Interesting developments with the Senate budget released yesterday, with Senate leader Marc Basnight amazingly claiming there isn’t enough money (despite that well-known $2-billion-plus surplus) for legislators’ earmarks:
It contains less by way of earmarked projects for particular districts ? what critics might less charitably call pork. Left out of the Senate budget, for example, were requests to build a transportation and logistics classroom building near PTI Airport, a proposed music hall in High Point and funding for the civil rights museum in Greensboro.
“We didn?t have the money,” Senate leader Marc Basnight said Tuesday. “You could have that money to do those projects, but you?d have to take it away from education or mental health.”
Democrat Rep. Alma “Magical Place” Adams of Greensboro wasn’t buying it:
“It?s stripped to the bone, and people are really upset,” she said.
When told that Basnight said budget writers ran out of money, Adams was skeptical.
“They probably didn?t prioritize right,” Adams said.
Watch out, Rep. Adams has been known to to pull a rabbit or two out from her hat!
