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Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Boomer with Attitude / News Wrong about Perdue
Posted By John Grooms on Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 1:42 PM
I admit that I voted for Beverly Perdue for one reason: She wasn't Pat McCrory. During the gubernatorial campaign, while McCrory continued playing his life role of Smug Yuppie, Perdue seemed ill at ease, vague, and frankly, kind of out of it. So although I was glad she won and thereby kept the GOP and their corporate shark friends at bay, my expectations for the new governor were fairly low. Since taking office, however, Perdue has made it clear that she's in charge (unlike her predecessor Mike "Go Away & Let Me Brood" Easley), she's confident, and she's got a plan. Now that we know what's in Perdue's first state budget, it looks like we may have lucked out by electing her. The governor faces a huge revenue shortfall, but at least for now, she seems to have dealt with it thoughtfully and shown the right instincts. State jobs will be lost, and highway money will be cut, as will funds for prisons, and those cuts will hurt. But Perdue wants to be sure that during our current economic mess, our schools have enough money to avoid teacher cuts; plus, she's proposing that the state spend more money to help displaced workers, and make sure our community colleges have the equipment they need. That's in addition to the $36 million in tax relief for small businesses. She's found a way to avoid across the board tax increases, too, by upping the tax on cigarettes by a buck a pack, and adding a 5 percent surcharge on alcohol sales. At the same time, she wants to raise the Earned Income Tax Credit for low wage earners, so the poor don't get hit any harder than they already are. It's only a first budget, but so far, Perdue seems to have been a solid, and even fairly progressive, choice for governor. Let's hope she can keep up the good work.
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