Budget takes one step forward, two steps back on job training

By
June 29, 2016
In 2016 Fiscal Year State Budget

North Carolina’s workers have been waiting for weeks to see how state legislators would address their needs, and now that the wait is over, they’re getting very little besides bad news. Not only does the compromise budget eliminate workplace health and safety inspectors at the NC Department of Labor, it also represents a missed opportunity for reinvesting in the state’s job training and workforce development system after years of cutbacks. This startling lack of investment is due largely to recent rounds of tax cuts that will reduce state revenues by as much as $2 billion in future years.

First, the good news: the budget strengthens state support for apprenticeship programs that allow participating workers to receive occupational job training from local community colleges while working for a participating employer. These programs provide workers with classroom instruction and on-the-job training on the way to earning an associates’ degree or a recognized occupational credential—and they have proven to be effective at ensuring workers get the training they need and securing job placement when they finish.

Specifically, the budget allocates $500,000 in state funding to support the administration and curriculum development of these programs and $110,000 in tuition waivers for students participating in apprenticeship programs. In effect, the tuition waivers reduce or eliminate the cost of enrollment for participating students.

But while the budget takes a step forward with apprenticeships, it takes two steps back in other areas of workforce development. After years of shortchanging community colleges and an enormously complex administrative overhaul of the state’s workforce development system, the budget does almost nothing to put these economically essential programs back on a path to success.

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More “clarity” adds to tax shift taking place in North Carolina

By
June 10, 2016
In 2016 Fiscal Year State Budget, NC Budget and Tax Center

North Carolinians are paying more in sales taxes than they did a few years ago. Lower income North Carolinians continue to pay a larger share of their income in state and local taxes compared to the wealthy. This is a result of state leaders’ deliberate efforts to create a state tax system that relies much more on the sales tax and much less on income taxes. Consequently, the tax load has shifted to low- and middle-income taxpayers and away from the state’s highest income earners.

North Carolinians now pay sales tax on a number of activities and services that were not subject to sales tax prior to 2014. In recent years, the sales tax has been expanded to include more than 40 services that were either not taxed at all or only partially taxed prior to tax changes passed by lawmakers. And the list of services subject to sales tax will likely grow under tax changes pushed through by state leaders that give large income tax cuts to the wealthy and profitable corporations and swap in the sales tax, which disproportionately hits middle- and low-income taxpayers. And because state leaders have not put in place a strong Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to offset this swap, this means most North Carolinians will likely see even more of their income going to state and local sales taxes.

For the current fiscal year, North Carolinians will pay more than $500 million in additional revenue as a result of lawmakers expanding the sales tax base. For the upcoming fiscal that begins July 1st, nearly $640 million in additional revenue will be raised from expanding the sales tax. Read more