Long-time Raleigh-watcher Paul O’Connor has penned a remarkably blunt call for state Senate president pro tem Marc Basnight (D) to step aside from his leadership slot.
Basnight is coming up on his 15th year in the position, too long O’Connor says. The evidence? The Senate budget that basically calls on taxpayers to trust Basnight to do what is best with over a billion dollars in new debt. The state has gone certificate of participation crazy in recent years and the trend is only picking up speed.
It seems that the General Assembly, as controlled by Basnight, has convinced itself that lawmakers do not need any kind of voter input to issue debt any more. All that is needed is a claim to be doing “good things for the people of this state.” The higher interest rate that COPs carry used to dampen enthusiasm for using COPS to do “good things,” even among legislators. Not any more. Not with the spending fever in full effect.
O’Connor continues:
This isn’t the only area of legislating where Basnight demonstrates that he feels that he knows what is best for North Carolina, and the regular input of others is not necessary.
Basnight has long supported his authority to add substantive legislation to the budget with relatively little public discussion. When Basnight has a controversial bill to pass, he slips it into the budget, where it’s darned hard to get out.
“But those are all good things for the people of this state,” Basnight argued on Wednesday. And he’s almost right. Quite a few things he has slipped into the budget are good, such as the Clean Water Trust Fund and Smart Start. The Journal editorialized in favor of many of these issues, but not for the method he used to make them law.
Remember that former House Speaker Jim Black used this same technique for some pretty nefarious stuff. That’s the problem. When a single legislator has that much power, items such as the Clean Water Trust Fund become law, but so do political favors for special-interest groups that support scofflaws.
There’s a pattern here: Basnight’s wisdom replaces both the constitutional process on borrowing and the legislative process on numerous other matters. He short-circuits the legislative process, substituting his own wisdom for that of the collective elected body. With input from his closest lieutenants, he chooses what will get done without subjecting that decision to the rigors of the democratic process.
All true, except for the “democratic process” business. Banana republics don’t have one of those.
