Senate

The Senate fiscal year 2007-08 budget would have spent $1.3 billion (7.1 percent) more on operations than the previous year, plus another $1.2 billion in new debt. The Senate would have allowed the 8.0 percent personal income tax bracket and the extra quarter-cent sales tax to expire as current law requires.

Budget proposals from Gov. Mike Easley and the Senate put state spending back on the path of rapid growth last seen in the late 1990s. After inflation, the state will spend 10 percent more per resident on operations in the FY2006-07 than it did just three years ago. Real spending per resident is up 23 percent in the last decade. If the General Assembly had restricted spending growth to inflation and population growth over the decade, the General Fund operations budget would be $3.4 billion less than proposed.

RALEIGH — North Carolinians appear to be more committed to voting this November than they have been in the past four election cycles, but there is no clear consensus on…

As the North Carolina Senate prepares to vote on its proposed 2004-05 budget plan, it is important to keep in mind that an accounting change included in the plan has the effect of masking the magnitude of the proposed increase.

RALEIGH — The medical-malpractice legislation likely to emerge from the North Carolina Senate this week “is a mixed bag” from the standpoint of reformers, according to a preliminary analysis by…

The North Carolina Senate is considering a budget plan for the 2003-05 biennium that would compound the House’s error in raising taxes in the midst of a slack economic recovery. While proponents of the plan claim that it would help families with children, the reality is that it would impose higher taxes on family purchases of such items as clothes, furniture, candy, soft drinks, and health insurance — in order to fund a $726 million increase in state spending, or 5.1 percent.