Thoughts While Shaving
I rose early this morning and began going through old file/folders that should have been discarded years ago…I re-shuffle them from time to time….re-label, place in a different file for no apparent reason…
Began to compare cost over the past humpteen years…Had it all laid out in a table….but it didn’t do right and I knew Ken Pervine probably would think the same…so after much debate with myself…I “dumped” it all….Ken is IT person….
I was employed for 25 years with the NC Association of County Commissioners…and I enjoyed just about every day….I continue to follow special occasions of the organization and have attended every annual conference since retirement in 2007…
NCACC held their Legislative Goals Conference this past week…89 counties were represented…good attendance…different faces but many of the same issues…Federal Government passes cost down to state government, state government passes down to local government and local government has no one to pass it to but us…the taxpayers…Nothing has changed…
It was not surprising that the 4 of the top 5 goals were concerned with funding, lack of funding or concerns about more unfunded mandates…
1..Support continued state funding of Medicaid and support efforts by the state to provide healthcare access for all citizens.
2. Seek legislation to restore the statutory requirement that 40% of the net lottery proceeds be allocated to counties for school capital needs and increase the annual appropriation of lottery funds until the 40% allocation is restored.
3. See legislation to repeal the statutory authority under N.C. G.S. 115C-431(c) that allows local school boards to file suit against a county board of commissioners over county appropriations for education.
4. Oppose any shift of state transportation responsibilities to counties.
5. Oppose unfunded mandates and shifts of state responsibilities to counties…
Little has changed since my retirement….just more of the same…Dems and Reps all…not 5 cents worth of difference…
So how has it changed…gas tax continue be siphoned off for general fund purposes despite much need for more transportation improvement (I-95), lottery proceeds were sold as a funding source for schools…but continues to be a “piggy-bank” for the state honorables…(counties were told they could finance new school construction and use the promise of proceeds as collateral) and taxes being cut for select segments of the population….
Spend, cut and pass the deficient on to the counties…and the counties, being sub-divisions of the state must do as the state mandates…pay the bills…and no tax is more despised than local property taxes….surveys have determine it to be so…
Sorry, but the truth….
Will Rogers was a staunch Democrat, but he supported Republican Calvin Coolidge, his favorite was Franklin D. Roosevelt…About the New Deal…”Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.
Other Will Roger quotes,
“Ten men in the country would buy the world and ten million can’t buy enough to eat.”
Of Calvin Coolidge..”He’s the first president to discover that what the American people want is to be left alone.”
“With Congress, every time they make a joke it’s a law, and every time they make a law it’s a joke.”
“You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” robert g hester
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