Agenda 2002: A Candidate’s Guide to Key Issues in North Carolina Public Policy

North Carolina’s state budget reflects its governmental priorities. Unfortunately, over the past two decades governors and lawmakers have usually chosen to add new programs to the state budget without considering the merits of existing programs and finding ways to fund higher-priority items by eliminating lower priorities. As a result, the budget has grown by leaps and bounds, interrupted only briefly by retrenchment during recessionary periods, including the past three fiscal years. Until state leaders learn to exercise fiscal discipline or to write fiscal discipline into law via a strong expenditure limit the budget problem will worsen.