Historic: NC General Assembly Overrides Governor Perdue's Budget Veto

Both chambers of the North Carolina General Assembly voted to override Governor Perdue's irresponsible veto of the 2011 state budget. The House voted 73-46, with 5 Democrats joining the Republican majority, to override the veto. The Senate completed the veto override this afternoon with a party-line vote, 31-19. The historic state budget is now the law of the land.

Below are highlights of the bipartisan budget.

Keeps campaign promises

-Balances the budget, closing a $2.5 billion shortfall
-Allows the temporary sales and income tax increases to expire, putting $1.3 billion back into the hands of North Carolina taxpayers
-Provides tax relief for small businesses, allowing them to expand and put people back to work
-Protects education - fully funding all classroom teachers and teacher's assistants
-Brings state spending in line with revenues and places North Carolina back on the path to fiscal responsibility
-Right-sizes state government
-Cuts state spending by four percent (spending has more than doubled in the past 10 years)
-More than doubles the amount of money in the Rainy Day Fund ($185 million)
-Allocates $125 million for renovation and repair of university and state buildings
-Fully funds the state's retirement system

Creates private sector jobs

-Cuts taxes for EVERY North Carolinian by allowing temporary taxes to expire, reducing the state's sales tax from 7.75% to 6.75%
-Implements small business tax relief, exempting the first $50,000 of small business income from income tax
-Creates nearly 14,000 private sector jobs in the first year (30,000 over the next two years) by returning nearly $1.5 billion to the hands of taxpayers of North Carolina
-Extends unemployment benefits for 40,000 North Carolinians whose benefits have expired

Protects students and teachers

-Reduces class sizes in grades 1-3 from 18:1 to 17:1 - adding more than 1,100 new teachers
-Protects every teacher and teacher assistant position currently employed
-Provides liability insurance for teachers and school employees to help ensure their safety in the classroom
-Does not pass down fiscal responsibility for school buses, tort claims, and worker's compensation claims to the counties like the Governor's budget proposed (saving counties $75 million)
-Allocates $100 million to the Public School Building Capital Fund to assist counties in building, renovating and upgrading schools with new technology (Governor Perdue's budget proposed only $55 million)
-Creates a performance pay model for teachers and state employees to retain and reward our state's best and brightest employees

Protects Health and Human Services

-Over half of all the budget reductions in the Department of Health and Human Services have been achieved through savings with no loss of services.
-All DHHS treatment facilities, schools, mental health hospitals and contract beds have been preserved.
-All 23 optional medical services in the Medicaid program have been preserved.
-We have paved the way for major Mental Health Reform in North Carolina.
-We have achieved pharmacy and medication savings through new initiatives to increase utilization of generic drugs.
-We have restored the Governor's proposed cuts to local health departments and senior services and taken steps to lessen the financial burden on counties.