A message from Senator Hunt

In the November 2010 election, Republicans won the majority in both chambers in the North Carolina General Assembly. This is the first time in 140 years that this has occurred!

Instead of the typical fashion of a slow start to the session, the new majority wanted to take an effective, efficient, and responsible approach to the session, by getting to work quickly and leaving as soon as our work was complete. After one of the most efficient and productive legislative sessions in modern history, the North Carolina Senate adjourned early Saturday morning on June 18, 2010, the quickest adjournment in a long session since 1973.

The Republican-led legislature passed hundreds of bills in 87 legislative days, including many long-overdue reforms that will put North Carolina on a new, more responsible path to better economic growth, prosperity and public education. “I’m proud of my Senate colleagues for refusing to accept the status quo, especially amid fierce resistance and overblown rhetoric from the left,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger (R-Rockingham). “We fought for the responsible change North Carolinians have long needed and deserved. We did what we said we would do, and we did it more openly and efficiently than any legislature in decades.”

Over the Governor’s objections we accomplished the monumental task of passing a budget that balanced our revenues with expenses without a tax increase. Instead of getting caught in a partisan fight, we crafted a balanced bipartisan plan that cut taxes, reduced spending, and reformed and improved public education – all while closing a $2.5 billion deficit. This $19.7 billion state spending plan became law June 15th, when the House (with the support of 5 Democratic House members) and the Senate overrode Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto.

This budget is an important step in the right direction for North Carolina; it fully funds classroom teachers and teaching assistants, makes important education reforms, and protects other core state services. By reducing spending by more than $1 billion, we are finally making North Carolina’s government live within its means.

In addition to protecting education and beginning the process of “right-sizing” state government, we have made tax reforms that we anticipate will jump start the economy by enabling the private sector create thousands of new jobs. The state budget eliminates approximately $1.3 billion in “temporary” tax hikes that Gov. Perdue and liberal legislative Democrats raised in the peak of the economic recession. They promised the taxes would end this year and Republicans and some moderate Democrats kept their word with the citizens.

The budget also enacts a $50,000 income exemption for small private businesses – the job-creating engines of North Carolina’s wounded economy. This tax savings and the termination of the “temporary” taxes will return more than $1 billion to the pockets of North Carolina citizens and businesses. Economists say returning this money to the private economy will create as many as 15,000 jobs in the short term and thousands more in the future.

The more liberal members of the General Assembly and their supporters in the news media have been super critical of our efforts in education this year. Actually the new budget spends more on K-12 Education including school construction than proposed by the Governor.  We believe that we are not doing enough in education for our students in North Carolina! Currently, more than 1 in 4 high school students do not graduate. Many that do graduate are ill-prepared for post-secondary education, straining our community colleges and universities by requiring extensive remedial coursework. This is unacceptable.

In order to begin the process of bringing true reform and improvement to our state’s education system, we crafted education reforms that will lower class sizes by hiring 1,100 additional teachers, eliminate the cap on the number of public charter schools, pay teachers based on merit as opposed to longevity, and ensure students can read by the third grade. We anticipate that these education reforms will help boost North Carolina’s unacceptable graduation rates and educational performance. Many of those reforms were in the bipartisan budget.

The General Assembly passed sweeping changes to the state’s regulatory environment that will simplify outdated rules and regulations. More than 15,000 new or amended regulations have hit the books over the past decade. Many are complex, confusing, and unnecessary rules that were imposed by unelected bureaucrats and caused uncertainty for the state’s businesses. The bill that passed the House and Senate prohibits new state regulations that are more restrictive than federal rules, and requires the state to review and eliminate burdensome regulations annually.

This session we worked for real reforms in areas that affect us all including medical malpractice and other tort reforms that will help North Carolina lure primary care doctors to North Carolina and make health care coverage cheaper and more accessible for everyone. The current lottery-like system lets trial lawyers win big while doctors flee to other states where they can practice medicine without fear of frivolous lawsuits. North Carolina doctors have had to practice defensive medicine, and often order unnecessary tests and procedures to protect themselves in case they get sued. That added health care cost is passed on to taxpayers in the form of higher insurance rates for all of us and more costly taxpayer-funded medical programs for the poor.

We fought fraud by passing a measure requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. Studies show Photo ID requirements boost voter confidence and participation. It’s a hugely popular measure – a no-brainer that the Governor unfortunately vetoed.  Hopefully we will be able to override the veto when we reconvene later this month.

Instead of putting our citizen’s property rights second to government, we reformed the state’s annexation laws to protect private property rights. The long-overdue, comprehensive annexation reform the legislature passed will keep municipalities from forcibly annexing private property and saddling residents with the high costs of hooking up to municipal services. Residents often pay thousands of dollars to connect to water and sewer lines – against their will. This is the first time North Carolina’s annexation laws have been reformed in more than 50 years, and it is something that should have been done before now.

Finally, we fought to protect North Carolinians from President Obama’s overreaching federal health care law. The legislature passed a bill early in the session that gave North Carolinians the right to opt out of the law, the same right the Obama administration extended to some favored corporations and Washington insiders. The Governor again unfortunately vetoed this popular legislation.

We have accomplished a lot but hopefully this is only the beginning. We have much more that we can do for North Carolina and will do so with bipartisan support.

The Senate will reconvene in late July for a special redistricting session.

Thank you for your support in Senate District 15 over the past seven years. I would appreciate hearing from you if I can be of service to you in the General Assembly.

Please refer to the Issues and Concerns section for my view on other important topics under discussion in North Carolina.

Neal Hunt

North Carolina Senate (Wake - District 15 )