RALEIGH (July 21, 2022) – North Carolina won bragging rights last week when CNBC named it the No. 1 state in America for business. It’s an honor of which we should be proud.
The network praised state leaders for putting aside sharp partisan divisions to present a united, bipartisan front when recruiting new business to the state. Toyota, Apple, Google, VinFast and Boom Supersonic are all testaments to that cooperation in the past year.
“I’ve had both Republican and Democratic leaders of both the House and the Senate on each side of me as we make a presentation to the company that this is where you need to be, you’re gonna get predictability, reliability, consistency,” Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper told CNBC.1
We’re also starting to see glints of bipartisanship on Medicaid expansion.
North Carolina is one of just 12 states that still haven’t expanded Medicaid coverage, bypassing billions of dollars that instead went to other states. In this state, it would mean coverage for nearly 600,000 of our working poor.2 (The reason they don’t already qualify for Medicaid is they work – even without health insurance – and have incomes too high to qualify.)
Cooper said he did not veto the legislature’s timid budget for 2022-23 in part because discussions over Medicaid expansion with Republican legislative leaders continue.3
We want to see a similar bipartisan approach to public education. Cooper repeatedly says the first question prospective businesses ask is whether North Carolina has a well-prepared workforce.
For now, he can answer yes. But for a state that ranks 34th in K-12 teacher pay, 39th in K-12 expenditures per student4 and 41st in community-college faculty pay, how long can that last?
Yet in a year when the state has a $6.5 billion surplus, legislators granted state employees a raise of 3.5% – an average of 4.2% if you’re a K-12 teacher – in the face of 9% inflation.
That’s a slap in the face. It’s a pay cut to state workers, from school janitors to college and university instructors.5
Despite the raises, the NC Justice Center’s Kris Nordstrom calculated that most of the state’s K-12 public school teachers will effectively see a pay cut of about 3.9%, given accelerating inflation.
And – embarrassingly – pay for North Carolina teachers pales in comparison to Alabama’s teacher pay plan.6
Alabama? So much for bragging rights.
We’d like to see the same bipartisan cooperation state leaders put on display for outside businesses be put to work taking care of our own. Public education needs to again be a priority in this state.
1 https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/13/north-carolina-is-no-1-in-americas-top-states-for-business.html.
2 https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2022/06/29/yet-another-attempt-to-expand-medicaid-in-nc/.
3 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article263365063.html.
4 https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/2022%20Rankings%20and%20Estimates%20Report.pdf; https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article260971512.html.
5 https://hew.aveltsagency.com/2022/07/a-pay-cut/.
6 https://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2022/07/07/alabama-is-schooling-north-carolina-on-teacher-pay/#sthash.K05WkvVR.dpbs.
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