's trust.

___

From Star-News of Wilmington, June 15

'Private' government e-mails are public business

Government employees who send e-mails from a work account ought to understand that every word they write is the public's business. That includes a quick note asking the hubby to pick up milk on the way home, or an off-color joke forwarded to friends and family.

That's not how North Carolina's local governments see it. The body that advises them, UNC's School of Government, has said all an employee has to do is mark an e-mail "personal" to keep it away from the prying eyes of taxpayers who foot the bill.

It doesn't take a Ph.D. to figure out how easily the privacy argument could be used to shield embarrassing correspondence about government business. The School of Government's position on that possibility? Trust your public officials.

No, really, trust them.

The N.C. Press Association's skeptical lawyers have a different interpretation of the state law that requires openness documents (including electronic ones) created during the course of doing public business. That is, that the law presumes openness unless otherwise specified.

That's a concept that many government officials have trouble grasping, no matter how often it is reinforced. We start with a presumption that everything is on the public record and every meeting is open unless the law specifically allows secrecy. There is no exemption for "personal" e-mails, nor should there be.

In general, most people aren't interested in the occasional innocuous personal message. But what if that person is sending inappropriate messages from a public computer? Or spending hours a day taking care of personal business on the public's dime?

That is the public's business.

Allowing government employees to determine which e-mails should be private invites abuse. It almost ensures that inconvenient information about government actions or officials also will be kept from the public. How would we know? It's difficult to challenge something if you don't know it exists.

Do government employees have a right to privacy? As much right as employees of private companies have to prevent their employers from reading their personal e-mails

Those of you who work in the private sector: Imagine trying to convince the top brass that they have no right to see "private" e-mails sent from your work computer. And see how far that argument gets you in court.

In fact, the courts have maintained that there is no expectation of privacy when an employee creates documents or e-mails on his or her employer's computer system. Or, for that matter, when the employee chooses to spend time on YouTube and MySpace instead of on assigned duties.

Government employees work for the public. They are paid with tax dollars, and they are expected to be good stewards of the public's money. That's why their actions can and should be monitored by their employers — that's right, the public.

Are hundreds, maybe thousands of questionable e-mails being shielded? Perhaps not. But how many of us are willing to trust government employees to decide which e-mails the public should see and which ones are simply "personal"?

If it's personal business, use a personal e-mail account. Otherwise, it's the public's business.

___

From News & Record of Greensboro, June 12

NC Commerce Department followed script with Miley Cyrus film

The pampered movie star storms into the producer's office with a flurry of complaints: Her dressing room is too small, the champagne is never chilled to the right temperature, the director is impossible to work with, and her leading man has a better hairstylist.

"There, there," the indulgent producer assures her. "I'll fix everything."

The N.C. Commerce Department, in contrast, didn't "fix everything" when Walt Disney Pictures asked for incentives to film a movie starring teenage sensation Miley Cyrus in Wilmington. Playing North Carolina against Georgia, Disney eventually chose Savannah just to save maybe a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

Details of negotiations made public recently show that the director of North Carolina's Film Office and other Commerce officials worked hard to meet Disney's demands. They failed in the end because state law allows a lower payback on a movie company's investment than Georgia grants.

This has led to regrets in Raleigh and apparently something approaching hysteria in Wilmington. The director of the regional film commission there told The News and Observer of Raleigh that the city now can expect to lose Disney business forever.

Nonsense. Wilmington has proven to be a great location for many television and movie projects — all of which managed to live with North Carolina's incentives policies. Making an exception for Disney this time only would have created more difficulty in landing the next production.

Filming "The Last Song" in Wilmington might have created 500 temporary jobs and infused $8 million into the city's economy. The presence of Miss Cyrus would have excited the local teen or preteen population. It all would have been grand.

But it's possible to bend only so far and still maintain respectability. North Carolina offered champagne. If it wasn't chilled enough, too bad.