Thread by @NC_Governor

Updates from Gov. Cooper's briefing:

https://twitter.com/NC_Governor/status/1374782672204132354

The past year has tested our state in ways that were once hard to imagine. It’s laid bare existing inequities while upending daily life and threatening people’s health and economic security. But it’s also shown the strength, resilience & innovation of North Carolinians.

Our state’s future is so bright. We’ll put this pandemic behind us sooner rather than later. With the right investments we can ensure our state roars back, creating opportunity for all of our people, not just those at the top. This is the time to find opportunity in crisis.

With the right priorities, we’ll not only beat this pandemic, but build lasting success for North Carolina. The most important recommendations today will invest in North Carolina’s people so they can learn, get healthier, and get the right kind of training for great jobs.

Businesses searching for skilled workers and a high quality of life keep heeding our calls to come here and expand. But as we work to right the inequities exposed by the pandemic, we need to make sure everyone is ready for their opportunity to succeed.

The most critical investments need to be made in early childhood education and our public schools. This budget provides more for pre-K and early learning, which science overwhelmingly proves starts children on the right path to success.

This budget also works to make good on our state’s Constitutional duty to make sure every child has access to a sound basic education. We know how to do that: Attract and keep good teachers with competitive pay and recruit young people to make teaching a career.

Make sure students and adults are ready for careers in high demand fields of employment. Provide the right resources for students with the greatest needs.

Another priority in this budget is making sure people are healthy and have access to quality health care to keep them that way. Vaccines are beating back this pandemic. But the affordable health care needs will persist long after the pandemic is over.

We must get health care to more working people. The best way to do that is to expand Medicaid. It insures more than 500,000 people without state tax dollars. It creates jobs. It helps save rural hospitals.

Expanding Medicaid makes private health insurance less expensive. And it gives many more people access to mental health and drug treatment. How do we know all that? Because the data from the 39 states that have expanded it shows us.

I know legislative leaders in the past have opposed it and they’ve had their reasons, which I have listened to. But three major changes have occurred since we struggled over this in the last budget:

First, the pandemic has cost hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians employer-sponsored health insurance. Second, the American Rescue Plan has opened the door wider with billions of dollars to encourage states that haven’t expanded to join.

And third, on July 1, NC will dramatically change how it manages the Medicaid system in a way legislative leaders wanted to take better care of tax dollars. Red states already are making moves. I’m ready to work with our legislators to find a way forward.

Access to good health care and education will get our state ready for the jobs that are already coming. As we’ve seen with job announcement after job announcement in recent weeks, our economy is moving and we’re telling employers around the world NC is ready & open for business.

This budget sends that signal by encouraging innovation and linking us to new industries: Biotechnology research, medical manufacturing, clean energy production. This will help businesses in our state, both large and small.

The pandemic has underscored the inequities in our state. Simply put, it’s hitting those with lower incomes much harder than those at the top. The needs are stark: housing, food, employment, health care. Any state pandemic recovery must tackle these inequities.

This budget recommends reinstating the Earned Income Tax Credit to help those with lower incomes keep more of the money they earn. More than 900,000 people in our state claimed the federal Earned Income Tax Credit in 2018, and we need a state credit to match.

A separate child- and-dependent-care tax credit can help the tens of thousands of families who have expenses caring for their children or dependent parents and grandparents. This helps more than ever during a pandemic.

State government has a responsibility to lead the way in promoting fairness. This budget provides a minimum $15 per hour wage for non-certified employees in public schools, such as bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and teacher assistants.

The budget also makes strong investments in our teachers, community college and university workforce as well as our other state workers and retirees.

We want state agencies to do more to view their work through a justice and equity lens. This means increasing participation of minority contractors which creates competition and saves taxpayers money. We must reach out to help communities of color and fix inequities.

We’re also recommending a $4.7 billion statewide bond initiative to be voted on this fall that’d build new K-12 public schools and fix aging buildings on our community college & university campuses. It would bolster state parks, museums and other sites across state government.

We have a responsibility to put our school children in safe, reliable classrooms and this bond will start addressing the more than $8 billion in documented needs. Interest rates have never been lower and our economy needs the boost.

And thanks to having paid down North Carolina’s debt, our state can afford it. Now is the time to address this backlog of needs.

It’s important to note what we left out of this state-funded budget and why. Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, some of our most pressing needs to lift communities in rural and other areas can be covered by federal funds.

Additionally, special help for hard-hit businesses like the hospitality and tourism industry; upgrades to water and sewer systems which smaller local governments are struggling to afford. My proposed budget for North Carolina’s share of the American Rescue Plan is coming soon.

Our state’s budget availability is strong, with almost $5 billion in unreserved money in the General Fund as we start the new fiscal year in July. Forecasts anticipate strong tax revenues the next two years and leaving recession numbers behind us as we beat this pandemic.

There’s no doubt that this last year has left many people facing financial hardship and temporarily robbed us of the way we lived our lives. But with the right priorities we can recover the education and economic losses and lay a foundation for a strong and prosperous future.