Red Clay Citizen

The Nine Million Dollar Stimulus Tracker

The nice folks here at Red Clay want you to know that we are looking out for you. 

The fact that $787 billion of your money is being spent by 537 people who have probably never even met you really troubles us.  We think you know how to spend that money better then they do.  The only saving grace in this whole process is the fact that the 537 people were nice enough to give you a website that you can use to track the money, and how it is being spent...Red Clay already knows what the first item put up for tracking will be.  It will likely look like this:

$9.5 million Spent on Stimulus Tracking Web site

It is interesting that this happens at the exact moment when Red Clay is revamping its blog.  I am told that it will be state of the art, and capable of displaying multiple pie charts and bar graphs (and the occasional picture of Bev Pedue as money).  See, we here at Red Clay World HQ think that you deserve to know what is going on in your government and home state.  We do these things because we care.  And by the way, it is only costing us one intern, one Mountain Dew per day, and an Apple Computer (that is called job creation folks). 

Just here to help.

Little Oversight and a lot of Overspending on Medicaid

North Carolina overspent on Medicaid services by as much as $226 million in a single year, according to a report released yesterday from the Legislature's Program Evaluation Division.

$2.4 billion was spent on Medicaid “enhanced services” from 2006-2009, of which $827.2 million was paid by the state. However, the program had no oversight mechanism until February 2007. During this first year, Individual Community Support services constituted 97 percent of funds, most of which included non-medical care for mental health patients and other services which were later deemed unnecessary and overpriced.  An article in the News and Observer states that auditors found providers billed Medicaid for questionable expenses such as taking student groups to the movies and clients to the gym, which accounted for up to 36 percent of total spending.

These expenditures continued to grow by 235 percent in less than a year. While all other 18 services in the program, including new treatment options, accounted for the rest of the 3 percent in spending. The $226 million in money that could have been saved by the state was calculated by the Program Evaluation Division by comparing spending in the first year with expenditures after September 2008 when program oversight was established. 

Why the rush to pass taxes in the middle of the night?

As the NC House meets tonight (Friday) and stays over until after midnight to pass higher taxes in the middle of the night on the citizens of the Old North State, it has to be asked why the rush?

Looking back over this session, the House has not exactly burned the candle at both ends. If you subtract the run-up to the madness known as "crossover" the pace has not exactly been frenetic. The house has considered an average of 4 bills a day, taken around 8 votes a day and passed less than 4 bills a day.

Now when the most important bill of the session is being debated they cram it and $1.8 billion of tax increases into less than 36 hours. Could it be they don't want people to know what they are doing?

Poll on which taxes to raise

The Triangle Business Journal is running an on-line poll on "Which taxes should the state raise to balance it's budget?"

Go there and vote. I did and my vote was in line with what most North Carolinians think when asked about spending and taxes.

More Proof ATV Bill is a "Bad Bill"

In May, Chris Hayes wrote a Bad Bill of the Week on "The Government Wants to Know About Your ATV." Senator Eddie Goodall (R-Union) has written an excellent editorial giving a lot more weight in the form of numbers to why this is definitely a BAD BILL.

Ever wonder how North Carolina’s government got so large?

Senate Bill 642, “Require Off-Road Vehicles to Be Registered”, provides a textbook example of how NC’s government quietly grows and in the process adds countless regulations and bureaucracies its citizens must work through. This money grab will cost off-road vehicle owners $25 million in the first five years of this program.

Got an ATV or dirt bike in the shed you occasionally ride around on the farm or woods? Well it’s time to take your checkbook down to the DMV office.  In simple language, SB 642 mandates the registration and titling of all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles with the Division of Motor Vehicles.

In the first year alone over 100,000 off-road vehicle owners would be required to pay a registration fee of $15 and titling fee of $40.  Projections for the subsequent four years show over 25,000 additional vehicles annually subject to these title and registration requirements. Vehicle registration information will also be sent to counties for property tax collections, thereby imposing yet another financial burden.

According to the bill’s sponsor Senator Doug Berger, a Democrat representing Franklin County, a few constituents called him and complained of off-road vehicles trespassing on their property. These citizens could not identify and therefore prosecute the individuals involved. Lo and behold a statewide solution, costing millions of dollars – with countless regulations, was crafted to make his constituents happy.

While NC budget writers must enact substantial workforce cuts and deal with a multi-billion dollar budget shortfall, this program does exactly the opposite. In the first year alone, it adds over $1.63 million in state expense. New personnel officers will be sworn DMV officials – fully equipped with a “State vehicle, uniforms, weapons, offices and supplies, and information technology support.”

Postage costs alone to administer the program would run over $113,000 the first five years. Reprogramming the State Titling and Registration System (STARS) would require over 5,620 man-hours with costs running $569,075.

Buying an off-road vehicle for use by a child under 16? Be prepared for a trip to DMV to secure a North Carolina Identification card so they can ride around the farm or woods.

Union County Sheriff Eddie Cathey told me he had a few complaints but typically the culprit would be a neighbor’s child and the charges would be dropped. He estimated about one prosecution a year which, for the whole state, would mean about 45 annually.

Berger thought the licensing of the vehicles would somehow make it easier to identify the trespassers but it is difficult to imagine one catching a 4 by 7 inch (or smaller) license tag number moving across a field a few hundred yards away.

The next step the bill takes to becoming law is the Senate Finance Committee. Legislators can be reached by calling 919-733-4111 or via email at the legislative website, ncleg.net.

So beyond the millions invested to address a constituent issue in rural Franklin County is the questionable effectiveness of the solution. Will a small “registration plate or sticker” actually help identify distant trespassers on a moving vehicle? Will an owner now try to ride on the highway equipped with a shiny new tag? Will one owner sell a dirt bike for $500 to a neighbor and then both go down to the local DMV and spend a few hours getting the paperwork worked out?

Looks like these may be the 25 million dollar questions.

Sen. Eddie Goodall
R – Union/Mecklenburg

Homeowners Association Run Amok - Bad Bill of the Week

Once again a hard week to decide on the BBOTW. It was hard not to go with the NC Colon Hydrotherapy Licensure bill - maybe another week, but I think the Community Association Managers Licensure was more worthy because of all of the bad things that will result. Higher costs for homeowners, more government bureaucracy and less freedom for North Carolinians will result from this bill.

Rather than a Community Association Managers Licensure maybe what is needed is a "Community Organizers Licensure" Bill. That bill might actually mean less organizing to increase the size of government.

Voters Reject Higher Spending & Taxes - Overwhelmingly

Yesterday California voters rejected every proposition politicians put up to deal with the Golden State's out of control budget. The one measure that passed was a measure prohibiting pay raises for lawmakers and other state elected officials during deficit years.

Civitas Polling has shown that voters are consistent on their preference to cutting spending rather than raising taxes. This was not a hard outcome to predict but sometimes politicians just can't bring themselves to do the right thing.

Hopefully North Carolina will not reach the depths of despair that California has reached but things have already gotten significantly worse since I wrote this piece less than two months ago. Brian Balfour gives the latest bad budget news here.

Oh That Wacky Charlotte City Council

You guys should really look into finding a better way to do public relations.

I'll give you a little nudge in the right direction...

If you are going to vote to recommend that the citizens of Charlotte tax themselves 1/2 cent on their sales tax for the seemingly ever increasing in cost transit boondoggle, try not to let it come to light that you are spending $42,000 on "colorful" trashcans.

You see the problem here?

Easley Corruption?

Before the left uses the Easley scandal of the day to rev up the call for "Welfare for Politicians", also laughingly called voter-owned elections, they should take a deep breath. The Easley story is not about using existing campaign laws to an advantage, if proven to be true, it is about violating EXISTING campaign law and about personal enrichment. As many politicians before him, it appears that Easley aspired to a lifestyle that his income as an elected official would not support. Enter "friends" all to happy to help him live that lifestyle and throw in taxpayer financed aircraft and security to make life that much easier.

Planes, trips, land, home renovations are not the stuff of campaigns, they are the ingredients in an all too typical story of greed and corruption.

Back to the voter-owned elections - I called that laughable because whoever controls the money controls the politicians. In the method the left is proposing the government will control that money which means that government will control the elections. That does not sound like voter-owned to me. It sounds like politician-owned. Before my words are misused remember that "legally" (Easley excluded) any one individual can only donate a maximum of $8,000 over one election cycle (primary and general). If an election raises and spends $8,000,000 do the math. The influence any one individual or PAC can have on an election is very limited, but when government is the source of almost all of your money - BIG IMPACT. Besides, voter-owned elections don't work.

Civitas Poll: 30% of NC Government Spending is Wasted

I figured the results of this question would be pretty high, but I was fairly surprised by just how high it turned out.  Voters on average think that 30% of government spending is waste according to this month's poll.

85 percent of voters think that at least 11 percent is wasted.

Is it any surprise then that 80 percent of voters prefer to close the state's budget deficit by cutting spending than by raising taxes?

Full text of questions:

If you knew there was a 5% deficit in the North Carolina state budget, to that 5 % deficit, would you rather see the state cut spending or increase taxes?

Cut Spending – 79.8%
Raise Taxes – 11.8%
No Opinion – 8.3%

In your opinion, what percentage of state government spending do you think is wasted?

Zero Percent/None – 0.7%
1-5% –  4.8%
6-10% –  9.3%
11- 20% –  16.0%
21- 30% – 15.3%
31- 40% – 12.5%
41-50% – 8.0%
Over 50% – 16.2%
No Opinion- 17.2%