State of North Carolina playing with Revenues again

In case you don't think the State of North Carolina will raid monies not intended for use in the general fund, then please read this article from the Saturday Charlotte Observer entitled Perdue may use lottey funds to cut shortfall.

Bev Perdue has no excuse. She cast the tie breaking vote for the NC "Education" lottery. She knew what this money was supposed to be intended for and now she is going to play the shell game and push it over to the general fund. Shame on you Mrs. Governor.

The Governor's spokesperson says "....the governor had little choice. Already $2 billion in the red, the state faces a $3 billion shortfall next fiscal year." I respectfully disagree. Y'all are the ones that ran up spending when times were good; so y'all are the ones that need to ramp down spending in these bad times. Playing these little "Rob Peter to pay Paul" games are not going to solve the problem. We have to make structural changes to the State budget. That is what you do when you have an obvious systemic problem.

The article states "Perdue has said she may transfer $300 million from several special accounts into the depleted general fund. That includes nearly $38 million in scheduled lottery allocations to counties and $50 million from the lottery reserve fund." Here they go again taking from the funds that are directly intended for other levels of government. That means that Catawba County Schools (as well as others) will be forced to readdress their local budget, in order to account for this shortfall in the state budget. In other words, the State of North Carolina wants others to feel the pain of what they have caused. This will only exacerbate local problems since those agencies are already suffering from the shrinking economy.

The worst part is that they are once again breaking a pledge and a promise. You cannot trust these people to do what they say that they are going to do. That is the main problem that people have with government and further contributes to the cynicism that is rampant in society today. I was apprehensive about the lottery to begin with, because it is generally a regressive revenue raiser. Now, after seeing this, I think that I am totally against this lottery and would like to see a bill moved forward to abolish it, if they aren't going to lock that money away in a true trust.

It is time for our state to get its act together. Everyone is being forced to cut back at unprecedented levels. Why do Raleigh and Washington not understand that it is there obligation to do the same?