Besides having a good eye for nice cars, Mark Binker of the Greensboro News & Record informs us that Medicaid relief for counties is the major sticking point in budget negotiations at the General Assembly according to Rep. Bill Owens.
The two legislative proposals most frequently mentioned would involve a second-hand billion dollars worth of tax hikes across the state or smaller second-hand tax hikes in about a dozen counties. Wasn’t there a Surgeon General’s report on the dangers of second-hand taxes?
If lawmakers cannot find the savings in Medicaid or the rest of the budget to alleviate this unfair burden on counties and are not willing to make incremental relief a budgetary priority, they should at least have the decency to raise taxes on their own instead of pawning of responsibility to local governments.
ht: Mitch
