It’s safe to say that, generally speaking, JLF’s Chad Adams and I see pretty much eye-to-eye. We just look at it from different angles.

If you’ll remember back in June, Adams said Guilford County’s budget, with its cuts to the arts, museums historic preservation, not to mention the entire economic development office, made a bold statement. Imagine that, he said, a local government acutally spending money on taxpayer services.

On the other hand, I said Guilford’s budget was more of the same, with a few cuts here and few cuts there, and we still got hit with a three-cent tax increase. It’s better than a seven-cent increase, but still…….

Then there’s the situation (or lack thereof) with Medicaid relief to N.C. counties. I think it’s insane that the state even makes counties pay for Medicaid, much less drags its feet on finding relief. Given the way our legislators spend money, it’s worthless telling me they can’t do it because they don’t have the money. Leaving aside the broader philosophical discussion of Medicaid, the bottom line is it’s one true responsibility of the state, right? Forty-nine other states suck it up; North Carolina should, too.

But once again, Chad approaches the situation from different angle……. in this (unposted) Carolina Journal commentary:

N.C. counties suffer from an interesting financial hypocrisy. Even as local governments handed out more than $400 million in financial giveaways in the form of incentives, they are simultaneously asking the state to relieve them of more than $500 million in Medicaid payments…..

A bolder and more courageous move would be to have the legislature rid the counties of the silliness of of incentives by making the practice a function of the Department of Commerce and disallowing counties to compete with giveaways. With such a move, the state would save the counties more than $400 million a year and force them to create more viable business opportunities through better taxation and business creation possibilities.

I guess I never thought about it like that. It’s not like Adams wants the counties to keep paying for Medicaid, either:

Now is the best time to deal with both issues…..There is no free lunch when it comes to Medicaid, and alleviating counties of that burden could be costly at first, but containing the costs and rooting out the waste, fraud and abuse will be much easier once in state hands. As such, the $400 million price tag of taking it over could be much reduced.